I will not have stand for this slander against the songwriting genius of Steven Page. Against Ed Robertson, yes, you have a point.
Steven Page puts on a great solo show, and hilarious. Told a story about how he heard “Easy Lover” in the car with his son, and said “son, this is why you should never do cocaine.”
I have nothing against the band at all, until they fired Page and then fuck them. I loved their first album especially— they are a “joke” band in the sense their lyrics are generally corny and cartoonish. Just having fun.
And yet he was hanging out with Jason Priestly when Priestly thought he was a high end director/producer, and got totally hooked on coke during the Barenaked in America documentary. It was that addiction that killed the band. Ed was always a smart, nice enough guy who was grounded in reality, Tyler was the goofy guy you'd love to hang out with, Steven was an egomaniacal asshole, Jim Creegan was super nice but reserved. The coke fueled ego of Steven was insufferable to all around him, and he imploded. The Creegan brothers were amazing musicians. I was part of the record company that managed them and made them big, so I have a bit of an inside line on all this. When they made it big on their first tour, they bought their road manager a custom harley as a gift. They also bought a trailer so that it could be towed behind one of the tour buses. I was involved in overnighting the bike via FedEx and picking it up from the airport for the big reveal at our Juno party we threw in our new office in Vancouver. Fin was blown away by it, and then we all got drunk. They did put on a hell of a show, though.
And just so you know, Priestly was one of those "little dog" fucktards... it was some little shitsu or something that he let just run around and shit everywhere in our offices. Fuck that guy.
In case you were wondering, my nickname comes from Nettwerk Records... the company I used to work for. I was the IT Manger at a time when the internet was transforming that shit, with email addresses, web sites, digital downloads (mp3's), and enhanced CDs and DVDs. I was spearheading all of that work, including data analysis to figure out touring plans for BNL. Instead of doing it logistically to be most efficient, we'd figure out where they were hot via sales and college radio plays, and go there next to help fan the flames. It was hugely successful. So I did all the big database work, for Nettwerk... so NettData was born. The more you know.
A 20 year old California man has guns temporarily confiscated for messaging the 15 year old female school shooter and saying he would also attack a government building. First of all... 'temporarily'? What the fucking fuck? Nah, there has needs to be a way to keep this fool unarmed for life, or in a prison until he's too old and feeble to pick up a gun. https://www-nbcnews-com.cdn.ampproj...ing-suspect-plan-attack-government-rcna184794
He may be an asshole, but for me, Page’s songwriting wins out. “Maybe You Should Drive” is my favorite album, and he hit his stride. Ed started hitting his stride on “Pirate Ship,” and they both were at their best on “Stunt.” Once Page left the band, the balance was out and it just didn’t appeal to me as much. Saw them at the Ryman and it was still a good show, but it didn’t hold a candle to seeing the them in ‘99 in the shitty MCI Arena. Im not derailing the thread. BNL is serious business.
I love this song. It had a lot of meaning for me when the Mrsanthropic and I moved out of our apartment and into our first home. Things didn’t go well, and we were only in that house for 6 months before we moved on to our current home. At about the same time, my parents moved out of their longtime home. The evening of their move, my mother called to ask me to get a load of laundry she had left in the dryer at the old house. I went there and it was obvious the new family was moving in- I could see boxes through the front window and all of the lights were on. I knocked for a while, loudly, but no one answered. So I tried my key, and sure enough they hadn’t yet changed the locks. I went in and yelled hello a few times but no one answered, so I went downstairs and grabbed the laundry. On my way out it hit me how incredibly weird it felt, to be in the house that was my parents for 20+ years, where I spent my teenage years and beyond, that I thought of as home- and I didn’t belong there, I shouldn’t be there, and probably never would be in that house again. Fuck, there’s something in my eye now. Must be dusty in here.
Great tunes for their first 3 albums. Absolute Canadian classics. Still heavy in my rotation. Their management had no clue how to break into the US and my old company constantly tried to help them but they said “not interested”. When Gord Downey was pronounced terminal it became overblown and a National TV broadcast of his final tour.
New Orleans is Sinking Little Bones 38 Years Old 50 Mission Cap Courage. That’s a reasonable sprinkling.
Canada has national content laws, so things like radio stations and MuchMusic (Canada’s MTV) had to play a certain percentage of music from Canadian artists. Because of that, a lot of Canadians have never heard some extremely popular American artists because they received zero airplay anywhere here. Like Paramoure, for example.
First, my favourite Hip tune... so much fun to play in bar bands. As to US vs Canadian path to success, a lot of it has to do with the feeder system, as you allude to in your post. In the US, so much of it (back when I was involved, when internet was dial-up, if you had it at all), was a result of the college radio scene in the US. Nettwerk had a bunch of "street marketing" teams that did nothing but stay on top of that scene, befriend those in control of it, and were actively involved in it. That meant that when we had a single we wanted to push out, we could hit our network of college radio insiders, and have a better shot of getting it played than if someone just off the street did. That was only a small part of it though, as the song had to be good or it would get no legs. We would also get the feedback as to how well the songs were being received, which, as I mentioned earlier, we used to make data-driven decisions around tour schedules, etc. We had some success in that area... with Sarah McLachlan, BNL, Avril Lavigne, Sum 41, and to a lesser degree Moist and a few others. We were also transitioning from being known as a heavy industrial label to more mainstream at the time... with Skinny Puppy, etc. We were so well known in that genre that Trent Reznor gave us his demo tape looking for his first record contract. (We wanted to sign him, but the big players stepped in with way more bank than we could imagine at that point). Nettwerk also ran Lilith Fair, as 3/4ths of the owners of Lilith were in Nettwerk... Terry McBride (the founder of Nettwerk), Sarah, Dan Fraser (her road manager and my old roommate, which is how I got the gig at Nettwerk in the first place), and Marty Diamond, a promoter in NY. They were fun times, for sure.