Tragically Hip have retired one of their songs (Katrina related)

[banquo's_bumble_puppy]

In 1989 the Canadian band The Tragically Hip came out with the album "Up To Here". "Up To Here" was their breakthrough album with two hit singles "Blow At High Dough" and "New Orleans Is Sinking". Out of respect for the Katrina hurricane victims, Canadian rock stations have pulled the song from their playlists and the Hip have apparently retired the song. This reminds me of what happened shortly after 911 and the sensitivity surrounding certain songs and movies that might remind people of the tragedy. Out of respect for the victims of Katrina; should "The Hip" retire this song for good?

[banquo's_bumble_puppy]

lyrics can be found by doing a google search

[Nicolas]

Nope.

When it was written, it was unrelated. THat stations aren't playing the song now, I can understand (whether I agree is something else, but I understand). But there's no reason to withdraw a song that is in essence unrelated (it is 16 years older than the facts!).

Say I had written a song in 1993 with lyrics like:

Planes above me,
in the sky.
Concrete beneath me,
dunno why.
Concrete in the sky,
I hope they see
or they just might hit the WTC

And that was a massive hit (edit: sorry absolutely no pun intended).
I wouldn't play that song shortly after 9/11. But why shouldn't I play it when things have settled down? It is a good (assumption :)) and unrelated song that people liked in the past. I thought about a plane hitting the WTC and in the future it did. It's not like I asked for it or did it myself. It's not that I'm laughing at people's misery, because there was nothing going on when I wrote that song.

The same goes for "N/O is sinking". People should see the song in it's original context. Of course the song gets a different load after the facts. If people know the history of the song, I see no problem. It's a bit like the movie "deep impact": New York gets hit, and all that's left standing up is the WTC. After 9/11, we look differently at that scene, but that's no reason to alter it or abandon it! History has both past and current events. More recent events shouldn't be a reason to clear out older things. That's a bit like burning books.

[Fram]

Randy Newman has a song about the previous fllods in New Orleans (1927 or something), and apparently he played this as his first song on a concert to raise funds for the current victims. I think that is the correct reply, not retiring a song (not playing it for a short while because it may come across as insensitive is something else). (Note: this is vague info, I read it in the paper this week and forgot most of it again).
Most of the songs that weren't played during the buildup to the Gulf War were really completely unrelated (Waterloo, because it might hurt the French? I don't think the French were hurt before either), but a song like 'Killing an arab' by the Cure could come across as inflammatory at such a time.

I feel most sorry (musically speaking) for Katrina and the Waves though. Talk about a truly unlucky name now...

[farmerjumperdon]

I'm mysteriously relieved that Don is not on the hurrican names list.

[kucharek]

Yep. When the storm hit, I also thought about Katrina and the Waves.
With respect to the subject, I'm strongly agains abandoning stuff just because something happened. It looks a little bit like the permanent history-rewriting in "1984". It's aokay not to play such stuff shortly after some event that has some resemblance, but we shouldn't overdo it.
A German band had a number one hit last year with the title "The perfect wave". After the tsunami, it was dropped from the playlists of radio stations, though the text was only metaphorical and in no way related to any catastrophe.

[farmerjumperdon]

I agree, a short moratiriam out of respect.

I've checked out the NOAA sites looking for an explanation of why hurricanes even carry names as they do. Does anyone know why they weren't just given numbers or the Greek alphabet from the get go?

Like I said, I'm glad none of the names in my family show up on their lists. Not that I think anyone is going to burn anyone named Katrina at the stake, it would just be kind of eerie having a killer storm with your name on it.

[peter eldergill]

There's always the inevitable "coming out of retirement"

Pete

The Hip rocks!

[Parrothead]

Pulling it from playlists temporarily, ok. Retiring the song, no. Besides if it were retired now, wouldn't that include removing the song and video from The Hip's upcoming boxset release (2 cds and 2 dvds)? Wouldn't it be strange retiring the song, yet the same song and video get released, as part of the boxset on Nov 1?

[Gillianren]

I've checked out the NOAA sites looking for an explanation of why hurricanes even carry names as they do. Does anyone know why they weren't just given numbers or the Greek alphabet from the get go?

Like I said, I'm glad none of the names in my family show up on their lists. Not that I think anyone is going to burn anyone named Katrina at the stake, it would just be kind of eerie having a killer storm with your name on it.

as I understand it, it's easier for us mere mortals to remember, should they have names. I believe it was Ophelia that started as "tropical depression 14," and that's not something you're going to remember. however, as Ophelia, there's a set of memories attached to the name. (granted, all of mine are of Hamlet, but that's the hazard of an education in English literature.)

the other reason is that you wouldn't be able to retire numbers or letters of the Greek alphabet, and any hurricane that causes sufficient devestation gets its name retired. if I refer to Hurricane Camille, for example, you know exactly which one I'm talking about--because there hasn't been a Camille since. there will never be another Hugo, Katrina, Andrew, or Rita. (well, I'm speculating on that last, but it seems a good guess.)

the bad news is that those letters got new names put on the list to replace them. this means that all of us may someday have major storms that share our names. (for the record, Jeanne-who-works-at-the-Evergreen-library was kind of proud of having Hurricane Jeanne be a major storm; she said it made her feel a little more powerful. but Jeanne's kind of odd.)

[pumpkinpie]

Pulling it from playlists temporarily, ok. Retiring the song, no. Besides if it were retired now, wouldn't that include removing the song and video from The Hip's upcoming boxset release (2 cds and 2 dvds)? Wouldn't it be strange retiring the song, yet the same song and video get released, as part of the boxset on Nov 1?

