02.20.04 - 3:05 p.m.

A long time ago (well, 1996), I took my friend Max and my darling Bassett to their first Ben Folds Five concert at the Metropol in Pittsburgh. Standing by the front of the stage before the show, Max looked across the sea of cardigans and corduroys and exclaimed, "These are the most sensitive fans I've ever seen." Ah, those pre-emo days. In that vein, after last night's show, I can safely say that Barenaked Ladies fans are the most vanilla.

As Dan and I killed time in front of the Carvel stand before the TWO opening acts, I occupied myself with my favorite sport of people-watching. From what I saw, BNL fans are the blandiest of the bland. No absolute knockouts, a few fugly ones, but mostly white suburban normalcy as far as the eye could see. (Insert stereotypical Canadian joke here.) I guess what this means is that it makes me one of them -- not that I ever consider myself one of the true members of the hipoisie by any stretch of the imagination -- but it's scary just the same.

And I overheard this phone conversation about Gavin DeGraw, spoken by a short, denim-clad, overexcited teenager: "I was all [mumble] about Matchbox 20 being here, but then I found out it's GAVIN!" She trotted away from us and then returned, still yapping to her friend. "He's AWESOME! You know the show One Tree Hill? He sings the theme song...." Oh, America. Why do you taunt me? Why couldn't you have bumped up Howie's tour dates and brought him to me instead?

Gavin was awful. He and his band looked like a bunch of Eddie Cahill clones dressed in Abercrombie and Fitch sample sale rejects. We joked that the only way they could tell each other apart was through the different colors of knit caps they wore. (like the Power Rangers!) The dads sitting next to me passed a flask back and forth throughout the set, until Dad on the Right couldn't take it anymore and went into the hallway. "I wasn't coming back in until THAT was over," he remarked as he returned to his seat during the break.

Barenaked Ladies, on the other hand, were efficiently awesome as usual. They threw out a few older standards ("Brian Wilson") and gems ("The Wrong Man Was Convicted"), danced a Busby Berkeley-style routine during "Shopping," joked about turning the Garden State into the Gordon State and even managed to forget the words to "$1,000,000." The llama/emu line was accidentally repeated in lieu of Picasso/Garfunkel, if you must know. How do you do that when you sing it every night? I have no idea, but I found it refreshing.