The Tragically Hip at the Bathouse: Part One of a new video series. We take you behind the scences as The Tragically Hip records their new Album with Bob Rock at their Bathouse Studio.
A new music mix was updated in the Hip Music Player last month and the Live Show has just been updated today. From the 2000, "An Evening with The Tragically Hip" tour, with Chris Brown and Kate Fenner.
Live at the Aggie Theatre, October 27, 2000.
Click on the "Launch the Music Player" button and navigate to the LIVE SHOW.
Registered users can now enter the shows they have seen via the website to create a personal concert history. Go to the touring section and view the individual set lists of the shows you have attended. Click on the "I was there" button to add it to your concert History.
We're on the lookout for missing setlists for our archive. If we are missing the setlist for a show you were at, and you have a copy of the setlist. Please take the time to enter it into our new set list submission system.
June 30th Charlottetown, PEI The Festival of Lights
Announce: Fri May 2nd @ 10am EST On-Sale: Wed May 7th
Tickets: 3-Day Passport $69 Single Day Tickets $37
Tickets and Passports available at www.charlottetowntickets.com or by phone 1-800-955-1864. Passports will be available at all participating Atlantic Superstores beginning May 26th.
The 2008 Bluesfest line-up has been announced and will feature The Tragically Hip, James Taylor, Feist, Widespread Panic, Steely Dan, Fergie, Brian Wilson, The Black Crowes, AKON, Three Days Grace, Dr.John, Metric, Sam Roberts, Donna Summer, Calexico, Wyclef, Kathleen Edwards, Tokyo Police Club, Hayden, Sean Kingston, Zappa plays Zappa, Matthew Good, Cassandra Wilson, Great Big Sea, Boz Scaggs, and many more. The festival runs from July 3rd through until the 13th.
The Hip will perform on the opening day of the festival - Thursday July 3rd.
Tickets go onsale to the general public Saturday April 26, 2008 at 10 a.m.
As a registered user of thehip.com you have access to a special pre-sale offer starting this Wednesday April 23rd. You can buy an 11-day full festival non-transferable passport for a discounted price of $175 (down from $195) or an 11-day full festival transferable passport for a discounted price of $180 (down from $200).
Or, you can purchase a General Admission day ticket for The Hip's show day - July 3rd - before anyone else.
This offer begins on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 10 a.m. and expires at midnight on Friday, April 25, 2008.
The Tragically Hip to Headline Virgin Music Festival Calgary
Posted on: 04/08/2008
June 22, 2008: Calgary; Virgin Festival 2008: Fort Calgary
The Tragically Hip, Mathew Good, City and Colour, Stars, Constantines, The New Pornographers, Attack in Black, Ten Second Epic, the Spades & The Whitsundays
June 21, 2008 Stone Temple Pilots, The Flaming Lips, Three Days Grace, Corb Lund, The Dudes, Pride Tiger & Crash Parallel
Tickets: Presale 2 Day tickets: $115 2 day general onsale: $125 Single day: $75.50
Presale for thehip.com registered users: April 9th 10am- April 11th 5pm Note: Ticket presale will offer TwoDay tickets Only
On Saturday June 21st we will be performing at Big Music Fest in Belleville, Ontario. Joining us will be the Sam Roberts Band, Sarah Harmer and Attack In Black. The show is at Zwick's Park. Presale for Registered Users of thehip.com starts this Wednesday April 2nd at 10:00am. Public onsale starts Friday April 4th at 10:00am. Tickets are $49.50.
Visit www.thehip.com for all the details on the presale and public onsale.
Tickets On-Sale: March 28th @ 10am PST Tickets: $239.50/ 3 Day Pass (does not include camping), $599.50 VIP 3 Day Pass (does not include camping) Tickets available athttp://www.pembertonfestival.com/tickets/index.aspx
The Tragically Hip rock hometown with two-hour, sold-out performance; An old-fashioned rockfest
Posted on: 02/27/2008
By Greg Burliuk
The K-Rock Centre may be state of the art, but The Tragically Hip christened it as a concert venue with an old-fashioned rockfest Saturday night.