I agree for situations like this in general. I remember after 9/11 there was supposedly this "list" that went around to radio stations of tons of songs they weren't supposed to play because they could contain offensive material. The only one I remember is John Lennon's Imagine because it said, "Imagine there's no heaven....." :rolleyes:

[bearcub]

I've checked out the NOAA sites looking for an explanation of why hurricanes even carry names as they do. Does anyone know why they weren't just given numbers or the Greek alphabet from the get go?

The explanations from the NOAA site are here:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames.shtml

and a deeper one here:
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/general/lib/reason.html

in case you weren't able to nail them down.

[Gillianren]

I noticed that Hurricane Lenny was severe enough to be retired, but there has not yet been a Hurricane Carl.

what does it say about me that I did notice that?

[Lianachan]

I'm pretty confident that there'll only ever be one Hurricane Higgins (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/snooker/2889881.stm).

[Big Brother Dunk]

I can understand radio stations not playing the song for a while, but how do you retire a song?

[dakini]

I don't think they should retire it.

I mean, it's not as though New Orleans sunk completely under the water permanently or something. It's just a bit of flooding.

[CalabashCorolla]

I agree, a short moratiriam out of respect.

I've checked out the NOAA sites looking for an explanation of why hurricanes even carry names as they do. Does anyone know why they weren't just given numbers or the Greek alphabet from the get go?

Like I said, I'm glad none of the names in my family show up on their lists. Not that I think anyone is going to burn anyone named Katrina at the stake, it would just be kind of eerie having a killer storm with your name on it.

Hurricane naming came about around WWII as a means of keeping the public clearly informed of the status of tropical storms. This was right around the time that actual warnings of impending weather crises started to become more than classified military information (believe it or not, tornado advisories were issued during WWII not for the public's benefit, but to protect the staff of the numerous ammunition plants in Tornado Alley). The previous method of naming hurricanes - by latitude and longitude - was realized to be confusing for both the public and meteorologists. So, in 1950, the Weather Bureau started naming storms after words in the naval phoenetic alphabet, which went Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog, Easy, and so on. That way, forecasters and the public could easily identify a storm by its name and not have to deal with coords.

This went on until 1953, when the international phoenetic alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.) was adopted worldwide. In addition, around this time hurricane forecasters probably realized that the name of a particularly devastating storm would best be retired out of sensitivity, which ruled out using static name lists, such as the phoenetic and Greek alphabets, as a means of naming storms. After all, if you are stuck with the Greek alphabet, and Hurricane Gamma kills a bunch of people, you can't exactly retire the name. So, they devised a series of lists of women's names, which were re-used every few years and off of which names could easily be retired and substituted with others of the same first letter. My guess is, since women's names were used colloquially to nickname other things at the time (as in Chuck Yeager's X-1 plane, Glamorous Glennis, and of course the Enola Gay), then using them for hurricanes seemed logical in a sense.

In the late '70s, a backlash ensued over NOAA's choice to use ONLY Anglo-European women's names on the list. So, six new name lists were created in which male and female names were alternated and which included many names of French and Spanish origin (a nod to the various cultures of the Caribbean, although it seems unfair that they left out Dutch names). These lists were first used in 1979, the season which included two of the most infamous "male" storms, David and Frederic.

Personal names are used by most weather bureaus around the world to name storms, as it is the easiest way for everyone to keep track them. My name happens to be Katherine (the Anglo variation on Katrina), and it was a little eerie earlier this year when my sister happened to mention, "Oh, 'Katrina' is on the list this year, that'll be the bad one for sure." Then again, I know of at least one fellow weather nut who named his children after notorious hurricanes, so it goes both ways I suppose. Me, personally, I have a large photo of Lower Manhattan pre-9/11 on my wall, see it when I wake up every morning, and don't so much as wince. But that's just me :)

[soylentgreen]

Retiring songs? Moratoriums? Good Lord it's ludicrous! What could everybody be thinking? It approaches the asininity of boycotting the words "french fries"!

People have gotten so thin-skinned over the last decade or so, it's frankly disgusting. What happens when the cable goes out for a day or so? ....have a rock concert for the victims of television loss? ....pull Springsteen's "57 Channels" out of rotation?

And ever since September 11th, people have reverted to an almost pre-enlightenment level of cravenness. It has nothing to do with respect, it's 100% ostrichism. Why are so many people determined to bring back the superstitious dogma of the dark ages? Kucharek above is right, it's Orwell all the way. I guess we've come quite far as a species, but as a people, we still haven't escaped 1348.

What about approaching it the other way? Maybe Elton John could write a song about learning the lessons of not building cities below sea-level in known flood planes or continually repopulating sandbars in a proven danger zone.

Besides, just how often is that Tragically Hip song played anyway!?!

Sorry, I just have a very low tolerance for thinskinnery. Now skullduggery...that I like!

[Paul Beardsley]

I agree with the likes of soylentgreen, and in fact I suspect Hip are just trying to use the tragedy to gain some publicity.

There seems to be a prevailing attitude at the moment of trying to find an "offended target" for innocent, normal activities - including the commemoration of historical events. For example, over here in Portsmouth, the Navy re-enacted the Battle of Trafalgar - and the two sides had to be called the Reds and the Blues in case it offended the French. I think the French were more offended by this presumptious "protection".

The hurricane-naming stuff was interesting though.

[kucharek]

There seems to be a prevailing attitude at the moment of trying to find an "offended target" for innocent, normal activities - including the commemoration of historical events. For example, over here in Portsmouth, the Navy re-enacted the Battle of Trafalgar - and the two sides had to be called the Reds and the Blues in case it offended the French. I think the French were more offended by this presumptious "protection".
IIRC, the British and the French had joint events with regards to the 200th anniversary, including some "replays".

[Candy]

I still get tears in my eyes when I hear Superman (http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Backstage/1687/Supermanfff.html) by Five For Fighting. It reminds me of UA93.