When you go see a band you grew up with, there's always a fear that they're going to ruin your childhood by playing too much new stuff and making you forget why you ever liked them in the first place. You start to question your own choices, spin into melancholy, and inevitably start wearing dark clothing and sticking saftey pins in any part of your body that can hold one.
Thankfully, Barenaked Ladies did not ruin my childhood. In fact, they played a variety of songs that conjured flashbacks to adolescence, in my bedroom, driving my first car to high school, and rocking out to my favourite copied cassette, Gordon.
As usual, the Ladies provided the audience with a blend of rock songs and slow ballads, harmonies and guitar solos, dance numbers and improvs, and of course a fair bit of silliness between numbers. As soon as the opening chords of One Week rang out, the dank, dull, cavern that is the Casino-Rama Concert Hall was turned into something much warmer and exciting.
Although they did mix in newer stuff like Wind it Up, Angry People, and Sound of Your Voice, it was just enough of a taste of things we weren't used to, reminding us that this was 2007 and not ten or fifteen years earlier.
Notable happenings included a new acapella 5-part harmony introduction to Brian Wilson, which sounded like a gospel choir ate a barbershop quartet... and was a pretty nice tweak on an old classic. For You was the only track from Everything to Everyone, and featured Kevin playing a pretty kickass mandolin. The improv bits mainly centred around Ed's gambling habits, and a little bit about the number of family members in the audience. They also busted out In the Car, which I hadn't heard in forever (so much so that I had to look it up and figure out what CD it was on... I guessed wrong). And when they rocked out Alcohol, I really did feel like I was back in highschool seeing them play it for the first time.
Of course there were the usual standards like Enid and If I had $1,000,000, but I think the most memorable thing was the mix. They played a lot of songs I forgot I loved, and made me think... hey, I could even love the new stuff.
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