Barenaked Ladies: Live in New Orleans, 1996

(As published in Offbeat)


House of Blues
September 1, 1996

"I went walking down Bourbon Street today," said Barenaked Ladies' Ed Robertson between songs last month to an SRO House of Blues crowd, "and I have to admit I was a little disappointed. I mean, all I wanted was a strawberry daiquiri--where can a guy go to get one of those? Or even just a white shirt with 'New Orleans' written across it? I mean, I see everybody drinkin' 'em and wearin' 'em, but where do you get 'em?"

"Maybe you have to know someone," answered Steven Page. "It's like the Masons."

From such anecdotes--the fellas also relished the memory of all the "nuts and wangs" they saw on parade in the French Quarter--one could tell that Barenaked Ladies love New Orleans. And from the ecstatic Labor-Day-weekend crowd who knew every word to "If I Had $1,000,000" and who knew every avant-garde turkey gobble to "You Can Be My Yoko Ono," one could tell that New Orleans loves Barenaked Ladies.

The Canadian quintet performed twenty tracks from their three Reprise longplayers, with special emphasis on Gordon--their multi-platinum 1993 debut--and Born on a Pirate Ship, their current release and one of the most generously loaded rock CD-Roms on the market. Beginning with the Latin rhythms of "Box Set," which the pudgy and bespectacled Page punctuated with karate chops and somersaults, continuing with "Crazy," and peaking with such left-of-center ringers as bassist Jim Creeggan's Indian-chant-based "Spider in My Room" and Page's homicidal-farmer vignette, "Straw Hat and Dirty Old Hank," the eclectic fivesome stoked the crowd for two hours, bringing off even their introspective, nuclear-family numbers ("What a Good Boy," "Great Provider") without a hitch. Somewhere amid Page's ham-opera vocal stylings, Robertson's singer-songwriterly croon, Page-Robertson-Creeggan's impeccable harmonies, and Ty Stewart's dexterous drumming, an idea of Barenaked Ladies as the perfect hybrid of Cowboy Mouth and Madness emerged and took on flesh.

What those in attendance will probably remember the longest and most fondly, however, are the "segues": the band broke into folk-rock snippets of Alanis Morisette's "Ironic," Biz Markie's "Just a Friend," the Divinyls "I Touch Myself," and Run DMC's greatest hits every chance it got.

Even so, the group's show-closing, folk-rock rendition of Madonna's "Material Girl" caught everyone by surprise, probably because the Ladies performed it nearly Barenaked, with nothing between their Canadian bacon and the crowd but their boxers.