54-40 is such a great band - now if only fans could appreciate it.
They make consistently solid albums, deliver excellent live shows and, to come right down to it, are just a bunch of nice guys - true blue Canadians.
You have to sympathize with the quandary the band faces with every Canadian tour - to come up with something other than, "oh, here we are again."
Yes, the band's been here more times than October snowstorms. In this case, familiarity breeds not contempt, but apathy. It hit home while I was listening to the radio a couple of weeks ago. The DJ had a caller on the air and they were talking about the 54-40 concert at the Myer Horowitz Theatre this Thursday.
"Oh, they're playing in town?" said the caller, who was obviously a fan.
"Are you going?" the DJ asked.
"Nah, they'll be back again."
Singer Neil Osborne is hip to this situation, of course, so he recently did something he figures no one in the world has ever done. Brace yourself - it's amazing: "I sat down and listened to every record we did in one sitting."
Don't try this at home. Since he and guitarist Brad Merritt met in high school and decided to form a band in 1978, 54-40 has recorded Selection (1982), Set the Fire (1983), 54-40 (1986), Show Me (1987), Fight For Love (1989), Sweeter Things (1991), Dear Dear (1992), Smilin' Buddha Cabaret (1994), Trusted By Millions (1996) and the latest, Since When. Osborne may have even spun 1997's Sound of Truth, the first two 54-40 records remastered.
The listening session took about eight hours, he says, leaving the 38-year-old singer "exhausted," but with a refreshed insight into just how long he's been in the rock 'n' roll game. With each era of the band committed to CD (and vinyl - this band was making music before CDs came along), the memories had jelled with them.
"All those experiences and memories came flooding back," he says. "Usually you just sort of remember a couple highlights in the last couple of weeks and that's about it. It was kind of neat."
Osborne says he did it to figure out how to put a show together that both featured the new album and tied the whole history of the band together. What he came up with is a whole bag of tricks.
An unusual move for a punk-style band used to bars, this tour is billed as an "Evening With 54-40" and played in soft-seated theatres across Canada.
There's a new feature Osborne calls "54-40oke," where a lucky fan will get a chance to sing a song with the band (it has to be a 54-40 tune). And to top it off, the band will let fans write the set list. You can vote for your favourite songs via the Internet, at www.54-40.com (one of the best band Web sites out there, by the way).
The all time winner is I Go Blind, which a "significant" number of people think is a Hootie and the Blowfish tune. 54-40 doesn't mind too much. They were able to build a studio in Vancouver with royalties earned when Hootie covered the song on its massive selling debut album. The two bands remain friends and occasional golfing buddies.
Although 54-40 is a couple years shy of celebrating its official 20th anniversary - 2001: A Band Odyssey - they're pulling out all the stops in an effort to keep things fresh for the fans. Most important is to make sure the band members themselves are still challenged.
"That's the thing," Osborne says. "We've got to keep doing different things just to keep it interesting for us and the people who come to see us.
"For Brad and I, it's always been our first rule or manifesto that we have to do what it takes to survive. And that's rooted in creativity, and that's rooted in keeping our interest up. When you see a band up there and they're playing the same show they played five years in a row and they don't look like they're into it, the fans pick up on that."
There are still tickets available for the concert, which has no opening act and starts promptly at 8 p.m. Call Ticketmaster at 451-8000.
