...The biggest hurdle was a question of time. We wanted to boil the show down to 70 minutes of music to fit onto a single CD. Doing a double live record was out of the question for us. Too expensive and too much music for one sitting. We wanted to do something with its own pace like a real live set, with a beginning, middle and end that you could hear and feel. The encores, 700ft Ceiling, Daredevil, and Flamenco were all sacrificed to that end. Stephen Marcussen put on the finishing touches at Precision Mastering. From there it was just a question of artwork and design. Our good friend Clemens Rikken, the famous Dutch photographer, had been with us during the tour and supplied us with more than enough brilliant photos. With the help of Andrew McLachlan, as usual, we pieced the package together while sitting around the dinner table at the studio. The whole process, which in so many ways had been ten years in the making, took us less than two weeks once we got rolling.

As it turns out, The Tragically Hip Live Between Us will not be the first live record made at the venerable Cobo Arena. Simply put, it's a great room to play as far as hockey rinks go. Unlike most arenas, there is nothing behind the stage area, just a wall which projects everything outwards to the crowd. As a result the room sounds great, and that sound quality adds to the quality of the performance and so on and so on. Maybe that's it. The end result is there on tape, an evening when all the intangibles of live performance come together to create magic. It's the room, the band, the crew, the crowd, the set, the evening and about a thousand other elements all falling into place. Who knows, maybe it's the water. Detroit Rock City!

Enjoy at Top Speed, Gord S

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