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Art in the '905'

Broadcast Date: Feb. 16, 1993

Singing about ketchup, K-cars and Kraft Dinner, the Barenaked Ladies have really made the most of their suburban roots. In satirizing the suburbs, this new group (of guys) from Scarborough, Ont., has managed in just seven months to sell 500,000 copies of their debut album. Band members Ed Robertson and Steven Page assert that, although Scarborough hasn't been upheld as a cultural milieu, creativity does exist in the suburbs.

In this CBC Television interview, the Ladies expose suburbanites for their reluctance: "People then move downtown and go, 'No, I'm not from the suburbs.'"

Art in the '905'

• In their song If I Had a Million Dollars, the Barenaked Ladies joked about upscale suburban purchases. This included buying a K-car for a girlfriend, and eating Kraft Dinner with expensive ketchup.

• If I Had a Million Dollars was featured on the band's debut album Gordon. The band composed initial songs for the album in their parents' Scarborough basements.

• Due to publicity about the band and their name, the Barenaked Ladies had their choice of signing deals for Gordon.

• The band signed a contract with an American company, Sire Records. The signing was a public event at Scarborough's city hall.

• The two initial members (Robertson and Page) formed the band's first incarnation in Scarborough in 1988. They started jamming together at a Scarborough summer music camp where they met.

• In the late 1950s, an American song about the suburbs called Little Boxes became popular in Canada.

• The song by Malvina Reynolds poked fun at suburban homes:

"There's a green one and a pink one/
And a blue one and a yellow one/
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky/
And they all look just the same."

(words and music by Malvina Reynolds)

• A Globe and Mail editorial entitled "Standardized – Like Anthills" exposed suburban conformity in 1946: "Endless dwellings of suburbia, each meticulously exact on its thirty-seven foot frontage, not an inch out of line."

• Other suburban critics spoke of "uniformity, conformity" (Humphrey Carver) and "identical houses on standard lots in featureless neighbourhoods" (Norman Pearson).

• In 1984, John Cougar Mellencamp's song Pink Houses also alluded to the simplicity of suburban living.

Art in the '905'

Medium: Television

Program: CBC Evening News

Broadcast Date: Feb. 16, 1993

Guest(s): Steven Page, Ed Robertson

Interviewer: Peter Grainger

Duration: 1:01

Last updated:
March 31, 2008