After Dinner Speakers: Barenaked Ladies, Carl Bildt, Ellen Degeneres

Scarborough, Ontario's The Barenaked Ladies started in 1988 as the duo of Page and Robertson who had previously played together in a Rush clone band. They released a cheap cassette called Buck Naked' in 1989 followed by 1990's 'Barenaked Lunch' which was the Creeggan brothers debut. By 1991 Tyler Steward had joined the band and the group was stirring up publicity both with their savage wit and impromptu acoustic concerts (especially on live radio) but in the media by being banned by Toronto mayor June Rowlands who wouldn't allow them to play in Nathan Phillips Square due to their 'offensive' name. The press that this incident generated put the 5 piece band under the microscope as they headed to New York for the annual New Music Seminar to try and sell themselves. While there, they met Sean Lennon, son of John & Yoko, and got positive encouragement that his mother wasn't the least bit offended by their now popular song "Be My Yoko Ono". They were still unsigned and selling out concert halls, doing full radio concerts and effectively selling thousands of copies of their 3rd cassette - 'The Yellow Tape' based on such commercially catchy songs as "Be My Yoko Ono", "If I Had A Million Dollars" and "Brian Wilson". Due to the changes in record marketing and tracking through the newly developed Soundscan system, BNL's indie tape was now being distributed by Steven Page's father's own business (Page Publishing) and being monitored and counted, statistically, like any major label released product. Before the band knew it, the cassette had gone gold - which had never happened in Canadian music history. The band managed to slip in a cover version of Bruce Cockburn's "Lovers In A Dangerous Times" onto Intrepid Records' 'Kick At The Darkness' tribute album before a bidding war by major labels ensued and Sire Records out of the US won the coveted label honours. President Seymour Stein himself came to Toronto to oversee the public signing of the deal - held at the city hall of their suburban hometown of Scarborough as not only a publicity stunt, but as a huge public snubbing of Toronto mayor June Rowlands. The band finished up their independent commitments of gigs and cassettes in retail and retired to record their 1992 debut called 'Gordon'. The album, riding the crest of the ensuing media frenzy, went on to sell 500,000 copies and BNL were unanimously hailed as geniuses. Since then, they've tread cautiously with their biting sarcasm and novelty tunes to build a steady cult following that got an unexpected boost from the video for the band's "The Old Apartment", directed by "Beverley Hills 90210" actor Jason Priestley, and the Stateside success of the 1997 live "Rock Spectacle" album. BNL finally exploded in the U.S. in 1998 with the release of the album "Stunt" and the single "One Week". The pay-off for years of gruelling touring, "Stunt" was certified double-platinum (2 million copies) in America in November 1998. The album's second single and video, "It's All Been Done", pushed sales even higher. They returned in August 2000 with the upbeat single "Pinch Me", which featured some of the same rapid-fire singing that made "One Week" so memorable. A full album, "Maroon", produced by rock vet Don Was (Bonnie Raitt, Rolling Stones), followed on Sept. 12, 2000.