For the last 16 years, one of the most unabashedly pro-Canada voices in popular discourse has been the Barenaked Ladies.
My most intimate experience with a Canadian ? prior to seeing the Ladies play the Alliant Energy Center last Wednesday ? came when my best friend and I were in a Lone Star Texas Grill on Toronto’s Front Street, drinking margaritas with a successful Canadian entrepreneur.
“Canadians don’t mind Americans,” he said. “But what really pisses us off is when the U.S. treats Canada like its loser little brother.”
“Here, here,” said my friend and I, both of whom were the oldest of our siblings.
Just like your weirdo little brother, Canada is a little different and ripe for abuse. Just like your little brother, that often amounts to it being just a little bit… nerdier.
The Barenaked Ladies are nerdy. Their fans ? also nerdy.
“Just look at these people!” my girlfriend exclaimed at the show as she pointed out the teenyboppers, the teenyboppers’ parents, the has-been-hips and the chronically un-cool.
But just like hanging out with your nerdy brother, or the nerdy brother nation, you have to say to yourself: “I am cool, and they are not. But who’s having more fun?”
Sure, nerdy brother Nation is not cool. But they have socialized medicine and decriminalized marijuana. Sure, your nerdy brother is not cool. But somehow he lands an easy office job and can afford laser eye surgery and a plasma TV.
And your girlfriend thinks he’s cute.
The Barenaked Ladies have enjoyed commercial success since the mid-90’s with light-hearted, catchy tunes, and are therefore generally regarded as “poppy.” This could mean death to any other band’s fan-base (R.I.P. Dave Matthews Band, 1992-2001). But BNL fans don’t care about cool and are not upset by their band being so un-coolly played on Top 40 radio. Who cares, as long as everybody has a good time?
“Ah, Madison. I haven’t played here since before I sold out,” said co-front man Steven Page at the beginning of the show.
The show began with a hilarious video clip from redvsblue.com, a website that uses robots from the videogame Halo in a sitcom, and from there went into the poppy (gasp!) “Maybe Katie” from their new album “Everything to Everyone.”
A couple of songs later on a ska-styled “Grade 9,” the realization comes slowly, grudgingly, but unavoidably: “These guys aren’t half bad.”
That realization is reinforced a few songs later when the band abandons their posts onstage and gathers in the middle with a guitar, a mandolin and an upright bass for old-timey harmony renditions of “Roadrunner,” “For You” and “One Week” that made me feel more like I was on Austin’s City Limits than Madison’s.
Following that was an impressive solo by bassist Jim Creegan, a section in which Page and co-front man Ed Robertson exchange freestyle raps as part of a new-school Frank Zappa gimmick, and their latest single “Testing 1, 2, 3.”
The BNL closed out with a fantasy-dance sequence onstage for “Shopping” and fairly rocking versions of all their hits, including the obligatory “If I had $1,000,000.”
Throughout the show, the stage set of a flock of flying white flags served as a constant reminder of the innocent playfulness, self-embracing optimism and democratic nature of the Ladies. But they also provided a visual allusion to the oh-so-many boxer shorts strung up flagpoles in nerdy brother nation.
As the Ladies’ shamelessly entertained, I felt increasingly nerdy.

But I was having a good time.