Episode Details

Episode Description

Number 31 on the countdown. First zoo animal on Prozac. JD is joined by Duxoop from Toledo — broadcasting from the actual birthplace of Gus the polar bear — plus Andrew from Winnipeg and Dave from Montreal to dig into one of the most quietly beloved songs in the Hip catalogue.

The panel gets into the Adam Kasper production that makes In Between Evolution sound the way it does, Rob Baker's untouchable outro solo, the Hip Museum's wonderfully unhinged George W. Bush theory, and the wordplay hiding in plain sight — because it was never what's troubling Gus. It's what's troubling us.

Fair warning: this one gets emotional. Duxoop tells us what the lyrics did to him last year from a nursing home wheelchair, and Dave tells us about his friend Al — nickname Gus — and the cover band he's fronting at Al's memorial this Friday. Then the whole thing derails beautifully into a full inventory of every animal in the Hip discography.

Explicit language. Recorded live on YouTube.

On the Panel

• JD — host
• Duxoop from Toledo — self-described part polar bear; born-in-Toledo credentials, same as Gus
• Andrew from Winnipeg — arrived with facts and a News Radio shirt; host of Soup Full of Radio
• Dave from Montreal — saw the Hip in Central Park; frontman of brand-new Hip cover band Colonel Mustard

Tale of the Tape

Pulled from The Hip Handbook, which amalgamates HipBase and setlist.fm data.

Album

In Between Evolution (2004)

Producer

Adam Kasper, recorded in Seattle

Single

Third single from the record

Countdown position

No. 31 on the Top 40

Times played live

327

First played

October 27, 2003

Last played

August 18, 2016 — the Ottawa show

As an opener

Once

As an encore

Five times

Poll Results

Love it

52%

Like it

36%

Tolerate it

10%

Skip it

1%

Never heard of it

1%

Possibly the most varied — and most indecisive — poll spread of the series so far. Duxoop's verdict: "That's crazy to me. These numbers should be way more lopsided toward the top."

Live Version Featured

Ottawa, 2004 — the Grey Cup halftime show. Andrew remembers watching it live and everyone around him asking why the band was opening the biggest gig of the year with a brand-new song. (They went into Courage right after.)

What We Talked About

The Album That Everyone Slept On

• In Between Evolution debuted at No. 1 in Canada on roughly 22,500 first-week copies — then got knocked off the top by Avril Lavigne's new album.
• Certified platinum in Canada that September. Dave notes it was one of the last Hip records to move real units.
• Where does this song sit in the career arc? The panel lands on "the end of the middle" rather than the dawn of the final third.
• Andrew's take: Gus is the first song on the record that sounds like the Hip you already knew — you lean back in the chair. Heaven Is a Better Place Today, Summer's Killing Us and Vaccination Scar are louder neighbours, so Gus hides in the first five.

Adam Kasper and the Seattle Sound

• Andrew looked up Kasper's credits and it clicked: Soundgarden's Down on the Upside, Queens of the Stone Age's Songs for the Deaf, Pearl Jam's self-titl