CMW Day 2: Oh, to be 16 again...

Day 2 went considerably better than Day 1.  Picked up the media pass at around 3pm (for the record, they did not use any computers.  All they did was pick up a pass out of a box, hand me a Canadian Music Week guide, and have me sign beside my name... and the pass doesn't even have my name on it - it just says Media.  Fail, CMW Staff.  FAIL.)

I still had to line up for an hour outside the Rivoli, but that was my own fault for not getting there earlier (got there at around 8:30 - first band went on at 8, and the "special guest" that everyone was pumped about was scheduled to go on at midnight)

Who was that special guest, you ask?  Well, it was the band that my life revolved around from the ages of 13 to probably around 19 or so: Our Lady Peace.

When I was a teenager, everything I did, lived, breathed, etc... it was all about OLP for me.  I was known to all my friends as "olpphreak" 

I fell out of the scene shortly after their Gravity album was released, and guitarist Mike Turner announced that he was leaving the band.  After he left, nothing felt right about OLP for me anymore, and I closed the door on that chapter of my life.

I bought their "Live" cd which was released a year or two later, but it just wasn't the same.

I saw them at Live 8... and I thought it was the most horrible thing I had ever seen in my life.  I vowed to never see them again, because it was just ruining my youth at that point.  

So, fast forward to a few days ago.  It was leaked on facebook (via Jeremy Taggart, OLP's drummer - who is on my friends list... who, for the record, I had 3 drum lessons with, back in the obsession days.  One of the coolest things I've ever done) that they would be playing a small club show.  I started to think about it.

I still had no concrete CMW plans for Thursday night.  I decided what I would do is go to the Rivoli (where OLP was playing), and if the lineup was crazy long, I'd just go down to the Horseshoe (about 50 feet away) to see the ChartAttack showcase.

I got to the venue at around 8:30, and the line was only about 6-7 people deep.  I asked if they were still letting media in, but alas, no, and he sent me to the back of the line.  They were at capacity for wristbands/passes, but were saving room for guestlist, and people who had actually bought tickets to the show.  The line got longer behind me.  A few people dropped out in front of me.  I texted some friends of mine (who I actually met through the Our Lady Peace message board - the Clumsy Congress - and we've been very good friends ever since then, for more than 10 years now) and they were already inside, so I figured I might as well wait in line a little longer, even if just to see them.

Finally at around 10 minutes to 9pm, I got in.  (Did I mention it was absolutely FREEZING in Toronto last night?)

Saw two bands before OLP went on: Cure Gravity (they were okay, kind of generic, nothing really memorable, but not bad either) and Hail The Villain (reminded me a lot of Billy Talent, but not quite as good yet... WAY too loud - I was standing right by the speaker to get good pics) - and one band afterward: Inward Eye (very good rock, from Winnipeg)

OLP took the stage at midnight.  My inner 16-year-old could barely breathe :)  I remember looking at the pictures that the photographers took at those small clubs, when I was too young to get in, and thinking "some day... that will be me."

That day was last night.

It wasn't nearly as magical as it would have been when I was 16.  But I was still in awe of myself at that moment.  

They played one or two new songs.  A few songs that were on their last albums that I didn't recognize, and then some older songs like Innocent, Clumsy and Superman's Dead (can't help but think of Mike Turner, every time I hear the "ooo ooo ... ooo weee ooo" line in the background at the end of the song.  They closed with Starseed, a perennial favourite.

It was good.  

After the show, Jeremy remembered me... I met the new guitarist, Steve (who complimented my shirt)... and my heart did not skip a beat, as it would have if I were that 16-year-old, meeting her favourite band.

I'm over my hatred of them.

I just don't think I'll ever love them the same way again.

I leave you with a picture :)  (I took close to a million, it seems LOL... It'll take a while to actually get a photo set web-ready... but here's one I snapped of OLP with my wide angle lens)

Sound Angel

Good thing NaBloPoMo ended on Sunday, because I totally did not have a second to blog yesterday ;)


Brainsgiving was a huge hit! Everything went off without a hitch (or, without any major hitches) ... I missed one audio cue (forgot to turn on the keyboard for a sound effect during the first sketch, dammit!), but other than that, it went rather well. Everyone told me what a great job I did at the end of the show... and I was credited as the "Sound Angel" which is totally cute. I could get used to that.





I'd forgotten how much I love doing sound. When I was in school, it's the only thing I wanted to do. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was going to be an audio engineer. It was what I knew. It was what I loved. In school, I engineered albums, I did on-site audio, I wrote & recorded songs. Then, after I graduated, I interned at a recording studio. And I saw what the audio world was like, OUTSIDE of school. And, though I absolutely LOVED my time at the studio, and I learned a whole lot, one of the things that I learned as a by-product of my time there was that I was probably not cut out for the audio world. I realized that while I completely loved (and was rather good at) the creative aspect of sound... I am really not good at the technical. I'm never quite sure what plugs into where, which frequencies need to be cancelled in order to stop feedback... but I am good at hearing what needs to be raised, lowered, eq'ed, etc, in order to get the right balance of sound.

Last night was good for that, because the two "regular" Gladstone sound people were there, and they mostly set up all the mics and tecchie stuff... and then I got to go in and play at the soundboard during the show! I definitely got the sweet end of that deal. It was also a good break from the everyday, too.

I took a tonne of photos last night, but I haven't gotten around to uploading them yet - it was pretty late when I got home. Look for them on Flickr later tonight at some point :)