[MarsNews] Tandem Reviews | Series 2 Artist Announcment

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! No better day to announce the artist for the latest series of tandem reviews with my wife, Sarca Sim! And the artist is…

The Tragically Hip!

As promised, here are all of the folks who guessed right last week:

2Loud2oldmusic:
Justin Bieber hasn’t been around that long so that rules him out. I think it is between Tragically Hip and Rush. I will go with the Hip.
– Sorry, John. You’re going have to tackle the Beeb’s catalog on your own!

stephen1001:
I’m locking in The Hip as my guess, mainly because of the ‘home video releases’ description, as that got me thinking about the early 90s Another Roadside Attraction tour VHS!
– I should have seen a well thought out guess by Mr. Quiz coming!

keepsmealive: 
I’m a day late on this but I’m gonna guess it’s the Hip… and the one boxed set you’re missing is because it’s at my house?
– No. Sarah has already reviewed that set right here. So us taking on the extended edition of Fully Completely instead is perfect.

What we are missing is the Boxset Hipeponymous which contains Yer Favourites, which we also don’t have… but we got the rest! That means all 13 of their studio albums, their one live album, and all 4 of their concert home videos will be reviewed. Yep, we’re tackling this one fully and completely!

A lot of you guessed Sloan, and some expressed a desire for it to be them over The Hip. Don’t be disappointed. I can almost guarantee that we will be covering them next time. Part of the reason why we went with The Hip now is we wanted this series to be a little different. For Led Zeppelin, we approached each album as enthusiastic fans. It will be the same for Sloan.

The Hip will be different.

I think you guys are going to like this ride since Sarah and I will be coming at their albums from different angles.

To read the perspective of someone who is a real fan with a long history with the band, you are going to want to check out Sarah’s write ups. She began listening to them close to when they were a new phenomenon and remained with them for their entire journey.

As for me, it took a while to warm up to them. I was a metal head in the ’90s, and back then all you listened to was your chosen genre… for the most part anyway. I even dubbed them as “The Tragically Zip” back then. That was until one album had me do a 180. It might have had to do with the quality of the release, timing, the company I was keeping, or all three. We will get there.

I think that will make for a fun series. Sarah is a diehard who can sing along to entire albums. I will be spinning more than half of the catalog for the first time. I’m stoked to finally give them a proper listen, especially after buying most on CD then again on vinyl.

It all begins next Sunday with the first review being The Hip’s self titled debut EP and it will continue on every Sunday from then on for the next 18 weeks. We should be done the series in June. Start by check out Sarah’s series introduction, right here and subscribe to her blog if you haven’t already! Good times!