Sure, there were fancy lights and mighty speakers, even video screens on each side of the stage to capture closeups of the quintet, and in particular the manic antics of lead singer Gord Downie. But there were no weird lighting effects or pyrotechnics. This was meat and potatoes rock, hold the salad please, just guitars, drums and voice. There was little banter between songs, and other than a few local references, you got the feeling this would be a typical band performance in Sault Ste. Marie or Calgary.
The Hip played for more than two hours, rocking all the crowd favourites, and, for good measure, even had Dan Aykroyd play harmonica during one of the encores. And most of the capacity crowd of 6,800 stood the entire time in a pledge of devotion to their hometown favourites.
The concert was 40 minutes late in starting because of ticket snafus. People were still piling through the doors at 8 p.m. The band was given a flowery introduction by Aykroyd who called them, "the spirit of our country, the voice of our country."
Instead of opening with one of their minted favourites, the Hip played a song of more recent vintage, The Lonely End of the Rink. From there, however, it was on to familiar territory, as the crowd knew within the first slithering chords, that New Orleans Is Sinking was about to erupt. They also knew when the next two songs, Fully, Completely and Grace, Too, were about to blossom.
One of the advantages of having the video screens was in capturing Downie's facial expressions, which alternated between being sly and knowing, and a little psychotic. He is known for his stage gyrations, which suggest he is a student of mime and Flamenco dancing. Over the last few years, a plaintive side has appeared in his singing, but on this night, he was rocker Gord - even on the slow songs.
The canon of best-loved Hip songs slowly unfolded: Ahead by A Century, Fiddler's Green, Fifty Mission Cap, Courage, Bobcaygeon, My Music at Work, and At The Hundredth Meridian all had their place in the sun. There were occasional bursts of newer songs such as Yer Not The Ocean from their 2006 album World Container.
But it was the classics that the crowd loved and the Hip closed the concert with a raft of them. The last song before the encore was Blow At High Dough, and the two encores saw such favourites as Locked in the Trunk of A Car (with Aykroyd on harmonica) and Little Bones. About the only hits missing from the performance were their first one, Small Town Bringdown, which was absent from their Yer Favourites greatest-hits album, Vaccination Scar, Three Pistols and Nautical Disaster.
Most of the songs were delivered in the same fashion as when they were originally recorded. However, Fifty Mission Cap was a much more muscular vision than its original and At The Hundredth Meridian featured Downie's most extensive mimicry, at first riding the mic stand like a hobby horse, then later taking a nap on it with his handkerchief covering his face.
My favourite song of the night was My Music at Work from the 2000 album Music@Work, mostly because of the nice combination of snarling guitars and Downie's equally snarling voice.
Although Downie may be the visual focus of the band, one can't help but be impressed by the ferocious beat driven out by drummer Johnny Fay; and the inventiveness of lead guitarist Rob Baker, who never seems to play the same guitar lick twice.
And what about the sound at K-Rock place? On Saturday night, you couldn't always hear every word Downie sang but you could clearly hear everything that Baker, rhythm guitarist Paul Langlois and bassist Gord Sinclair were doing. There were times that the rhythm section of Sinclair and Fay seemed to make the joint shake with their deep-ended sounds.
The Memorial Centre had been struggling for years (some would say the last 20) to keep up with the technological needs of modern bands. In a recent interview with the Whig-Standard, Baker said the Hip hadn't played the M Centre since 1995, basically because their show was too big. Now that's not the case and Kingston can be back on the concert circuit for current stars and not be just a respite for has-beens.
Arena launch a Hip affair: Band christens K-Rock with mix of old and new
Posted on: 02/27/2008
Lynn Saxberg, The Ottawa Citizen
For a Tragically Hip fan, Saturday night in Kingston was nirvana. The beloved Canadian rock band played its first hometown arena show since the last millennium, opening the city's mini-stadium with an epic greatest-hits concert that went on for nearly two and a half hours and featured a celebrity appearance by their old friend, Dan Aykroyd.
The actor, vintner and tequila mogul was on hand to welcome the folks on this historic occasion, and introduce his favourite Canadian rock band. Happily for music fans, the Elwood Blues side of him couldn't resist the opportunity to sit in with the band for an encore. More about that later.
First, some background. On paper, Kingston's sparkling new sports complex, newly dubbed the K-Rock Centre, was built as a home for the Frontenacs hockey team, but it was no secret the city also had a dire need for a decent venue for touring bands. At the crumbling old Memorial Centre, the reverb was said to be so fierce that a rock concert might have brought the place down.
