Quantcast

Call for Feature Essays About Any Aspect of Popular Culture, Present or Past

Music

Barenaked Ladies

Talk to the Hand

Live in Michigan

(Shout Factory; US: 6 Nov 2007; UK: Available as import)

Listening to a Barenaked Ladies concert CD can sometimes be a little like Evening at the Improv, only with music. Before the band can even get to song number three, which is titled “Sound of Your Voice”, the group spies a man in the audience who is either playing maracas or shaking two beer bottles for extra rhythm. This leads the act into an impromptu funky tune, probably titled something like “Old School Maracas”. Although this disc is the soundtrack to a live DVD (normally a nervous time for most bands) Barenaked Ladies are unafraid of having a good time, cameras or no cameras. The disc opens with “One Week”, the group’s dialogue-packed hit song. But there are plenty other memorable moments, such as an organ-fueled robbery song, called “Bank Job”, and a nostalgic look back at a former hometown with “The Old Apartment”. This act may be smart asses enough to call a song “Be My Yoko Ono”, but they also come off surprisingly sincere while performing it.

Rating:

Dan MacIntosh is a freelance writer from Bellflower, California, “The friendly city”. He’s married with two children, two cats, one dog, one bunny, and one bird. He earned his B.A. degree in Communications (emphasis Public Relations) from California State University, Fullerton in 1986. By day, he works for a software company (Ah, but doesn’t everybody these days?), and in the evenings he works at Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts where he is hardly recognizable in a suit and tie. He also dearly loves his church, Calvary Baptist Church, Bellflower, where he is a deacon, a praise choir member, and a small group leader. He also plays guitar, but mainly in the privacy of his home.


Tagged as: barenaked ladies
Media
Barenaked Ladies - Million Dollars (Live in Michigan)
Related Articles
5 Dec 2011
Do you want to hear "The Big Bang Theory Theme", "One Week", and other Barenaked Ladies songs that you maybe kinda-sorta remember? Are you too lazy or disinterested to track down the original albums or buy the individual tracks online? Then this greatest hits compilation is for you.
2 Dec 2010
BNL still knows how to put on a show, but they are definitely struggling to deal with the lack of Steven Page onstage, even after a year of concerts as a four-piece.
By Matthew McKean
7 Nov 2007
Canada's Barenaked Ladies make some of today's best, most relevant protest music. No, really.
6 Nov 2007
Talk to the Hand: Live in Michigan is, at its heart, a perfect synopsis of the Barenaked Ladies live experience.
Comments
Now on PopMatters
Hip Hop Es Mi Cultura (Columns) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Van Halen: A Different Kind of Truth (Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Eyvind Kang: The Narrow Garden (Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
The Soft Hills: The Bird Is Coming Down to Earth (Capsule Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Matthias Sturm: Blood and Thunder (Capsule Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Jack DeJohnette: Sound Travels (Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Sam Mickens: Slay & Slake (Capsule Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Sibiri Samake: Dambe Foli (Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Big Fresh: Moneychasers (Capsule Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
Alyssa Graham: Lock, Stock & Soul (Reviews) [Mon, 1:00 am]
A Painting Come to Life: 'The Mill & the Cross' (Short Ends and Leader) [Fri, 4:00 pm]
  1. 'Nebraska': Bruce Springsteen's 'Heart of Darkness' (Columns)
  2. The 10 Greatest Shakespeare Film Adaptations of All Time (Short Ends and Leader)
  3. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 1: From 13Ghosts to Friendly Fires (Features)
  4. Not-So-Central Casting: Kevin Smith and the Birth of the Reality Podcast (Features)
  5. The 10 Greatest Movie Spies Ever (Short Ends and Leader)
  6. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 2: From the Go! Team to the Phoenix Foundation (Features)
  7. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 3: From Real Estate to Youth Lagoon (Features)
  8. Lana Del Rey: Born to Die (Reviews)
  9. The Top 15 Madonna Singles of All Time (Sound Affects)
  10. Get Off of My Cloud!: 'Collecting' Music in the Digital Age (Features)
  11. Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas (Reviews)
  12. Google and the Production of Curiosity (Marginal Utility)
  13. Carole E. Barrowman’s Authorial Journey to Hollow Earth (Features)
  14. “Don’t Let Me Fall”: Hip-Hop in the Age of Austerity (Features)
  15. Tower Songs: Townes Van Zandt (Columns)
  16. Black Bananas: Rad Times Xpress IV (Reviews)
  17. Paul McCartney: Kisses on the Bottom (Reviews)
  18. The Gay Ole Countryside (Columns)
  19. Of Montreal: Paralytic Stalks (Reviews)
  20. Counterbalance No. 67: John Coltrane’s 'A Love Supreme' (Sound Affects)
  21. Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munro: A Rock Star’s Midlife Crisis or Valid Literature? (Features)
  22. A Look to the Past, An Insight Into the Present: The Use of Gender in 'Mad Men' (Features)
  23. The 10 Best John Coltrane Solos (Sound Affects)
  24. A Tale of How Great Journalism Became Revisionist History: Grambling State U Football (Columns)
  25. Chairlift: Something (Reviews)
  26. Mark Lanegan Band: Blues Funeral (Reviews)
  27. The Asteroids Galaxy Tour - "Heart Attack" (Cosmic Kids Remix) (PopMatters Premiere) (Mixed Media)
  28. The Barbaric (and Poetic) Yawp of Shelby Lynne (Notes from the Road)
  29. Mitt Romney Can Reside at Today's Proverbial 'Downton Abbey'... Newt Gingrich Cannot (Features)
  30. After Cease to Exist: The Far-from-Final Report of Throbbing Gristle (Features)
PM Picks
Music Archive
Announcements

© 1999-2012 PopMatters.com. All rights reserved.
PopMatters.com™ and PopMatters™ are trademarks
of PopMatters Media, Inc.

PopMatters is wholly independently owned and operated.
PopMatters is a member of BUZZMEDIA Music, MOG and Guardian Select.