Extreme with Raine Maida
Our Lady Peace is one exception ,1998 was definitely the year for Our Lady Peace. Sale for the Clumsy, surpassed the nine time times platinum mark in Canada (they now have di satus and are appproaching the platinum sales in U.S.A. they made a made a mark in france, germany and australia as well. the band went on to dominate the Much Music Awards(like MTV awards)and appear at the Juno Awards(Canada version of music awards ) and on american TV, inaugurate their own summer festival tour titled summersault and play Toronto's lengendary Maple Leaf Gardens and woodstock 99'. Vocalist Raine Maida admits that countinouos touring with popular bands in the was the key to success in the states. "we'd been on the road for three years before we got back into the studio, that's a long time, but I think that's the way your going to build your fan base. You can sell records without touring, sometimes with MTV and radio play, but if you wanna be a real band, you have to be able to play live and if want to have a career in music you have to prove that you're real."
The band begen work on their new album "Happiness Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch" as soon as they finish touring in September 1998. The resulting 11 track disc showcases more polished, yet more spontaneous sounding band. But aside from the thought provoking lyrics and Raine's singature vocals lines, a reoccurring theme of mortality and a search for answers winds itself thoughout the disc."We talked about religion abit an it turn into an obsession with death. We tried to dissect and it just of came full circle with the talk about where the world is right now, with the internet, and how high tech everything is, and how extreme peoples veiws are. I rememberThe Faces Of Death video when i was back in highschool. You hide it and when your parents are't home you invite friends over and watch it. Now there's Real TV, it's real life! Lots of people die on TV now, so once people get bored ot if it, then we're pretty well desensitized to it. I can't even tell you what the last school shoting was in america because there's been so many that it does noting more anymore. If someone was dying in front of you doesn't have impact or shock you, what else is gonna do it?. There's noting else after that".
Oddly enough, while Maida abmits to liking a lot of heavy music, singling acts like Deftones, Quicksand, Rage Against The Machine, the band has musically steered clear of the rock/rap game.
"Obviously we've been influenced by music but when we record we stick to what we do. on this disc we insulated ourselves to the point of not having contact with anybody while in the studio. I find that much of modern rock is very dull and boring" As far as incroping rap? "It's not us" explans Maida. "we probably could gotten away with it but is not honest, so i'm not gonna start writing songs songs that have little raps in them, just beacause that stuff is cool right now. That's bullshit when band do that, your just following. A good song is a good song. If you don't have good melody, agood chours, a good guitar lick, it doesn't matter, your not going to save a song with technology and you're not going be successful unless you write music that you believe in fully."
The band recorded Happiness...with longtime producer Arnold Lanni again at the helm, but this time round, they also had help from some guess musicians. Most notably, 73 year lendary jazz drummer Elvin Jones, a personal hero of OLP Drummer Jeremy Taggart, who appears on the track "Stealing Babies". "Jeremy met him about two years ago and decided to called him up and he said he'd loved to come up and play on a song. It was sort of awkward as he'd never played on a rock song before, but he got the vibe and did it and one take. Recording is always a shot in the dark and this guy is one of the best drummers ever. We really got lucky to have in the studio for a day and hear all the stories about John Coltrane and Miles Davis cause there not to many people of those left, he's a living lengend and it's hard to describe how inspiring it was."
And then there's Jamie Edwards, an accomplished multi-instrumentalist that plays the guitar the chapman stick, zither, and is a whiz the keyboard." Basically, what happened was when we were writing these songs arrangements in the studio. I was sitting there with this sampler, a guitar and keyboard, Duncan was in the corner playing his bass with a piano, Jeremy had his
sampler and his drums, Mike had like 10,000 pedals...and we all said it sounds good right but we but live we can't do this, it's not going to be fun, we're gonna need another musician to help out. we didn't want it to feel like we just playing some guy to play the stuff so we brought Jamie in more towards the end just to really do a few little guitar things, little keyboard sections and stuff, we needed to make him feel part of it and he add definitely added some different sections which we knew we wanted. the way he gets around on the keyboard and some of his little guitar nuances it's we could of done it , but it saved us hours in the studio. The guy is playing the keyboard and he's programming while he playing it's unbevlievable to watch!"
Our Lady Peace just returned touring with British mega band "we didn't do to well in the UK on the last album and that's why we when out to do a tour in UK , where we got to play huge show in front of about 50,000 People." OLP is now ready to bring the new songs and a headline show to canadian audiences."we didn't want to headline when we got off the tour with creed tour last year as we weren't ready to tour on own.
We have a bunch of litte films that we're directing and they weren't done and that stuff will be pretty prominent and it's something special" But before the canadian tour, the band played series of intimate small venue gigs that incorporated acoustic arrangements of the band's catlog. set lists were selected by fans via www.ourladypeace.com and each member created a short film that run during the performces. OLP also took questions from the audience. "we wanted to interact with our real fans and allow them to see us in a new light says Madia"at the same time theres gave us the opportunity to be more upclose, intimate and personal. "we wanted to make sure that the real big tour was in Canada"
Interveiw By Greg Campbell. from Extreme magzine
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