Good Morning America's Going Naked

By JANE STEVENSON, Toronto Sun, July 4th, 1998.

Barenaked Ladies will perform on Good Morning America on Monday, a day before the release of their new album, Stunt.

"It's kind of just another TV show, but I know that it's a huge deal," Barenaked Ladies frontman Steven Page says.

"From the perspective of the big shows, I guess that is one of them, that's just one I don't watch, but I know tons of people do."

In fact, the GMA appearance is just the latest in a series of U.S. breakthroughs for the Barenaked Ladies, who are currently riding high on the success of their 1997 live album, Rock Spectacle. The live collection has sold 775,000 copies in the U.S. — compared to 80,000 in Canada — largely thanks to the eight-year-old song Brian Wilson.

Over the last two years, the Barenaked Ladies have appeared on Beverly Hills 90210 (star Jason Priestley directed the video for The Old Apartment from 1996's Born On A Pirate Ship), Conan O' Brien, and David Letterman.

Meanwhile, One Week, the first single from Stunt, was the song most added to modern rock radio playlists in the U.S. upon its release a month ago. It now sits at No. 9 on Billboard's Modern Rock chart.

In addition to the GMA performance, Barenaked Ladies will also be in Boston Monday night to release Stunt.

"We're releasing the album 12 hours earlier or whatever," Page says, "doing an appearance at city hall and autograph signing."

"Boston's our biggest area right now," adds Barenaked Ladies' other frontman, Ed Robertson. "Detroit was, but now we've sold as many copies of Rock Spectacle in Boston as we did in Canada."

Any theories?

"It has something to do with the tea, I think," Robertson jokes.

The Barenaked Ladies are also co-headlining the H.O.R.D.E. tour with Blues Traveler this year, although the first show, skedded for next Thursday, was shelved due to poor sales. H.O.R.D.E. pulls into Molson Amphitheatre on July 28.

"They originally put it in a town outside of Minneapolis... and then they moved it, before it went on sale, to St. Paul," Page says of the cancelled show.

"The official line, I think, from H.O.R.D.E. was that because of the tornadoes that had happened, no one had the money to buy tickets.

"I think what it actually is just that they put it on sale really late, no one really knew about it, they sold like 1,000 tickets or something and it was cancelled."