MOST READ: Hey, man, thanks: Kingston radio station plays unreleased Tragically Hip track, “Wait So Long”
In honour of the anniversary of Gord Downie’s death, Kingston’s KROCK dubbed itself Gord FM on Oct. 18. All day, for a full 24 hours, the station played nothing but the Tragically Hip and Downie solo tracks, encouraging listeners to call in with their stories, memories and requests.
And then, around 5 p.m., the station gave listeners a little gift: A previously unreleased song believed to be called “Wait So Long.”
Reddit went bonkers.
“The DJ said he had heard a couple versions of the song in crappy live recordings, but never the studio recording,” the original poster said. “It sounded like it was from around the Up to Here days and it was a fantastic studio recording.”
The KROCK DJ at the time said the song showed up, presumably on CD, in a blank envelope without any notification or identification. The original poster followed up to say the station got “special permission from the band to play it” on Wednesday, but no word on whether or when it would play again.
Since word of Downie’s illness came out, and again after his passing, there’s been rumblings of a deep vault of recorded but unreleased material that could give Hip fans more songs to add to their collections and playlists.
Guitarist Rob Baker told the Toronto Sun just after Downie’s death that the band was in the middle of recording an album at the time and that there was a “double album’s worth of unreleased material.”
Could this be a tease to what’s to come?
Correspondence with one of the Hip’s first managers confirmed that the band did indeed have a song called “Wait So Long” during the time they were working on 1989’s Up to Here.
The band includes it on their list of 61 unreleased songs as well – a list that also features “Radio Show,” a track released with the anniversary edition of Fully Completely a few years back, along with “Streets Ahead” and “Transformation,” songs that later were used on Now For Plan A.
Fan sites have a similar list, of course, that also include “Wait So Long.”
And one helpful Reddit user included a link to a YouTube video of a song by the same name.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttI7CVn_xa8
So, what do you think? Do you want there to be more Hip songs or should we be grateful for what we have?
I won’t rest until I have all unreleased songs are released.
Truly a gift…
My neighbour Don has tears in his eyes, love it
This is a video I made, on my Youtube channel `MojoPaw’.
There are many other unreleased gems there that I think are much better.