Success in showbusiness has many occupational hazards, but they do not usually include being assaulted with packaged food. Such, though, is the lot of Barenaked Ladies, the Canadian band who put a decade of hard labour into their newfound North American stardom - their album, Stunt, has gone triple platinum in America - and who will be back on an English stage next week, dodging boxes of macaroni cheese. To describe a Ladies concert as lively is like calling Bart Simpson playful, and one of the joys of their belated breakthrough is that it proves that a sense of humour and creative excellence need not be oil and water in the rock world. As they proved on previous UK visits in less celebrated times, the Barenaked boys will charm total strangers with shows of maniacal, Goonish jollity and damn good tunes. Plus that unusual concert tradition: where the Beatles got jelly beans and Tom Jones gets knickers, this five-piece has tins of apple sauce and boxes of macaroni cheese lobbed at it. You get hit by food, it sucks. Last month at Madison Square Garden in New York, Barenaked Ladies performed at an all-star concert staged by the city's top-rated pop radio station, Z100. Lesser men would have been daunted by an audience of screamy, dreamy ten-year-olds awaiting the appearance of pin-ups such as N Sync and 98 Degrees, but the band made them all rock and roar, especially with a gloriously absurd closing medley that stapled together songs like Gettin' Jiggy Wit' It, My Heart Will Go On and Bittersweet Symphony. But, much as one smiles at their compositions such as Be My Yoko Ono and If I Had $1,000,000, it would be misleading to file the Ladies in the novelty section. As they underline again on Stunt with songs such as Alcohol and When You Dream, they can do shade as well as light. "Our live shows are off the wall and fun," says Robertson, "but especially with the new record, people get a
lot clearer picture of what the band's about musically. There's still fun on the record, but it's not as overt as it's been in the past. "I don't care when people use the word 'zany' about us because sometimes we are ridiculous, but when it's used to detract from what the band does musically, then I have a problem with it, because for me those are two very separate things. People say 'You should do stand-up', and we always say no. It's just that you don't expect to see a band that makes you laugh, but if you came along expecting a comedy night, you'd be very disappointed. you don't expect to see a band that makes you laugh, but if you came along expecting a comedy night, you'd be very disappointed. Robertson's co-writer and singer, Steven Page, recalling some comic capers on those earlier UK gigs, senses a cultural kinship between Brits and Canadians. "There's a certain faction of Canadians that clings for dear life to England," he says. "It's kind of the place that keeps us not being American. If we didn't have a fish and chip shop on the corner, or we weren't rushing home to see Coronation Street, we would be American." Their ear for the absurdities of language has had audiences in this country in stitches as they played with newfound English phrases like toddlers in an Early Learning Centre. I remember them once constructing an entire song about Jaffa Cakes, and Page says they still get requests for it. "Whatever word happens to strike us, we play with," says drummer Tyler Stewart. "We talked about baps a lot, I remember. And slapper is one of our favourite words. We met these girls from Liverpool when we were there in 1996, I swear they were the original Spice Girls. They were so funny, drink you under the table, witty Scouse birds. They used this word slapper all the time." "I think the biggest thing Canadians have in common with British people is that we both get embarrassed," says Page. "Americans just don't get embarrassed." Americans just don't get embarrassed Their recent success is made more poignant by the current absence of keyboard player Kevin Hearn, now making a good recovery from leukaemia. "Now that he's recuperating, it's doubly frustrating for him that he can't be out here on tour with us," says Robertson. "It's a really hard thing when you feel like your career is at its
pinnacle, but you're not celebrating it together." The belated triumph of Barenaked Ladies is a tale of victory against the odds by a band that will not sit comfortably in any of the industry pigeonholes. "I like diversity in music, but it's hard to market," says Robertson. "There's so much music these days, everybody wants to be able to say what they're a cross between, like 'It's somewhere between U2 and Soul Coughing'. We are Herman's Hermits meets Henson's Muppets."
"We're trying to curb that a little bit," says co-writer and singer Ed Robertson. Have they gone all serious and arty, then? No, stresses bassist Jim Creeggan, they would just rather not have to play in hard hats: "Maybe one idiot in the audience would put a little more steam behind the throw and hit somebody. You get hit by food, it sucks." Robertson adds, philosophically: "But you know that going into rock'n'roll." "I like to think our music is like an honest conversation. If you're sitting with a friend over the course of an evening, you don't just make jokes all night and you don't talk serious all night." Page recalls the vexation of finding the acclaim for their shows in this country never translated into record sales, least of all in the Britpop era. "A song like Brian Wilson wasn't going to gel with Song 2 by Blur," he says. "We felt really on the verge of something in the UK, but each record never quite hit it, and by the time the third record, Born On A Pirate Ship, came out, the ball was just dropped. We thought 'This is terrible, our chance has gone.'"