Shoehorned onto a prime piece of downtown real estate, the new arena is like a miniaturized version of Scotiabank Place or Toronto's Air Canada Centre, the upper levels lopped off. It's cosy, but because the ice surface is a standard size, the back end of the rink, opposite the stage, could be a far off, lonely place.
Not on Saturday, of course, when every one of the 6,877 seats was filled with a screaming fan, or the offspring of a screaming fan. Lonely End of the Rink, a musical snapshot of a common sight in arenas across the country, made the perfect opening song. The same parents who take their kids to hockey practice were now dragging them along to a Hip concert.
Lonely is a relatively new song from the most recent disc, World Container, and if it didn't grab some of the greyer heads in the crowd, the next stretch of tunes was irresistible. Hitting stride early, the band dove headlong into their anthemic breakthrough hit, New Orleans is Sinking, floored it through another early '90s rocker, Fully Completely, before completing the vintage-Hip trilogy with the magnificent, sprawling Grace, Too.
Eccentric singer Gord Downie appeared thoroughly absorbed with his job of delivering the songs to the people, but at times the music inspired him in ever more bizarre ways. He used the microphone stand as a metal detector (to detect gold in them thar hits?), climbed the monitors along the edge of the stage, writhed around on the stage floor singing, waved a white hanky and eventually broke the defenseless mike stand.
Although some of his antics seemed pretty far out, that's typical on-stage behaviour for Downie. Just when you're starting to wonder if he's missing a few marbles, the performing trance snaps with a totally lucid comment.
"Here's one for Bob Lovelace," Downie declared early in the concert, showing serious support for the Algonquin chief in jail for protesting a uranium mining company's claim on land near Clarendon Station (worrisomely close to the site of the Blue Skies Music Festival). The song was It's a Good Life (if You Don't Weaken).
Through the upbeat Ahead by a Century, the perky In View, the unexpected Pigeon Camera and a glorious singalong on Courage, the pace built again, the barrage of rock created by five guys who have known each other for years. The rhythm section of drummer Johnny Fay and bassist Gord Sinclair played hard, while electric guitarists Rob Baker and Paul Langlois dug into their instruments.
Exactly at the point in the show when the opening-night challenges of missing tickets and long lineups and no parking had been forgotten, Downie brought us back to earth. "What a dump," he said, to a roar of laughter. "I'm kidding -- welcome to your new home."
The last hour or so was an emotional roller-coaster, the pendulum swinging from a teary Fiddler's Green to the sizzling Fireworks, from the contemplative Bobcaygeon to the delirious 100th Meridian. Also included in the home stretch were important early songs such as 38 Years Old, Blow at High Dough, Wheat Kings and the show-closer Little Bones.
Kingston's most famous son, Aykroyd, joined the boys during the encore, honking out some of his greasiest licks on harp, adding an even scarier dimension to Locked in the Trunk of a Car.
The sound was loud and fairly clear, not overpowering for the size of the room, and there were two big screens flanking the stage, an expense that hardly seemed necessary given that every seat is fairly close to the stage. Every seat is also fairly close to every other seat, by the way, so leg room might be an issue at a sit-down performance.
The best thing about the new venue had nothing to do with sightlines or acoustics. It was the location, a short walk from hotels, restaurants, pubs and the waterfront. Instead of spending an hour jockeying to get out of the parking lot at Scotiabank Place after the concert, in Kingston you can migrate a block or so west and nip into a pub.
Because of the size limitations, the U2s and Rolling Stones of the rock world probably aren't going to be playing in Kingston. But acts from Anne Murray to George Thorogood are already booked, and more are expected for the summer. Bring them on -- it's never too early to start planning a road trip.
Brockville Registered User Ticket Window Information
Posted on: 01/31/2008
The Link and password for thehip.com Presents, registered user show in Brockville will appear at 10:00 am EST, Feb.01, 2008 on the right hand side of each page. Refreshing the page is no longer required. The link and password will appear at the end of the countdown.
In order to access this information, you must be a registered user of www.thehip.com and logged into the web site.
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We are happy to announce the next show in thehip.com Presents Concert Series.
