Direct from the Ladies Room e-mail:

We're really excited and happy to announce that the Barenaked Ladies will be the hosts for the 2002 JUNO AWARDS!!! Here is a clip from the press release...

Viewers can expect a heady mix of cheeky humour and high energy when the five ladies" - vocalists/guitarists Steven Page and Ed Robertson, drummer Tyler Stewart, bassist Jim Creeggan, and keyboardist Kevin Hearn - hit the stage at Mile High Stadium in St. John's, Newfoundland on *Sunday, April 14 at 8 p.m. (EST/PT*. The JUNO AWARDS, Canada's premiere music awards show, will be broadcast live by CTV which acquired the broadcast rights for both the 2002 and 2003 awards shows in late August.

In choosing the multi-platinum quintet as hosts, CARAS President, Daisy Falle, said: "We're pleased to have the Barenaked Ladies back on the heels of their fabulous year in 2001. The fact they've gone on to even greater international fame since last year's program only adds to their unique and outspoken 'star' quality for what we believe will be the best JUNO AWARDS show ever."

Please check your local listings as we get closer to the broadcast date for more details.

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SUPERSKATE 2002


SUPERSKATE 2002
SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 2002 - 7:00 PM ET

4th Annual Charity Hockey Event
A celebration of hockey for the whole family!

The New York Rangers will host SuperSkate 2002, their fourth annual charity hockey event on Saturday, January 19, at Madison Square Garden. The entire 2001-2002 Rangers club, led by captain Mark Messier, and Christopher Reeve will team up in an all-star evening of hockey to benefit Rangers Cheering for Children and the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation (CRPF). The event, which is presented by Canon Business Solutions and Nextel, will feature a number of stars from the stage and screen joining the Rangers at The Garden in what has become one of the club's finest fundraising activities. Since the inaugural SuperSkate in 1999, over $200,000 has been raised for the two charitable foundations.

Tickets for SuperSkate 2002 are now on-sale ($60, $45, $30, $20 and $10) and can be purchased at the Madison Square Garden box office at all Ticketmaster outlets or by clicking here.

In a change from the previous three SuperSkate events, SuperSkate 2002 will feature a varied format with Rangers players skating side-by-side with the celebrities in a skills competition and hockey game. Also participating in the skills portion of the evening will be youth hockey players from the greater metropolitan area as well as members of New York City's Police, Port Authority and Fire Departments.

The Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation (CRPF) encourages and supports research to develop effective treatments and a cure for paralysis caused by spinal cord injury and other central nervous system disorders. CRPF also allocates a portion of its resources to grants that improve the quality of life for people with disabilities.
Rangers Cheering for Children (formerly known as NYR S.K.A.T.E), is a division of the Madison Square Garden's Cheering for Children Foundation, which was established in 1998 in order to make a significant and meaningful impact on the New York community. The primary focus of Rangers Cheering for Children is to strengthen the educational, athletic, artistic and social opportunities in after-school programs for more than 30,000 children in New York's five boroughs. Rangers Cheering for Children is proud to be changing children's lives by improving quality after-school programs for our city's 7-13 year-old boys and girls, and our commitment continues to grow.
Participating celebs:
Billy Baldwin
Gary Dell'Abate (Howard Stern Show)
Steve Levy (ESPN)
Chad Lowe
Barry Melrose (ESPN)
Rick Moranis
Matthew Modine
Chris Jericho (WWF's Y2J)
Denis Leary
Darren Pang (ESPN)
Michael Rosenbaum (WB's - Smallville)
Tim Robbins
Susan Sarandon
Marcus Schenkenberg (Model)
Tyler Stewart (Barenaked Ladies)
Scott Wolf

RANGERS ALUMNI (as of 1/8/2002)
Rod Gilbert
Glenn Anderson
Ted Irvine
Jeff Beukeboom

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From Mary Valdes on the mailing list
I got to the show down in Chicago and of course it was awesome. I met up with Ed after the show and he was just as sweet as could be considering it was 2:00am and about 10 degrees out. I hope they will be back out on the road soon!

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www.MYSD.org has a listing in their news section saying that BNL will be performing at the pre-game show of the Superbowl. They state they will do an hour-long set and 1 song will be televised.
I have seen no other mentions of this information on any other websites, nor have I received the information from BNL’s management. Let’s hope MYSD.org is right because that would be great exposure for the band. The Superbowl website only lists the Boston Pops with Mariah Carrey so far for the pre-game events, along with Marc Anthony and Mary J. Blige singing America the Beautiful and U2 performing the half time show.
There is a very good possibility that this information is correct as the pre-game show usually starts at noon and runs up until kickoff later that evening. So lets keep our fingers crossed.

