Bare Naked Ladies in Edmonton

BNL is on a most massive road trip right now, and from looking at their list of shows one can only guess at how tiring and stressful this will be for them.  As I write this, they are preparing to perform in Vancouver, after playing in Edmonton, with previous locations in the last few days for Regina, Saskatoon, Las Vegas, Calgary and Victoria (April 6th to 14th).  All I can say is they must have an awesome road crew!  With that said...

Ed Robertson (shown here in an illegally taken picture from last nights performance) and crew (Jim Creeggan, Kevin Hearn and Tyler Stewart) did their "best" to wow the crowd as best as possible.  As best as one could be, minus the exceptional talents of Steven Page.  Yes, we know Steven was a bad boy.  Yes, we know at the time that BNL was concentrating on doing their "kids release" and it made it difficult to keep him around.  As a side note, I think that most people would probably presume that any rock and roll type band is doing some form of drugs from time to time. And I have to say that if we can "forgive" others who have done bad things, then I would suggest that the band may want to look at asking him back.

Getting to see the band, was a challenge that came about within the twitter community.  I simply love groups who are starting to embrace this form of Social Media (check out the BNL Twitter page here) and I was in a state of awe, as I read two of the tweets sent by them. These two tweets are quoted below:

Thx to everyone that played. Dn't forget to upload ur videos + pictures you take at the show and tag them so they can be seen on bnl.com (5:50 PM Apr 9th via TweetDeck )

Go to the link for your show here http://bit.ly/dvYkwJ to find out how to tag them so they can be shared (5:53 PM Apr 9th via TweetDeck )

Like many of you, one of the things you really want, is to have those "memories" of having been-there-and-done-that type of thing. And to have a band saying what they did... well... blissful is the word that comes to mind!  But wait!  Arriving at the Jube you were greated by signs saying that no recording or picture taking was allowed!  I asked one of the ticket takers what the scoop was, and even mentioned that BNL had said they wanted to see the pics and videos... and was emphatically told "no way".  And of course, during their performance, you could see the security staff literally running up and down the aisles, getting folks to stop taking those pics etc.  Well, I came "camera ready", but it was impossible to really use it because I had to keep the camera lcd screen close to my chest to stop the glare (this is what security was watching for), which meant I could not focus, and had to do my 'best guess' at where the lens was point.  This makes for bad memories, not good ones.  I just don't understand why this no-picture policy is in place.  After all, we all want our memories and we all did pay the price to be there.

Um, ok, so.. I lied. Not everyone paid-the-price. And that's because BNL was doing ticket give aways using twitter.  From following the BNL timeline, you could see what they were going to ask, and knew their tweet would be coming the day before the next performance.  So, I watched.. and waited... and waited... AND waited. Finally, there came the following: (I just happened to be in both tweetdeck and on their twitter webpage, when I refreshed the web page, this appeared)

Here we go: first five people to respond to this tweet with #BNLEdmontonTix gets a pair of tix (7:13 PM Apr 13th via TweetDeck )

So the natural response was to just re-tweet it... after all, isn't that a "response"?  Well, I was the first person to respond, and I waited and waited. But I got nothing. :(  A note to those who read this, BNL does not deem this as a response! So if you are looking to win tickets for your area do NOT re-tweet it because you will not win!
 
Thankfully, I was also tweeting with GuitarKat and somehow along the way, a person from South Carolina (sumrthyme) picked up on things, and also had tweeted back to BNL about the tickets, and actually ended up winning a pair.  She was trying to get them for friends in Vancouver, and didn't quite realize that Vancouver and Edmonton were not as close as she thought, and offered them to GuitarKat, who then suggested that I would be more interested. Well, bless GuitarKat, and bless sumrthyme. Thanks to both of those folks, those tickets were passed on to me.  I so love social media!
 
Ok, so now you folks reading this are clued in about winning tickets... but, what about the actual performance?  The opening warmup was done very nicely by Joel Plaskett, followed by a short break before BNL performed. The Bare Naked Ladies kind of rocked.  I mean, it was "good". But I was disappointed.  The following review posted in the Edmonton Journal entertainment section pretty much sums it up, at least for me.
 
To Ed, Jim, Kevin, Tyler... and especially to your road crew... I love you guys.  But I'd love it a bit more if you used the twitter social media a bit better, and if you brought back Steven. :)  As another side note, the videos I got were obviously terrible, considering the cirumstances I was trying to perform under, but I have other... ummm.. sources... and I will be looking at those to hopefully provide some better pics and maybe some videos.