Thursday February 21, 2008 Brockville Arts Centre Brockville, Ontario
Tickets onsale: Friday February 1st at 10:00am (est)
Doors: 7:00pm Show: 8:00pm Tickets: $50.00 plus Service Charges Reserved Seating Limit two (2) tickets per order All Ages Show
Tickets are only available to be purchased by Registered Users of www.thehip.com
Instructions: Registered Users who log onto www.thehip.com at 10:00am on Friday February 1st will see an icon on the right side of the homepage with a password and link to purchase tickets.
Major credit cards are the only method of payment accepted.
Visit www.thehip.com for more information on the show and how to sign up to become a Registered User.
Please note, tickets for this show will NOT be available for purchase at the venue’s box office.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION:
No hard tickets will be sent out prior to the show dates.
All tickets are to be picked up, at 7:00pm on the evening of the performance, by the individual who purchased the tickets. All people in the purchasers party MUST be present at time of pick-up.
Once tickets are picked up, ticket holders must enter the venue.
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Photo ID of purchaser and credit card used to make the purchase will be required to claim the tickets.
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There will be no exceptions to the rules. The rules are instituted for you, the fans, so that tickets do not end up in the hands of ticket resellers.
Just a note. Registered users MUSTLog-in to get their Hip Holiday Music Download
Logging in will also allow you access to the new video player and it's featured Live videos, as well as reveal ticket links, passwords and other registered user content (as available).
The Holiday download will be available until 12PM on January 1st, 2008.
Kingston Regional Sports & Entertainment Centre: February 23, 2008
Posted on: 12/11/2007
Kingston, Ontario Saturday February 23, 2008 Kingston Regional Sports & Entertainment Centre
An Evening With The Tragically Hip Doors: 6:30pm Show: 8:00pm Tickets: $69.50 plus FMF and Service Charges. Reserved Seating. Limit six (6) tickets per order
Proceeds from this show will benefit Lake Ontario Waterkeepers and Camp Trillium
Presale for Registered Users of thehip.com : Wednesday December 12th @ 10:00am. Running until Thursday December 13th @ 11;50pm
Tickets are only available to be purchased by Registered Users of thehip.com
Instructions: Registered Users who log onto www.thehip.com at 10:00am on Wednesday December 12th will see an icon on the right side of the homepage with a password and link to purchase tickets.
A Hip Invasion From Up North Sean McGrath, Staff Writer
Anyone who was not on the seventh floor of The Manhattan Center on the night of Oct. 23 was in the wrong place. Around 800 people were lucky enough to experience a Canadian rock invasion upon the United States led by The Tragically Hip and Joel Plaskett Emergency. These two bands put on an unforgettable show.
Joel Plaskett warmed up the thin crowd of mostly Canadian expatriates (although there were fans from as far away as Florida and South Carolina) with some solid tunes from their new CD, Ashtray Rock, such as "Snowed In" and "Face of the Earth." Although most of the crowd hadn't heard of the opening act before that night, the band really got the crowd going as more and more Hip fans filtered in. That's one of the great things about the Hip; they always pick great opening acts.
The anticipation could be felt and heard in between sets as the fans chanted, "HIP! HIP! HIP!" When the band finally walked on stage, the (now quite large) crowd erupted. Gord Downie, the frontman, gave the crowd a wave and wasted no time getting into the music. They opened with a single from their 10th full-length album, World Container, released in October 2006 entitled "The Lonely End of the Rink."
Although the rest of the band provides most of the music, Gord Downie is the face of the Hip. Some call him crazy. Some call him a god. Some both, but one thing is for sure: He puts on an amazing show with his singing, goofy dance moves, and interaction with the crowd. Gord's got the dance moves of Mick Jagger and the spontaneity of Ozzy Ozbourne. He frequently leans over to interact with the front row of the audience. At one point he pretended the microphone was stuck in the middle of his chest, had an audience member pull it out, and then gave the microphone to him.
The setlist was balanced very well with songs from the new cd and classic hits from their older cds. "Nautical Disaster," "At The Hundredth Meridian," and "New Orleans is Sinking," and several other songs from their first three albums were played. Before Gord Played "New Orleans is Sinking," he shouted, "This one's for Bush! New Orleans is sinking and I don't want to help!"
