Itty Bitty Rants

Infrequent posts about stuff.

But only a little guilty…

As a birthday present for my sister this year I got tickets for her and I to go see the [Barenaked Ladies](http://www.bnlmusic.com) play at the [Xcel Center](http://www.xcelenergycenter.com/) in St Paul last night. The show was pretty good, though I have to admit that I was a bit more excited about (and happy at the performance of) the opening act than I was was of the headliner. [Mike Doughty](http://www.mikedoughty.com/) was in fine form and did a great job warming up the crowd with some of his solo work as well as a couple of [Soul Coughing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_Coughing) tunes, though no one sitting near us really seemed to know who the heck he was. I really need to make more of an effort to see him do his own show the next time he's in town.



Anyway, Barenaked Ladies also had a very good show and I did enjoy it very much. My sister and I have had an on-going strong discussion (because it's not serious enough to be an argument) about whether BNL was as fun on stage as their fellow Torontans, er, Toronto-ans, um, band from Toronto [Moxy Fruvous](http://www.fruvous.com/). Well BNL does a good show, but they're nothing close to Moxy Fruvous on stage. Definitely fun, don't get me wrong, but not nearly the quantity of digressions, ad-libs, and other wacky types of stuff that happens at a Moxy Fruvous show.



They also didn't sing any songs in French. What kind of Canadian band is that, eh? ;-P



The really cool part of the show for me though was that while perusing the merchandise table prior to the show they had a sign up the "Barenaked on a Stick LIVE!" USB key for $25. The details are this: They record the entire show off of the boards and dump it to an MP3 file. They they copy that MP3 file and a PDF with the set list off to fifty USB keys and hand them out as soon as duplication is complete after the show. The two very, very tiny little issues that I have with this:
Overall it's a really cool idea and it's been fun to listen to. I'm trying to decide if it's a good idea to get the albums they have available in this form or not though.