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An article From when BNL was nominated for a Grammy

WE REALLY WANT TO WIN THAT GRAMMY by Steven Page (Barenaked Ladies)
Date: Feb 23, 1999
Source: New York Times, Sunday February 21, 1999, Arts and Leisure section http://www.nytimes.com
Submitted by: Y. C.
[Note from Y.C: SOMETHING TO PONDER WHILE WATCHING THE GRAMMYS: Something for all of you fans to think about when you are boohooing over the Backstreet Boys not winning their Grammy. I remember the reactions when they didn’t win at the American Music Awards. Pay particular attention to the 2nd to last paragraph.]
[Note from Caitlin: I still have high hopes for the Boys this coming Wednesday, but I thought that this article was well written and would be of interest to BSB fans... thanks Y.C.!]
WE REALLY WANT TO WIN THAT GRAMMY by Steven Page (Barenaked Ladies)
This Wednesday, Los Angeles will play host to the Grammy Awards, and for the first time ever, my band, Barenaked Ladies, will be sitting in the audience, nails bitten to the quick, awaiting our loss. Yes, I’ve already resigned myself to the fact that we won’t win, but it won’t stop me from fretting about what I’m going to wear, what celebrities we’re going to gawk at or what our acceptance speech might have been like.
After 10 years of wallowing in relative obscurity, this Grammy nomination marks a big, tangible plunge into the mainstream for us. Especially considering the category in which we’ve been nominated: Longest Title for a Grammy Category, otherwise known as Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. Although it’s not as prestigious as say, Record of the Year, it does hold more cachet than Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group, Instrumental.
Our category is a good one to be nominated in, as it celebrates the band’s actual performance, rather than songwriting, which often credits only one or two band members, or engineering or album artwork, which usually excludes the entire band. The phrase "we won a Grammy for best album artwork" tends to lose some of its excitement in the translation. The unfortunate thing is that we’re up against Aerosmith, and although our band features members named Steven and Tyler, we don’t have Steven Tyler. The other nominees are the Goo Goo Dolls, the Dave Matthews Band and the Brian Setzer Orchestra.
It would be very polite of us to say, "We’re just happy to be here," and it would be partly true, as it is nice to be invited to the same event as Madonna and the Beastie Boys. However, the other common quip of potential Grammy losers, "They don’t really matter anyway," is complete bunk. Come on, it’s not your high school attendance awards, it’s the Grammy’s! It doesn’t get any bigger than this, really, unless we were nominated for the Nobel Prize. So, when it comes down to it, we want to win. We’d be really excited if we won. And we’d be good winners; we’d represent the category with grace and honor. We promise not to get caught doing a Penthouse magazine pictorial. It does feel a bit like being nominated for Miss America, and for five guys from Toronto known for our observations and satires of popular culture, this gives us great, perverse pleasure.
Last year, while we were recording our latest album, "Stunt," we watched the Grammy Awards from the studio and jokingly said, "That’ll be us next year." Now, after what has been the most incredible year in our band’s history, our nomination comes as the icing on the cake. Alas, we are still up against some mighty competition, particularly from Aerosmith and the Goo Goo Dolls, both of whom had huge hits this year from movie soundtracks, that perplexing record-business phenomenon. We probably have an edge over the Dave Matthews Band, which shares our history of having cult status and a word-of-mouth fan base but which didn’t have the giant pop hit we did this year with "One Week." Brian Setzer will have to win something this year, being the best of the swing fad, and also for his years of service. I just hope that he wins in some other category.
[BSB fans listen up]
We won’t win for several reasons: We’re an unproven entity without any previous hits and possibly no future hits, either, a distinction usually reserved for the Best New Artist category,. However, we got scooped for that award by two-time Grammy winner Lauryn Hill (who won with her group the Fugees) and Andrea Bocelli (destined to bring in the over-50 viewership). Aerosmith, Goo Goo Dolls and Brian Setzer (formerly of the Stray Cats) all have a history of hit songs. We don’t look like rock stars and have yet to hire a stylist for the awards, so again, Aerosmith has the upper hand. We wouldn’t thank God in our acceptance speech. We have no movie tie-in, which means no studio money is behind our Grammy campaign. This is also our only nomination, and Grammy voters tend to like multiple nominees, which again gives the lead to several of our competitors.
It makes me incredibly uncomfortable to be thrust into competition with other musicians for anything: sales, awards, radio play. I always try to leave the competition up to the record companies. I avoided sports in school because I couldn’t handle the competition. But, now that I have been forced to stand in line with the other beauty pageant contestants, I’m ready to fight. Gracious losers at awards shows have always rubbed me the wrong way, so proud of the winners, so humble in defeat. I propose that all losers at this year’s Grammys storm out just as the winners names are announced. We need more looks of disgust, like Burt Reynolds’s at last year’s Oscars. We need more people crashing the stage as Ol’ Dirty Bastard of the Wu-Tang Clan did at last year’s Grammys. Maybe we’ll start shouting obscenities from the crowd. Or throw eggs. Then again, we could fall back on the old lines: these things don’t really matter anyway, and we’re just happy to be invited.
Steven Page is a singer, songwriter and guitarist of Barenaked Ladies.