This show was on the last leg of a tour that started all the way back in October 2006. The band toured in Canada, both coasts of the US, and Europe. In an informal interview after the show, lead guitarist Rob Baker had this to say, "We feel that we have a really strong album and that we should really put it out there. We're excited to go back home and start recording again, too."
By STEPHEN COOKE Entertainment Reporter | CONCERT REVIEW | 6:56 AM
Few Canadian bands thrive in the bloodstreams of their listeners like the Tragically Hip.
There are countless kids entering college this year who were probably conceived to Up to Here, and judging by the age range in the crowd at the Halifax Metro Centre on Thursday night, a healthy proportion of them were there.
About 8,000 fans turned out to catch the Hip at the tail-end of its Canadian tour — the band plays a smaller-scale show tonight at CBU in Sydney — before it sets out on a European jaunt, and they were rewarded with a show crackling with electricity and brimming with vitality.
While the guitar duo of Paul Langlois and Rob Baker with bassist Gord Sinclair and drummer Johnny Fay laid down the fierce rock groove, frontman Gordon Downie was a one-man, three-ring circus, a vessel of fervour and emotion.
"Smoke what you gotta smoke . . . drink what you gotta drink . . . just meet me at the lonely end of the rink!" exhorted Downie as he took the stage, singing the saga of a goalie’s life from the latest album, World Container.
One could draw parallels between playing nets and singing lead vocals — after all, Downie does both — and so much of a game or a show’s success rests on his shoulders.
For emphasis, he held his mike against his chest so the arena could hear his heart beat. A grand gesture, but also a touching one.
The Hip turned to the classics, with New Orleans Is Sinking getting the crowd on its feet, with Downie screaming the last chorus over Baker’s snarling guitar line, followed by a mix of James Brown and flamenco moves to Grace, Too.
"You wanna hear what war sounds like?" asked the singer, before obliging with a bevy of mouth noise on the mike.
Obviously the Hip are at a stage in their career when crowds are split between those who merely want to hear the hits and the diehard fans who feel they can do no wrong, and Thursday night’s set did a good job of maintaining the balance, with passionate renditions of favourites like Ahead By a Century and Courage (for Hugh MacLennan), which saw Downie lean over the front row, holding out the mike to capture the sound of the Halifax Metro Centre Memorial Choir singing along.
But the night held its fair share of new tunes with World Container tracks like Yer Not the Ocean and In View energizing the crowd with driving melodies and prominent hooks, clearly a byproduct of working with producer Bob Rock.
Downie was at his most possessed during At the Hundredth Meridian, calling out names like Clarence and Ernestine, stating, "I remember everybody, I remember all you guys . . . How do you think I dance?" earning a hearty roar of approval.
Then he proceeded to make his mike stand dance before turning it into a recliner, putting a handkerchief over his face and miming a solo passion play while the band brought the music down, before rising from the dead for an explosive final chorus.
The main set ended with a one-two punch of Family Band and Little Bones, with Downie staying on stage to thank the cheering "music lovers of Nova Scotia" before returning for an encore that included a surprise cover of David Bowie’s Queen Bitch.
Now I just wonder how many future Hip fans were conceived in the wee hours following this show?
Props also go to the Hip for having great taste in opening acts, with Toronto’s the Sadies playing dark country rock with impressive skill and a supreme veneer of cool.
On the Web: Blog: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime
Posted on: 09/14/2007
Friday, September 14, 2007 The Tragically Hip
I saw the Tragically Hip playing in Halifax last night at the Metro Centre. It was packed, not surprisingly. And since my blog is read by a lot of music fans who live outside of Canada, I need to do a bit of promotion here. If you’re Canadian, you can pretty much stop reading now, because you’ll already know a lot about this band. But if you want to learn more, carry on. . . .
Hip’s brave new World Kingston quintet revitalized with help from producer Rock By STEPHEN COOKE Entertainment Reporter | 8:32 AM ADVERTISEMENT
When veteran Canadian rockers the Tragically Hip named their 11th studio record World Container, they could have been referring to their own globe-spanning adventures over the past year. They’ve criss-crossed the continent a few times and following this week’s Atlantic Canadian leg of the tour, cross the Atlantic Ocean for the second time in 14 months.
