Barenaked Ladies's "Last Summer On Earth 2015" stopped in at the Treasure Island Resort & Casino Island Events Center in Red Wing, Minnesota, last Friday, June 12th. This unbeatable lineup of The Violent Femmes and Colin Hay was too good for us to pass up, so I spent over two hours (one hour of it being stuck in rush hour) on the road to attend this very special sold out show.... but it was all worth it.
Although I've stayed at the Treasure Island Resort & Casino hotel and eaten at their famous buffet before, I've never attended the event center before. I was glad to see that this was a very nice stage: high enough for everyone in attendance to see and lights were bright and colorful. If you've never been there before, the event center is on the left wing of the casino and has a capacity of nearly 3,000 removable seats. If you get lost, staffs were friendly and knowledgeable in directing us where to go.
Overall, this was a pretty terrific spacious stage and the sound system was comfortably loud.
Colin Hay
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Men At Work's singer
Colin Hay kicked off the event with a couple of classic songs, "Down Under" and "Overkill". Of the latter song, he told us this funny story about how a fan misheard the lyrics as "goats appear and fade away" (instead of 'ghosts appear...')
While the majority of fans only know the Scottish Australian musician from Men At Work that made his career, he did squeeze in a couple of tracks from his latest release
Next Year People, including the title track and "Scattered In The Sand".
Violent Femmes
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Up next was Wisconsin trio
Violent Femmes. Just to give you a little backstory, I got into VF when I started getting into music in the early 90s. By the time I bought their debut self-titled album, it had gone certified platinum, and they were already a well-known band. The odd thing about VF is that they were notorious for not doing full tour, after 2000 (and on their third drummer?), primary singer/songwriter Gordon Gano decided they were not going to write new music and "retired" from touring. They would play some random shows when promoters would book them, but they didn't regularly play live.
15 years later, in March 2015, we heard that the trio is back and will be releasing
Happy New Year EP on 12" for Record Store Day (for April 18). What was more surprising was that they also announced a string of live dates as part of the "Last Summer On Earth 2015" tour. The closest venue to us was at the Treasure Island Casino, so, of course, we had to show up for support.
Joining the trio were two additional touring members: Blaise Garza on saxophone, additional guitarist Jeff Hamilton, and John Sparrow on the cajón box.
Clearly, based on the big sing-along to "Blister in the Sun", "Kiss Off", "American Music", and "Gone Daddy Gone", a
lot of longtime fans had the very same idea and drove in from all over the place to finally see this band in person.
As bassist Brian Ritchie said on stage, the band's setlist are made up as they go along... and with no exception, they had decided to take a request from a fan to play "Girl Trouble"... a song that they had not played in a long time and they're not really sure if they can pull it off. After singing the song, Gano commented that "Nobody says 'up the ass' anymore."
Highlight of the show, besides from all the sing-along songs, was when Barenaked Ladies' bassist Jim Creeggan stepped in to lend a hand on "Gone Daddy Gone" because that song required Ritchie to play the xylophone.
Say what you will about Canada's
Barenaked Ladies, but they are a great live band. All those years touring, singer Ed Robertson has developed an amazing ability to randomly improvised some raps and songs. My personal favorite was the "Ring Ding Ding for Red Wing" rap, it's clear to me that they just actually thought of it while randomly shouting out rhymes. The other favorite moment was when they decided to upgrade "the Bearded Man" to the center front row seats. They sang "New Seats for the Bearded Man" as about 20 people started just moving in a conga line to the front. There were
more people than the actual six empty seats in the front, so after an awkward moment, the first group left to make room for the Bearded Man and his friends.
Setlist
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As you can see from their setlist, they did all the hit songs people expect to hear: "The Old Apartment", "Big Bang Theory Theme", "One Week" and "If I Had $1,000,000". Sandwiched in between the hit songs were four songs from the band's 14th studio album
Silverball ("Get Back Up", "Matter of Time", "Passcode", and "Duct Tape Heart"). From what I've heard, they still write some incredibly fun and catchy songs.
For the introduction of "Big Bang Theory Theme", they said they were happy to have a television show used one of their songs... and the band started to play "Facts of Life" and then an incorrect/joke version of the "M*A*S*H" theme song (the correct song is "Suicide is Painless")... and then eventually "Happy Days" theme song.
The highlight of their show was when they invited Colin Hay and Blaise Garza on stage to play the Men At Work's song "Who Can It Be Now?" It was just so good with the blaring saxophone and three guitars, especially coming off of the acoustic low key Men At Work songs that Hay played on his opening set.
Barenaked Ladies'
Silverball is out now on Vanguard Records.
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