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| From | "Stewart Mason" <craigtorso@verizon.net> |
| Subject | Barenaked Ladies (was Re: Lydon) |
| Date | Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:47:29 -0500 |
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Lee Elliott" <blelliott01@gmail.com>
> >Me, I hate bands who think it's enough to just recycle the same old
>>Beatles/Badfinger/Raspberries/Big Star cops without bringing
>>anything
>>new to the party
>>
> Stewart, please stop picking on the Flamin' Groovies - it makes baby
> Jesus cry.
Certainly one of the bands I was thinking of, yes, but no reason to
open that particular can of worms again...
>
> I hate Bare Naked Ladies. They played them so much here though I
> try
> not to hold it against the band - who seem like swell dudes. I
> can't
> even hate properly. Did they have big hits in the States?
See, if I was going to put together a list of bands I thought were
*under*-rated, I think Barenaked Ladies would be very high on the
list. Steven Page and Ed Robertson are immensely gifted songwriters,
and Kevin Hearn and Jim Creeggan have both slotted very nicely into
the George Harrison role on their last few albums. I truly think
BARENAKED LADIES ARE ME and BARENAKED LADIES ARE MEN (basically one
double album with both halves released a few months apart) is the best
thing they've ever done, and that includes their big hits. So the
songs are melodically strong, the vocals are outstanding (separately,
Page and Robertson are two of my favorite singers currently working,
and the four- and five-part harmonies are consistently great), the
arrangements are consistently really interesting (Hearn, who
apparently can pretty much play anything that makes a noise, deserves
most of the credit there), the lyrics are great, and I will tell you
right now that they are one of the very very few bands that I will
make an attempt to see every single time they come through town,
because the live act is a blast. But they've always had to battle
that kind of "wacky guys in shorts" image that they had in their early
days, and I think that's always hurt them. They have this unfair
image of being, like, a band that guys who play D&D and girls who do
needlepoint like, which is mostly a shame because it means the
hipsters are missing out.
Yes, they've had big hits in the states. I was in college when GORDON
came out in 1992, and that album was just frickin' inescapable. And
then later the live version of "Brian Wilson," "One Week," "It's All
Been Done" (a straight-up power pop song that shreds the entire
catalogue of, say, Myracle Brah) and "Pinch Me" were all big radio
hits. They hit a rough patch with the EVERYTHING TO EVERYONE album --
which isn't a *bad* album so much as it's an amazingly cynical, fed-up
and depressed album, with at least a couple of songs that I've always
suspected are kind of kicking out at a certain segment of the audience
they'd gained when "One Week" blew up big, and it's dark enough that I
was utterly shocked when the band didn't break up afterwards. (I'd
actually love to hear what Paul Myers, our resident BNL expert, thinks
of this album.) And even though there weren't any hits off those last
two albums, they still close to sold out the hockey arena near my
house when they came through last year, so the audience is still
there.
S
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