----- 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