Steven Page Puts On Some Clothes (That’s the Best I Got)
Friday, March 13th, 2009
I’m nearly 3 weeks late to commenting on this, but current/relevant journalism be damned, I’m makin’ a post.
24 February 2009, Steven Page and the rest of the Barenaked Ladies parted ways “by mutual agreement”. Ed Robertson and his remaining band-mates will continue to tour and record without Steven Page, who is planning on doing other shit.
Not a big deal, right? Bands lose members all time; this is true. Nevertheless, this particular announcement is of considerable significan for me. Let me explain…
The Year: 2000. The Month: October. The Day: I can’t remember.
Enter a young, impressionable Evan Mudryk, age 10. It could have been any-other day for him, except for the fact it was an extraordinary day, because he was about to see DIGIMON: THE MOVIE! (Incidentally, if anyone ever decides to make a documentary about my life, it needs to be titled “Evan Mudryk: The Movie”.) The movie was amazing, and still is, but that’s besides the point.
Now, before I get too far in my story, I should mention that Lance and I weren’t really into music at this point, which isn’t to say that we’d cover our ears anytime we heard a song — far from it. But we never actually chose to listen to music. We had a few CDs sure (Big Shiny Tunes compilations, Pokemon music, etc…) but if someone asked us who our favorite band/music artist was, we wouldn’t have had answer. Until after seeing Digimon, that is.
We purchased Digimon soundtrack sometime after seeing the film. And it was good. I still have the songs synced to my iPod:
4. Kids of America — Len
5. Hey Digimon — Jason Radford
6. One Week — Barenaked Ladies
7. The Impression That I Get — The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
8. All My Best Friends Are Metalheads — Less Than Jake
This was (probably) the first time either Lance or I had ever heard BNL. But they made a very deep impression on our lives, with just one song. Clearly, our love of the band lasted longer than one week, because I’m writing this endless post. We bought their greatest hits the following year, and the rest of this sentence is a cliche.
But now, after 20 years together, those Barenaked Ladies are no longer…
Lance and I are never embarrassed to say that we consider BNL to be our favourite band. But we have never seen them perform live, we passed up an opportunity a few years ago because we didn’t go to live shows back then, because of a bad experience with Nickelback. (Bye the bye, I will not write a post when Chad Kroeger leaves Nickelback to become Mayor of Hanna, Alberta.) And now we never will.
The Barenaked Ladies are still going on without Page of course and I’m optimistic to see how they do (maybe even a little curious) but it’s still disappointing to see the end of an era. But I am, without a doubt, indebted to them. Lance and I have 14 of their albums (all of them legally purchased!) and own multiple versions of many of their songs.
Listening to their latest album (Barenaked Ladies Live On New Year’s Eve – Detroit, Mi 12/31/2008), in between songs, Ed Robertson makes no secret of how terrible 2008 was for the band, but seems desperately optimistic for 2009. And, imitatively he’s performing a show on New Year’s Eve, but aren’t we all performing? Who is ever really optimistic for the following year? Not me. It’s just a tradition an excuse to drink. In any case, the events of 2008 bleed into 2009 and we no longer have the real Barenaked Ladies.
Much like Ed Robertson, I have to remain optimistic about 2009 and the future of the band. Will they be any good? I hope so. But it’s going to take more than one week for me to forget the band that made me love music.
And to close out this gigantic post, I’ll leave that to the new Barenaked Ladies. The video below has the the four remaining members rehearsing one of my favourite songs “Maybe Katie”.
They start playing at 1:21 in the video.
-Evan