I wonder how much Kraft Dinner they eat now. When four twenty-year-olds from Scarborough piled into a Speaker’s Corner booth at Queen and John, they were beginning a twenty year odyssey from goofy Canadian indie folk to international rock stars. It’s been One Week (less a day) since a large chapter in that journey drew to a close. Last Tuesday, Steven Page announced he was leaving the Barenaked Ladies to further pursue a solo career, and the rest of the band would be carrying on without him.
They are saying all the right things about mutual decisions and continuing careers, and there’s really nothing to suggest otherwise, but after a year involving kids’ albums, cocaine, and plane crashes, cracks were beginning to show. Maintaining a creative relationship involving musicians as talented as Page and Ed Robertson can always have its complications. Let’s hope this provides Page an avenue to further explore his own creative ideas, and that the band can carry on without one of its founding members.
But speculation and hearsay aside, we should remember the Barenaked Ladies for what they meant to Canadian music and to many of us individually. Personally, it started as a kid, with my parents’ copy of Gordon with the original cover as the soundtrack to those car trips to Nova Scotia (it was a while before I learned that Mr Roboto was actually its own song). One of my earliest arena concert experiences was BNL at the ACC in high school with my friends, and then again as the second-to-last act at Live 8 in Barrie. When I first picked up a guitar a few years back, some of the first songs I learned were Brian Wilson, If I had $1000000, and The Old Apartment.
The Ladies also had a big impact on this country. Starting at Speaker’s Corner, they had a large relationship with their home town of Toronto, despite being kicked off the 1991 New Year’s Eve bill by Mayor June Rowlands for ‘objectifying women.’ They would go on to sing about their new place on the Danforth, sweet Jane (and) St. Clair, GO Trains, and Birchmount Stadium, Home of the Robbie, as well as giving nods to Halifax, Peterborough, Phil Esposito, and much more Canadiana. They would sing silly songs about Yoko Ono, Styx, and their hardships faced in Grade Nine (they called me Buckwheat!).
Reaching international fame with One Week and Stunt, they added to Canada’s already disproportionately large contribution to international music, and toured the world. Following Stunt and after Kevin Hearn’s battle with leukemia, they released a more serious album Maroon, spawning such hits as Pinch Me, and Too Little Too Late. Later albums would feature songs about Chimps, tunes for the holidays, and in 2008 a kids’ album called Snacktime, displaying an extremely versatile musical repertoire.
Perhaps most appealing about the band is their propensity for humour and fun. They never took things too seriously, and this shows in their songs and their persona. It takes a rare talent to be able to sing about eating too much Kraft Dinner and Yoko sings “Aoyoyoyoyoyoyo!” mixed with more serious numbers about preconceived gender roles and spousal abuse, all on the same album. To get a good idea of the fun Page and Robertson have, check out the Bathroom Sessions on Youtube, where the two of them and an acoustic guitar perform a number of their songs, and genuinely have fun. Ed also provides some 'How To' videos for a few songs, something that not a lot of musicians will make the time for or openly 'give away' their songs for free.
So, good luck to all parties with future endeavours. Here's looking forward to the reunion tour. In closing, some of my favourites moments from twenty years of making records:
Downtown record shops in the rain; demanding the nostalgic return of old mousetraps and dishracks; cruel green dresses; sprinklers and gym shorts; shopping carts in the ravine, foam on the creek like pop and ice cream; you’re the last thing on my mind; laughing at funerals; and if I filmed my sister walking, I’d yell stuff like: “Hey, get off the phone!”
They are saying all the right things about mutual decisions and continuing careers, and there’s really nothing to suggest otherwise, but after a year involving kids’ albums, cocaine, and plane crashes, cracks were beginning to show. Maintaining a creative relationship involving musicians as talented as Page and Ed Robertson can always have its complications. Let’s hope this provides Page an avenue to further explore his own creative ideas, and that the band can carry on without one of its founding members.
But speculation and hearsay aside, we should remember the Barenaked Ladies for what they meant to Canadian music and to many of us individually. Personally, it started as a kid, with my parents’ copy of Gordon with the original cover as the soundtrack to those car trips to Nova Scotia (it was a while before I learned that Mr Roboto was actually its own song). One of my earliest arena concert experiences was BNL at the ACC in high school with my friends, and then again as the second-to-last act at Live 8 in Barrie. When I first picked up a guitar a few years back, some of the first songs I learned were Brian Wilson, If I had $1000000, and The Old Apartment.
The Ladies also had a big impact on this country. Starting at Speaker’s Corner, they had a large relationship with their home town of Toronto, despite being kicked off the 1991 New Year’s Eve bill by Mayor June Rowlands for ‘objectifying women.’ They would go on to sing about their new place on the Danforth, sweet Jane (and) St. Clair, GO Trains, and Birchmount Stadium, Home of the Robbie, as well as giving nods to Halifax, Peterborough, Phil Esposito, and much more Canadiana. They would sing silly songs about Yoko Ono, Styx, and their hardships faced in Grade Nine (they called me Buckwheat!).
Reaching international fame with One Week and Stunt, they added to Canada’s already disproportionately large contribution to international music, and toured the world. Following Stunt and after Kevin Hearn’s battle with leukemia, they released a more serious album Maroon, spawning such hits as Pinch Me, and Too Little Too Late. Later albums would feature songs about Chimps, tunes for the holidays, and in 2008 a kids’ album called Snacktime, displaying an extremely versatile musical repertoire.
Perhaps most appealing about the band is their propensity for humour and fun. They never took things too seriously, and this shows in their songs and their persona. It takes a rare talent to be able to sing about eating too much Kraft Dinner and Yoko sings “Aoyoyoyoyoyoyo!” mixed with more serious numbers about preconceived gender roles and spousal abuse, all on the same album. To get a good idea of the fun Page and Robertson have, check out the Bathroom Sessions on Youtube, where the two of them and an acoustic guitar perform a number of their songs, and genuinely have fun. Ed also provides some 'How To' videos for a few songs, something that not a lot of musicians will make the time for or openly 'give away' their songs for free.
So, good luck to all parties with future endeavours. Here's looking forward to the reunion tour. In closing, some of my favourites moments from twenty years of making records:
Downtown record shops in the rain; demanding the nostalgic return of old mousetraps and dishracks; cruel green dresses; sprinklers and gym shorts; shopping carts in the ravine, foam on the creek like pop and ice cream; you’re the last thing on my mind; laughing at funerals; and if I filmed my sister walking, I’d yell stuff like: “Hey, get off the phone!”
Thanks, that was fun.
Russ MacDonald
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_snpe3QmzCc&feature=related Bedside Manor (they almost lose it laughing)
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