11/30/2001
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*PPV tonight
*Regis again???
*Guerrila concerts
*NY Lottery article
*Charts
*SU Article
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PPV Tonight….It’s the Great Guiness Toast and BNL WILL BE PERFORMING LIVE FROM NYC…check local listings for time and cost!!!!!!
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REGIS N KELLY:
Think that the Ladies got short changed by Regis last week? Have no fear! BNL prevail! Barenaked Ladies will perform "The Old Apartment" on Live with Regis and Kelly on *MONDAY, December 3rd*. Please check your local listings for air times!
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BNL will be on a new program on VH1 next month. It is called “Guerilla Concerts”. It will feature several bands performing, audience reactions and interviews with the bands. The concerts are impromptu and unadvertised to preserve audience spontaneity.
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Lottery hits big one with Barenaked Ladies
Monday, November 26, 2001
By Mark Bialczak
Even if you know nothing about the band Barenaked Ladies, chances are you've heard their song "If I Had $1,000,000." It's the infectious little ditty sung by a range of Mr. and Ms. New Yorkers in the omnipresent new commercial for the state lottery. You know, the one that ends with the dreamy line, "I'd be rich!" The sight and sound of TV commercial folks crooning their song even makes Barenaked Ladies singer/guitarist Ed Robertson chuckle. "Yeah, we're hearing it everywhere," Robertson says during a recent phone conversation that takes place the day the band from Toronto is visiting Manhattan to appear on "Live With Regis and Kelly." Robertson says he's on his cell phone, at the start of a "harrowing New York City cab ride."
"We thought, only a select, small group in New York would know about the commercial, you know?" Robertson muses. "Right!" He and band mates Steven Page, Kevin Hearn, Jim Creeggan and Tyler Stewart especially appreciate the normal-folk aspect of the commercial. "Love that," Robertson says. "Apparently, there's a Spanish version in the works, too. I'm excited about it." Robertson admits that a slew of companies have asked Barenaked Ladies for permission to use the 1992 song to hawk their wares over the years. But until lottery officials came up with a high-stakes offer this year - the New York Post reported that the band was paid about $80,000, but Robertson says, "No, I don't think so" about that figure - the answer has always been no. "They finally wore us down," Robertson says. "They've been working on us for almost 10 years. So we said OK." It also doesn't hurt that "If I Had $1,000,000" appears on "Barenaked Ladies Greatest Hits," which was released last week. The collection includes quirky vintage songs held fondly by fans there from the beginning, like "Brian Wilson" and "Be My Yoko Ono." And there are the equally quirky newer hits "One Week" and "Pinch Me," the pair of friendly pop tunes that became mega radio hits in the United States and made Barenaked Ladies the kind of band that appears on morning TV show "Live With Regis and Kelly."
Sure, Robertson says, wide and far success has changed Barenaked Ladies. "It slightly altered the way we communicate with each other," Robertson says. "We each got personal assistants and trainers. We have to communicate through them now. We can't just call each other." Robertson pauses to let the joke sink in. "We work hard to stay grounded," he says. "Steven and I have known each other since the fourth grade. We support each other.
"But the whole success thing, it does spin your head around. It's hard to get used to. But here we are. We're still a band. We still like each other," Robertson says. And that's despite the fact that success can be tiring. The interviews, the appearances, the whole frantic pace. "As our manager, Terry, says, 'I need to use all the tools.' We try to facilitate him with those tools," Robertson says. "The media eye I can do without. The traveling I can do without. But I love the performing. We've been touring musicians for more than a decade. The travel life, you feel like a trucker. We live out of suitcases. It's a grind, for sure, but it facilitates doing the one thing I truly love to do." Those tours have hit Syracuse frequently. They're used to plenty of their Canadian brethren showing up to Syracuse shows to partake in the Barenaked Ladies ritual of throwing Kraft Dinner (that's Kraft Macaroni and Cheese to those of us south of the border) at the stage.
"There's none more Canadian than the Canadian abroad," Robertson says. "It's always our countrymen that embarrass us," Billy Bragg said." Robertson arrives at the end of the interview, and his cab trip's over. "I'm standing outside my destination. I went 60 blocks without a hitch," he says. These days, that's all anybody can really ask for, the musician knows. He's in Manhattan, where the terror of Sept. 11 still hangs in the air.
"I love this city, but this city has sustained a giant, festering wound," Robertson says. "It's impossible to not think about when you're here. I am frankly of the mind that it should be thought about. "I'm all for getting on with your life, but you have to think about that day all the time," he says. "Our lives depend on the humanity of people amongst us," Robertson says. "When somebody walks into a McDonald's with an Uzi. ... You depend on that not happening. You're not supposed to do that. We depend on that balance. And when that gets upset, anything can happen."
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GH chart news…..#68 - us #9 - canada
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Barenaked in Schine
Pop-group Barenaked Ladies play impromptu gig for SU students
By Shawn Anderson
When Wendy Sikorski learned Wednesday morning that the Barenaked Ladies would be playing an unadvertised concert on campus in a few hours, she dropped plans of working at the Watson Hall front desk that afternoon.
