ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT, SEPT. 30, 2004
By Steve Newton
Dear Bryan: I just finished listening to your brand new CD, and, well…I know you’re from North Van and everything, but listen, dude, it’s time to quit writin’ all those songs about girls. I hate to break it to you, but girls don’t care about you anymore.
Sure, you can include a photo in the Room Service booklet, taken by yourself, of a gaggle of youthful brunettes scrapping over your white Strat, but we all know that the teenyboppers of today are all into that hippity-hop music. They don’t want some guy in his late 40s wearing a white T-shirt and singing “She left her shoes out on the beach/She left my dreams just out of reach”. To them that’s just icky.
After the initial run-through of Room Service, I didn’t hear one track that was in the same league as your girl-oriented golden oldies like “Run to You” and “Summer of ’69”. Sure, there’s some sharp guitar work by local stalwart Keith Scott, but girls don’t care much about that, either.
And what’s this about you recording the vocals at fancy European hotels like the Ritz in Paris, France, and the Hyatt Regency in Cologne, Germany? That’s a bit rude, don’t you think? I mean, if I was trying to enjoy my $30 continental breakfast, the last thing I’d want to hear is some raspy-voiced guy in the next room hollering: “She got the brains, she got the looks/She knows all the right people, reads all the right books”.
What does “Hey, shut the fuck up in there!” sound like in German, anyway?