One of my earliest World Hum blogs was about the perfect
road trip soundtrack. It got me thinking about the role of the road trip – and
of road trip music – in modern American folklore, and then that got me thinking
about Canadian road trips and how they, while common, aren’t nearly as
mythologized. We’ve got plenty of slasher-flick motels and loooong stretches of
empty highway (try the drive from Toronto to Winnipeg sometime), and
there’s something very appealing about the idea of the full coast-to-coast
drive. But the Canadian road trip doesn’t have the same cultural stature as the
American version, and it doesn’t have a world-famous soundtrack to go with it,
either.

So I started thinking about my ideal soundtrack for a
Canadian road trip, and I thought I’d post about it here in case anyone is
planning a long drive north of the 49th and wants some appropriate
Made in Canada
tunes to rock out to along the way.

First and foremost, any Canadian road trip soundtrack has
got to involve at least a couple of tracks from The Tragically Hip. I’m not a
cult-level fan, but they’re that band that always, when one of their songs
comes on the radio, makes me stop flipping between stations and crank up the
volume.

The lyrics are laced with Canadian cultural references, like
these lines from “Fireworks”, about one of Canada’s finest hockey moments: “If
there’s a goal that everyone remembers, it was back in old ’72 / We all
squeezed the stick and we all pulled the trigger, and all I remember is sitting
beside you / You said you didn’t give a f*ck about hockey, well I never saw
someone say that before / You held my hand and we walked home the long way, you
were loosening my grip on Bobby Orr.” Lead singer Gord Downie’s random tangents
and spoken-word rants during live shows are legendary; I’ve heard it said that
you’re not truly Canadian until you’ve seen The Hip live.

For road trip tracks, try out “Blow at High Dough”, “Nautical
Disaster” (about “Canada’s Gallipoli”, the WW2 catastrophe at Dieppe), “Fireworks”,
“50 Mission Cap” (about Toronto Maple Leafs legend Bill Barilko, and his
mysterious death – this live version includes a vintage Gord rant), “Boots or
Hearts”, or “38 Years Old” (about a break-out from a major penitentiary in the
band’s hometown of Kingston, Ontario). Or slow things down a little with “Wheat
Kings” – about David Milgaard, one of Canada’s most famous
wrongly-convicted non-murderers.

Moving beyond The Hip, there are the usual big-name
classics: choose your favourite tracks from Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, and
throw in some 80s/90s cheese-rock from Bryan Adams – “Summer of 69” is always a
good sing-along option. Then add “American Woman” and “Running Back to Saskatoon” (just for the
awesome title alone) by The Guess Who, and “Born to be Wild” or “Magic Carpet
Ride” by Steppenwolf. (Okay, okay. Only some members were Canadian. I'm counting them anyway.)

Shifting to more recent music, I’m a little out of the loop
but I hear that a bunch of Canadian bands, mainly Montreal-based, are making a
lot of noise on the indie scene. If Feist, The Arcade Fire, Broken Social
Scene, Metric, Stars, Death From Above 1979, Hot Hot Heat – or whoever the
latest, hottest acts are that have supplanted them – are your thing, then
definitely add some of that. (Sorry no specific recs here, I just can’t keep up
with who’s sold out and who’s become too well-known to make acceptable
listening anymore.)

I did used to keep up with the latest music though, once
upon a time, and I still have a soft spot for the Canadian alt-rock bands of my
youth, way back in the mid-to-late 90s. Check out Matthew Good Band (try “Load
Me Up” or “Alabama Motel Room”), Big Wreck (“The Oaf (My Luck Is Wasted)”),
blues-y Saskatoon-based Wide Mouth Mason (“Midnight Rain” or “This Mourning”), Rusty
(“Misogyny”), or Sloan, a Halifax band who’ve been known to channel a bit of an
early Beatles vibe (“The Lines You Amend”, “Everything You’ve Done Wrong”).

If hip hop is your thing, believe it or not, we’ve got
plenty of that too. Most of Canada’s
biggest rappers and hip hop artists have emerged from Toronto (the "T-dot") and its Jamaican and Caribbean community, but the latest guy to make it is Ottawa’s own Belly, who
is Palestinian-born. Unlike most Canadian hip hop acts, who never make it big
outside of Canada,
Belly actually cracked the American Top 40 with his single, “Pressure”. (Until
you’ve grown up in a residential neighbourhood in a medium-sized city that’s
possibly one of the WASPiest in a nation of WASPS, I don’t think you can
understand how strange it is to hear a rapper giving shout-outs to O-town on
Rick Dees.)

Two of Canada’s
most interesting hip hop acts, as far as I’m concerned anyway, are Somali-born K’naan
(“Soobax”) and the very innovative K-os (check out “Man I Used To Be” or “B-boy
Stance”). And going back to the artists of my youth again, check out reggae-influenced
Kardinal Offishall (“Bakardi Slang”, “Ol Time Killin / Maxine”), typical Top 40
rapper Choclair (“Let’s Ride”), Jully Black (“Sweat Of Your Brow”), or The
Rascalz (“Top of the World” or “Northern Touch”), one of the first hip
hop acts to get serious attention at the Juno Awards, Canada’s Grammys. And of
course, Canada’s
original rapper was also one of the original white rappers: Snow, and his giant
one-hit-wonder track, “Informer”.

I don’t want to ramble on too much longer, I guess I just
wanted to let people know that there’s a lot more to Canada’s music scene than Celine,
Avril and her hubby from Sum 41, Nickelback, and Shania. So if you’re planning
a Canadian road trip, there’s no excuse to be rocking out to Lynyrd Skynyrd or
Springsteen the whole way!