Google Earth Community: Lyrical Places

A Bird's-Eye View of a Bird's-Eye View
The Lyrical Places of The Tragically Hip

After seeing a recent Google Earth post showing the location of the Group of Seven’s paintings of the Canadian Landscape, I started thinking about how music lyrics can also evoke place and in particular the songs of a great Canadian band, The Tragically Hip (TTH). I have always felt TTH are modern lyrical landscape artists in the way that many of their songs make use of stories, symbols and places, many of which can be geo-referenced. So I spent last weekend combing through the song lyrics, available on the band’s website and when I found a place or event referenced in a song, I added an album cover icon, to mark the location of the song’s reference and denote the album that the song was from.

While many songs were easy to place mark, with the location embedded in the title, “Thompson Girl”, “Toronto 4” or obvious from the title’s inference “Daredevil” (Niagara Falls), many others required a little more research. For example, finding the location of an actual building, “Golden Rim Motel” in British Colombia, or locating the defunct Kingston Speedway, now a rock quarry, in TTH’s hometown that is referred to in the song “Blow at High Dough”. With other songs I took a little cartographic license for example in place marking the line “ill Prairie wind” I choose the intersection of Portage and Main from my current place of residence, Winnipeg as I have personally felt that cold “ill” blast in February. Or placing “Three Pistols” on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park where Group of Seven painter “Tom Thompson came paddling past” and then later disappeared (and reappeared) into Canadian Folk Lore.

Of course, many of these locations are open for debate, especially because the one data rule I imposed in this first draft, was one location per song, even if the song has two location references. For example, the song entitled “Bobcaygeon” was located in the town of that name even though Toronto is mentioned in the second part of the song. Also, in “Fifty Mission Cap” I could have added Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto as the place of the last goal Bill Barilko scored, but instead I placed it 60 miles North of Cochran Ontario where the wreckage of his plane was discovered. Where I was able to zoom in I could refine the locations. For example, “Gus the Polar Bear from Central Park” is tied to the Polar Bear exhibit based on looking at online Central Park Zoo Maps and the line “Terry’s gift is forever green” is located at the Terry Fox Monument outside of Thunder Bay Ontario. Finally, other places were place marked based on historical references, for example in “Looking for a Place to Happen” I used the location at Gaspe Quebec where Jacques Cartier first landed in North America, and as TTH lyrically paint, was greeted with “you've got a real bum's eye for clothes”.

After locating as many geo-lyrics as I could (album songs only), I also have added related information in the pop-up balloons/callouts, including websites that explain songs in more depth, The Hip Museum, as well as images from Wikipedia of people “Billy Sunday” and things “Emperor Penguin” noted in various songs. I have also included video clips, including the fall of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge mentioned in “Vaccination Scar”.

I have also added tour locations for the last four years, as found on The Hipbase and listed them by Date and Place with the concert venue noted in the pop-up balloon along with links to set lists and where available (2006) YouTube clips of the band performing.

Comments, Suggestions and lower case criticism welcome!

Wyman

p.s. a quick look at song locations, at the North American scale, should indicate the geographical region TTH are from.

Edited by Wyman (07/26/07 12:54 PM)

Post Extras