Now they’ll remind us

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/09/2017 (2409 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Remember when Nickelback wasn’t the band so many people loved to hate?

You might have to go back to 2001, when the single How You Remind Me launched the Hanna, Alta., group to the top of the rock charts and to arena-rock superstardom. The group, which plays Bell MTS Place Thursday, Sept. 21, became a Canadian rock success story.

Despite selling more than 50 million albums worldwide and becoming a rock-radio staple with a string of hit singles, the name “Nickelback” was frequently accompanied by sneers and eyerolls from critics and rock fans alike.

In 2011, Detroit Lions football fans signed an online petition aimed at booting the band off a nationally televised halftime gig on U.S. Thanksgiving Day. The petition failed and Nickelback performed — to a lusty chorus of boos from many in the seats at Ford Field.

Three years later, a crowdfunding campaign — dontletnickelback — launched a multi-pronged effort in an attempt to keep the far-from-hurtin’ Albertans from ever again darkening Her Majesty’s doorstep.

Donations of $1 — it wasn’t clear whether they were asking for Canadian or American funds — would buy an email written on the donor’s behalf to Nickelback’s management, urging them never to play another concert in the U.K. People willing to part with $10 would have their names attached to emails “full of explicit phrases and lots of capital letters and maybe even a rude emoticon or two.”

And for the real haters across the pond, a $50 pledge secured a promise the organizers would send some of Nickelback’s music to the members of Nickelback, so “that Nickelback can listen to themselves, realize how inept they are and immediately retire.”

Another failure. But point taken.

Frontman Chad Kroeger welcomes all the anger, saying the critics’ crusade against the group is helping maintain Nickelback’s popularity.

“I love it,” he said in an interview on Pulse of Radio in the U.K. “I think it’s hilarious. All these critics, they’re just tireless…. They don’t know that they’re still responsible for us being around today.”

He said the loathing has kept Nickelback going; the band released its ninth record, Feed the Machine, in June.

Tickets for the Winnipeg show, which includes rock stalwarts Cheap Trick and Missouri’s Shaman’s Harvest on the bill, are still available at Ticketmaster, and range in price from $25 to $125 plus fees.

alan.small@freepress.mb.ca