Barenaked Ladies "If I Had $1,000,000" (from "Rock Spectacle")

One of the benefits of living near a large college campus (Michigan State University) is getting to listen to actual college radio (Impact 89 FM).

When I was in high school, one of the morning DJs would play this song, and I fell in love with it enough to buy the album it first appeared on, Gordon.

During my freshman year of college (Grand Valley State University), I interned at an alternative radio station (WGRD) just as Barenaked Ladies broke big in the US with "The Old Apartment."

At the same time, The Real World, an MTV show featuring a dozen (or so) strangers who lived in a single apartment, was one of the biggest pop-culture phenomena of its time. Thus, when I interned at WGRD, the station had just started "The Real World Grand Rapids," a segment with actual locals put up in an apartment near the station. Participants were contractually obligated to make occasional appearances on the radio, which was met with varying degrees of success.

Also at the same time, Barenaked Ladies was on tour in support of the album that contains "The Old Apartment," Born on a Pirate Ship, and played at The Orbit Room in Grand Rapids.

To promote the show, WGRD teamed up with a furniture store to give away a living room's worth of furniture and fixtures, which were on display inside a box truck outside The Orbit Room the day of the show. My job was to keep an eye on the truck and furniture from mid-afternoon until showtime as well as get people who perused the goods to sign up for a drawing to win the contents.

A few hours before the show, a group of guys wandered into the truck, and before long, someone who just came from the box office recognized it was the band. There were only a handful of people present, so the band signed autographs and shook hands for a few minutes before a handler pulled it into the venue to get ready for the show.

That night, my boss, who typically introduced bands onto the stage, had laryngitis and, knowing I really liked Barenaked Ladies, asked me to introduce the band onto the stage. I was supposed to thank a bunch of people and sponsors of the show before the introduction, but when the spotlight hit me, I got nervous out, yelled my name into the microphone, said a couple things that probably came out as a non sequitur, and finally shouted, "Please welcome Barenaked Ladies!"

I had an 8 a.m. class the next day and lived 30 minutes from the venue but stayed until the bitter end to hear this song.

Also, I met many, many bands when I interned at the station as well as my career as a journalist, and Barenaked Ladies was easily one of the coolest, most easy-going groups I came across.