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BareNaked Ladies
The Olympia Theatre, Dublin
10 April 2007About a year and a half ago, on their “Barenaked for the Holidays” tour, Canadian favourites Bare Naked Ladies visited Dublin’s Olympia Theatre for a night of songs and storytelling – even though, according to them, they didn’t even have a record label or representation in Ireland any more, as they’d failed to renew their contract. They’d had such a good time the previous visit that they decided since they were this side of the Atlantic they’d do a gig in Dublin anyway.
This trip, they were ostensibly promoting their latest album, “Barenaked Ladies Are Men” (alternatively “Barenaked Ladies Are Me”) - though naturally that didn’t mean that their set list was necessarily overloaded with songs off the album, instead taking in 15 years or so of a back catalogue that had a pretty packed house in the Olympia dancing and singing along much of the first night of their “tour of Ireland”. As singer Ed Robertson joked, “it’s a one-stop tour…”. The crowd were well up for it from the first moment, welcoming the band onstage with every voice in the place cheering loudly, and they launched straight into “One Week”, to the clear delight of much of the audience.
After the second song, Robertson confessed to making a crucial mistake on their return visit to Dublin. Bangers or mash would have been fine, but the combination of the two had him feeling a bit full…. “I’m still gonna be jumpin though” he laughed, before launching into a seemingly impromptu riff on bangers and mash. The beat picked up almost immediately by drummer Tyler Stuar,- that appeared to catch singer Stephen Page almost off-guard when Robertson passed it to him to continue (though it only took a second for him to pick it up).
The crowd were treated to a set list that included many tunes from their Greatest Hits album, with a number from 1998’s hit-laden Stunt. “One Week”, “Some Fantastic (Ivory and Ivory)”, “It’s All Been Done”, as well as the much-loved “Brian Wilson”, “The King of Bedside Manor” - which segued neatly into a quick bit of Van Morrison’s “Moondance” - before finishing the song, to cheers from the crowd. Also “If I Had $1,000,000” from 1992’s Gordon, 2003’s Everything to Everyone getting a look in with “Have You Seen My Love?”, and “Falling for the First Time” from their 2000 album Maroon. BareNaked Ladies are Men gave us “Sound of Your Voice” and “Angry People”, amongst others.
BareNaked Ladies are best in front of a live audience not simply for their energetic set list and interaction with the crowd though, but for their showmanship, storytelling, and humour that make a live gig a truly memorable experience.
This trip, they’ve supposedly decided to make a big push for the position of spokesband for “low-cost” airline Ryanair – “The Surly Airline” – complete with a song about the company that had people around me in fits of laughter. Singer Stephen Page started messing about the fairly ornate plasterwork in the Victorian Olympia Theatre at one point, claiming that when they arrived the theatre had looked a bit sparse, so they did some plastering that day - they wouldn’t be able to take it with them, though, so they hoped we didn’t mind… And Ed Robertson claimed to have the best seat in the house – he was able to see the crowd, the theatre, he was a big fan of the band and “a huge fan of your work” (to Page) – and a view straight into the gents’ toilets, where he could see men who didn’t realise he was watching, urinating, an experience he’d never had before… and later in the set they even went so far as to pause in singing a song to question two guys leaving the gents’ whether they had washed their hands or not (“you left too quick. Either you didn’t wash, or you washed and didn’t dry…”) to chuckles from the rest of the crowd.
Robertson also regaled the crowd with the tale of his “geek’s paradise” that day, when a little company called Microsoft flew someone in from their smaller gaming division Halo to interview him for a bonus DVD promotion. Attempting a “reveal” with the woman interviewing him turning out to be the voice of a 5-inch-high translucent character in the game. “How did I not know from the voice?”, Robertson laughed, “it’s not like Helen Hunt with glasses on taking her glasses off”, or Bill Paxton as suggested by Page – leading them to a quick riff on “Twister: The Musical”, coming to the Olympia in 2008….
They revisited the musical idea with a choreographed dance finishing “Angry People” that referenced “West Side Story” (naturally for the curious, you can see a couple of videos from performances in the UK on YouTube), with a photo-shoot finish that had some prepared audience members throwing roses at the band. And those weren’t the only stage-bound missiles brought by particularly prepared audience members down front – a number of pairs of knickers ended up on stage (and on the end of the band’s guitars) at the “I just made you say underwear” bit of “Pinch Me”, and during “If I had a Million Dollars” a stuffed toy monkey landed at Stephen Page’s feet during the lyric “haven’t you always wanted a monkey?”. And unusually, they did not just one but two encores, to a crowd that seemed more than willing to stay the night if they’d keep playing.
A night to remember, and top-notch entertainment worth every cent of the ticket price.
Lisa Rooks