Really. How great are the Barenaked Ladies?

The ladies are launching their first ever children’s album in May (“Snacktime” is its name) and debuted some of the material from that album at the Chapters store in Langley (BC). The first 200 families got to sit down in plastic chairs. And then they just let people in who could peer out from the aisles of books to watch the show.

Our family was one of the aisle peerers (we were in the “studying for your LSAT, SAT, MCAT” section. It was the aisle to be AT.)

It was great! I haven’t had that much fun at a concert in years.  I mean the Police concert was awesome too, but for my money ($100 as opposed to free), this outranks them. Plus, we were about 50 feet away as opposed to the 1/2 mile at the Police concert.

But really, they are just great guys. so winning in person. Funny. Smart. Their between-song banter was hilarious, ranging from comments about their own unfamiliarity with their own material, to comparisons between Hannah Montana and Britney Spears (give her five years and BZZZZ), to family dynamics (the first kid gets organic, the third kid gets the shaft).  The funniest bit was when they got to the part in the million dollar song that talks about “building a tree fort in their yard” and how they’d like to set up sections in their tree fort like Chapters. That was already funny. But there was a “Storytime” sign of which Steve could only see the letters TORY and he noted that it was a propos that the TORY section was so far away from the ARTS section. HAH! Okay, maybe it’s a “you had to be there” thing, but trust me, it was very funny.

Oh yeah, the songs were good too. My personal favourite was 7 ate 9. But Polliwog and Eraser were great too.

We left with huge smiles on our faces. These guys are peacemakers. We should be sending them in to sort things out in the Middle East. Maybe they should be the opening act at the next Camp David summit. At a minimum maybe they’d be able to get everyone to stop taking themselves so seriously.

I think besides their music, I like them because they seem to have zero ego. They just do what they do really well and have a great time doing it.

You guys are my heroes. If you ever need a backup singer….