Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
PINBALL WIZARDS
Canadian band will join Violent Femmes and Colin Hay at Sunset Cove Amphitheater
Flip for the Barenaked Ladies.
A blinking, beeping machine made from glass and metal and commonly used for entertainment purposes taught Barenaked Ladies’ frontman Ed Robertson a valuable life lesson.
Barenaked Ladies, the Toronto-based pop-rock band, no longer finds itself with a No. 1 single, a feat it achieved with the 1998 song “One Week.” The group’s recent albums haven’t sold millions of copies. Some longtime fans still lament the 2009 departure of singer and co-founder Steven Page, who was arrested on suspicion of possessing cocaine in 2008.
But with “Silverball,” a strong, 13-song collection released in June, Barenaked Ladies — Robertson, bassist Jim Creeggan, drummer Tyler Stewart and keyboard player Kevin Hearn — sound rejuvenated. In concert, they perform with all the goofy fun and exuberance of 1999-2000, when you couldn’t escape music videos such as “Pinch Me,” the band’s second Top 20 hit.
“This is going to sound really weird, but pinball was an eye-opener for me,” Robertson says. “I’ve been collecting pinball machines for years and years.”
A Metallica-themed table is his favorite, even though he doesn’t listen to the band’s music. He wouldn’t accept the Addams Family machine, a collector favorite, if you gave it to him for free. Robertson is drawn to the randomness of pinball, and the inevitable outcome of every game. No matter how good you are, pinball will defeat you. “I love the mechanics of it,” he says. “It’s rock ’n’ roll under glass. It’s lights and sounds and action and physicality.”
A few years ago, Robertson started hosting a regular Wednesday night pinball club. “It was Toronto musicians and people in films and television, friends of mine from high school,” he says. “It was this cool, eclectic group of people that was all connected through me.”
Amid the smiles and whirring machines, he experienced a moment of clarity. “My faded star, if you will, was 50 to 70 times brighter than a lot of my musician friends could ever hope to aspire to,” Robertson says. “I could get up and say, ‘We’re not at the top of the charts right now. We’re not selling millions of records.’ But what I really need to do is to look out at 10,000 people in the audience who grew up with our music and who are excited to be there.”
“Silverball,” the album named for Robertson’s obsession, starts with an anthemic rocker titled “Get Back Up,” co-written with Better Than Ezra’s Kevin Griffin. On tour, it’s the current set opener. You can’t help but hear Robertson’s change of heart in its chorus: “You’ve got a whole stadium at your feet/It’s not about victory or defeat.”
On tour, the current openers — alt-rockers Violent Femmes and Colin Hay, the lead singer of Men at Work, who performs solo — fit the Barenaked Ladies vibe perfectly.
And after three decades, the fact that Robertson plays music for a living, a point first driven home during those weekly pinball club meetings, is not lost on him.
“I get to write songs and play music,” he says. “That’s all I have to do”