Then she got busy doing another kind of work.
“I ran to the bookstore, grabbed a camera and just waited,” she said. It was noon.
Her waiting worked: Sikorski, a sophomore speech communications major, was in the front row when the free concert began at 12:35 p.m. in the Schine Student Center atrium.
BNL, who performed Wednesday night at the OnCenter in downtown Syracuse, played a 15 minute, 4-song set at Schine for a pilot television program that will air on VH-1 next month. About 350 people attended the Schine concert.
The show, “Guerilla Concerts,” will feature several bands performing, audience reactions and interviews with the bands. The concerts are impromptu and unadvertised to preserve audience spontaneity.
“We bring it down to the rock ’n’ roll basics,” said Scooter Pietsch, an executive producer for the show. “Strip it down to the songs, the artists and the fans.
“God, that (concert) was fun.”
BNL opened the show with “The Old Apartment” from its “Born on a Pirate Ship” CD.
Students snapped pictures with disposable cameras and called their friends on cell phones, urging them to join the audience. They bobbed their heads and sang along. After seeing the raucous crowd, lead singer Steven Page announced, “I’m going back to college.”
The band played a song about the freshman 15, the number of pounds first-year students are joked to gain. There was a twist, however.
“The freshman 15 thing is all done. We’re the new spokesmodels for the freshman 45,” drummer Tyler Stewart said. “Have a 30-piece chicken dinner after this and you’ll look like us.”
Page sang: “I’m getting fat, I’m gaining weight / I’m bulking up, You know it’s straight / I’m eating everything in sight / Have a kegger every night.”
Between songs, Page asked, “Anybody skipping class right now?”
Adam Rosenberg was.
“I looked at (my friend) and said ‘I’m going to be late to my class and I don’t care,’ ” said Rosenberg, a junior environmental public policy and political science major.
Page, clad in maroon pants, black sweater and his trademark black-rimmed glasses, offered academic advice to students such as Rosenberg, saying that to succeed in college, students only needed to attend the first five minutes of a recitation.
“You never have to read anything. You never have to go to any lecture,” he said. “And it’s a guaranteed B.”
The band then played “One Week,” their first No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.
BNL released “Maroon” in 2000. Previous albums included 1992’s “Gordon” and 1998’s “Stunt,” from which “One Week” comes.
When BNL finished the song, they thanked the students for coming. Students, in turn, chanted “play more songs” for two minutes.
It worked.
“We had our coats on and everything,” Page said before the band launched into “It’s All Been Done.” Guitarist Ed Robertson, guitar in hand, waded through the crowd and stood on the circular bench surrounding the atrium.
Some students, such as Seth Borden, a sophomore international relations major, felt the concert was too short.
Immediately after finishing their last song, the band went to do their soundcheck for their OnCenter concert. The band does not give press interviews on days when they perform, a representative of Warner Bros. Records said from Los Angeles.
A pilot is a sample television program that demonstrates to a network what a show will be like. VH-1 has not yet picked up the show as a series, but Pietsch said he expected it would soon order 26 episodes to begin airing in January.
Marilyn Wilson Productions, which is owned by Pietsch and his wife, created the show. They took it to Dick Clark Productions to produce the pilot, which involved selling the show to VH-1 in addition to filming the concerts. A crew and staff of about 25 came to Syracuse for the Schine concert, including Rac Clark, executive producer of “Guerilla Concerts” and Dick Clark’s son. Six cameraman, some with handheld cameras, filmed the show.
After Dick Clark Productions contacted SU Monday afternoon, the Office of Student Affairs began organizing the concert.
It agreed to host the event because it publicizes the university and benefits students.
“It’s one of the things students will be talking about — ‘I saw Barenaked Ladies in Schine,’ ” said Charles Merrihew, associate vice president of Student Affairs.
This was the second, and final, impromptu concert filmed for the pilot. John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting performed last week at a new shopping mall in Hollywood.
“He played piano in the pouring rain,” Pietsch said.
Dick Clark Productions requested a location that was indoors for this concert, said SU spokesman Kevin Morrow. They also asked it to be in a public space with steady walkthrough, Morrow added. Goldstein Auditorium, which can hold up to 1,650 people, was considered as a possible venue but it did not have enough walkthrough, he said.
Dick Clark graduated from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in 1951 as did a VH-1 executive working with “Guerilla Concerts.”
“We were working with what you might consider ‘extended family’ of the university,” Morrow said.
Two Department of Public Safety officers attended to ensure no one was hurt.
“I liked how it was so impersonal and we were so close, instead of tons of guards holding everyone back,” Sikorski said. She added that she wished the band had played one of their classic songs, “If I Had $1000000.”
“The audience was better than we expected,” Rac Clark said. “It was better than the band expected, too.
“Nobody got hurt. Everybody had fun. And we’re outta here.”
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