BnL at Universal Studios

From BnL at Universal

Got to see Barenaked Ladies do their first performance as a four-piece last night, and, if you’ll excuse the pun, they were fantastic. (Even punnier since the concert was at Universal Studios, whose sister park, Islands of Adventure has a section of the park devoted to the Marvel Super Heroes.)
On the Ships and Dip Cruises, I really got an appreciation for how much musical talent each of the members of BnL has, and that talent really shone last night, as they worked to figure out what this new arrangement of the band meant for their roles.

There was a moment during one song where I was singing along with the Steven harmony line, and I suddenly realized someone was doing it on stage. Did they have something recorded? Why no, it was Tyler, doing an absolutely bang up job with the back-up vocals. Jim did a fantastic job singing “Maybe Katie”, which always kind of sounded like a The Brothers Creeggan song to me. And he also did some fantastic dancing and moving around on stage. Kevin, it’s hard not to praise Kevin as the utility guy off the bench. He plays like 7,000 instruments, sings, and jokes. He did a fantastic job on “Sound of Your Voice”, which is particularly kewl since he wrote the song. Speaking of the cruise, I had heard him do the song there, and liked his version better than Steve’s version. Steve’s got the huge voice for it, but there’s something about the emotion in Kevin’s voice that I identify with more.

From BnL at Universal

Kevin struggled a bit on Million Dollars. Though he stepped up on the answer vocals to Ed’s call, he didn’t seem to have the timing quite right. Finally, Ed looked out at us, the audience, singing along loudly already and said, “Hey, can you folks sing along here; Kevin could use the help!” And we all joined in 1,000 percent at that point. Even before the show, I thought, they ought to just start doing Million Dollars as a duet with the audience, since they’ve sort of been doing it that way for a while already. And sure enough… It just goes back to my thoughts about Mike Evin earlier – music is collaborative, and the best musicians know that the audience is a part of any performance.

And I hope to be a part of the audience at BnL concerts for a long time into the future. The concert really made me look forward to what they’re about to craft in the studio. Can’t wait for the new CD! Can’t wait for them to drop by Orlando again.

From BnL at Universal