Possibly Downie was simply drawing a parallel between the inexperienced Henry Hudson, who piloted the ill-fated flight that went down with Barilko, and the neophyte pilots of the Allied Air Forces. Nevertheless it’s tough to disregard the imperfections on this picture of elite navy pilots, these dashing and supposedly unquestionable heroes. A few of them have been simply children. A few of them weren’t heroes in any respect—at the least not but. They have been working it in. And if that picture of Canadian historical past might be sophisticated so shortly, as a chaser to a narrative a few vanished hockey participant, every thing was questionable.
Elsewhere the lyrics have been extra immediately adversarial. “Wheat Kings” was torn straight from the headlines, an acoustic monitor about David Milgaard, a 17-year-old wrongly convicted of a brutal rape and homicide in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Milgaard served 23 years in jail earlier than being launched earlier that summer time of 1992, and finally absolutely exonerated. The music begins in a watercolor picture of rural Canada, Downie singing of “sunset within the Paris of the Prairies,” however the veil is shortly pulled again to disclose the nightmare in Milgaard’s thoughts, “the place the partitions are lined all yellow, gray and sinister/Hung with footage of our dad and mom’ prime ministers.” 5 of them had served within the time it took Milgaard to be convicted, endure behind bars, and discover freedom.
Most pressing of all was “On the lookout for a Place to Occur,” which informed the bloody and bitter story of European annexation of Fatherland from two views. First, Downie gave voice to French explorer Jacques Cartier, who callously needed “To discover a place, an historical race/The sort you’d prefer to gamble with,” earlier than shifting the main focus to an indigenous particular person fleeing for his or her life: “I’ll paint a scene, from reminiscence/So I’d know who murdered me.” The Hip weren’t telling the story of a harmonious nation. All over the place on Totally Fully, there gave the impression to be injustice and loss of life, a beautiful-seeming facade melting away to disclose one thing grotesque and disturbing.
Totally Fully exploded upon launch in Canada, promoting 200,000 copies in its 5 weeks. Within the States, it carried out so poorly that MCA pulled their advertising and marketing price range for it only a fortnight after its launch. “Two weeks earlier than the report comes out, all of the report firm is saying is, ‘It’s gonna be massive boys, look out!’ Then the week after, nobody returns our calls,” Sinclair stated. “That’s the way in which it’s.”
By July 1993, the band’s personal optimism had curdled. In an interview with the Calgary Herald, drummer Gord Sinclair put it all the way down to an perspective south of the border. “I feel People have this bizarre factor about Canada,” he stated. “They appear north and determine it’s simply the 52nd state. Being from Canada actually doesn’t have a lot of an impression for them. They only form of assume that you just’re a second-class American or American with a humorous accent or French.”