But as with most things found in the lyrics of Hip vocalist Gord Downey, there are multiple meanings to be parsed, and the CD title track is no exception, putting personal relationships into a larger global context, with our individual collections of experiences and actions jostling against each other in this giant cargo hold called Mother Earth.
"That’s pretty much how I see it," says guitarist Paul Langlois, who joins his bandmates and the Sadies at the Halifax Metro Centre on Thursday, and the Cape Breton University Student Union in Sydney on Friday. "I love the image of it, that everyone has their own way of seeing the world, and reacting to it and what’s in it. I also love that it’s up for a lot of interpretation, and that’s usually a difficult process, coming up with the title for a record.
"It’s nice to have a title like that which could mean a number of things to a number of different people. And World Container is probably my favourite song on the record to listen to; it goes a lot of different places lyrically and I love the drama of it. It’s a great title, because it’s an apt title of where we’re at, and it also describes our path and a kind of consciousness."
Where the band is at is an interesting situation. Produced by noted rockmeister Bob Rock (Metallica, Motley Crue), World Container boils the Hip down to its essence, with straightforward rockers and openly personal word-work by Downie. It’s the sound of a band taking its engine apart, cleaning the parts and putting it back together following the intense career-analyzing process of assembling its 2005 Hipeponymous box set, determined to rediscover the essentials.
"I think that has a lot to do with why we were feeling so energized going into the project," says Langlois. "Working with Bob Rock was going from an idea to a reality, and we’d had Yer Favourites coming out, with the Walk of Fame and the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, and it was all a lot for everyone to absorb. . . . I think it put a bit of wind in our sails as far as saying, ‘We’re not done yet!’
Rock is known for his back-to-basics approach — he did similar duties for Our Lady Peace on the Healthy in Paranoid Times — although Langlois says Rock didn’t have to play referee between the members of the Kingston quintet as he famously did with OLP and Metallica.
Instead of wearing a ref’s black and white striped shirt, Langlois says Rock was more like a cheerleader for the album, but one who knows his way around a song and what makes them work for a mass audience.
"Bob certainly didn’t hesitate to attempt to get us to highlight the hook," Langlois chuckles. "That kinda goes against our nature a little bit; we’ve tried to keep them really subtle, and if something sounds really great, we try not to overplay it."
Rock’s desire to focus on songs that grab the listener rather than sneak up on them pays off in the brute force of the CD opener Yer Not the Ocean and Downie’s analogy between playing goalie and fronting a band, The Lonely End of the Rink, which has become the favourite show starter on the current tour.
The flip side of that sentiment can be found in Family Band, a propulsive ode to the days when the band travelled in a van, loaded its own gear, and played long-gone Halifax venues like Rosa’s Cantina on Argyle Street and Dartmouth’s Crazy Horse. The Hip’s set list changes every night, but there’s a nice symmetry on those evenings when The Lonely End of the Rink and Family Band bookend a show.
In fact, the band plays a healthy selection of new tunes in its current shows, which pleases its hardcore fans and those who’ve seen it perform countless times, but doesn’t always sit so well with the casual listener who can only name a handful of song titles off the top of their head.
"Well, people are different," sighs Langlois. "We were at a cottage recently with our family and our neighbours, sitting around having a few beers, and one guy I had just met that week — a nice guy — had definitely had a few, and he asked, ‘Why is it you don’t write songs like you used to?’ "
With a little prodding by the ardent fan, Langlois discovered the incredulous listener was comparing recent material to songs that are nearly two decades old, off Up to Here and Road Apples, and he hadn’t picked up a Hip album since 1992’s Fully Completely.
"So he just had to check back in," says Langlois. "Like a lot of fans, when you’re 22 and in university or whatever, the music you love then becomes the music you’ll always love, or you get older and move on. I don’t think we sound the same, but if we did sound the same, we wouldn’t be together anymore."
Tickets for the Tragically Hip at the Halifax Metro Centre are $69.50 for Gold Circle seats, $49.50 for regular admission. Tickets are available at the Ticket Atlantic box office (451-1221), online at www.ticketatlantic.com and participating Atlantic Superstores.
Tickets for the Sydney show are $49.50 at Centre 200 box office, Savoy Theatre and Caper Convenience at CBU, $25 for students (CBU only). They are also online at www.reservatech.ca