Our Lady Peace
I'm Thinking why is superman dead is it in my head. If you have not guessed my project is
on Our Lady Peace. In this essay I will be telling you about the band, it's history and I will
also tell you some frequently asked questions about them. Enjoy.
To start of let me tell you about the band. You might be asking yourself who is Our Lady
Peace. First of all Our Lady Peace consists of four members. They are Raine Madia, Duncan
Coutts, Jeremy Taggart and Mike Turner.
Raine Maida is the lead vocalist, the rhythm guitarist and the lyricist. He was born on
February 18th in Toronto, Canada. Raine was originally christened as "Michael Raine
Maida" but now goes his stage name Raine to avoid confusion and media mix ups with
fellow band member Mike Turner. Raine is considered on of the founding members of
Our Lady Peace. Raines unique childhood has given way to many songs that have been taken straight out of his life and our now on the album "Clumsy" which is there second CD release.
Raine says that this CD is more personal than their first CD release "Neveed". Some song titles on "Clumsy" that describes parts of his life are " Big Dumb Rocket" which talks about him almost killing his friend and then there is one of O.L.P's most famous songs entitled 4AM
which is dedicated to his father. This song talks about his relationship with his father. To
people just coming into the business he tells them that " You enter as a musician and if your not
careful, you wind up as an entertainer."
Now I will be telling you a bit about the lead guitarist Mike Turner. Mike Turner was born on June 5th in Bradford, England. He says that is heavily influenced by such bands as the "Sex
Pistols" and " The Jam." He spent a lot of time playing punk music on his guitar but in
1992 when Our Lady Peace began to take shape he decided to start taking formal lessons. Mike
happens to be the web-geek and the prankster of the band. He is also the oldest member while he is in his 30's, the rest of the band members are in there late 20's.
Next I will be talking to you about Duncan Coutts. Duncan is the bassist and often plays the keyboard to add more sound to the music. Duncan was born on February 4th in Toronto, Canada.
Duncan is the newest member of the band. After joining O.L.P in 1995 he had the uneasy task of replacing there departing and original bassist Chris Eacrett. Although Duncan is the newest member of the band he wasn't a total rookie when he joined. Before joining he had been playing with an, other band called " Blue Heavies."
The last and final member of the band that I will be talking to you about is Jeremy Taggart. Jeremy is the bands drummer. He was born on April 7th in Toronto, Canada. He is the force behind the staggering beats on O.L.P's three CD's. At auditions for O.L.P.'s drummer Jeremy was picked as the best one out of 100 people and had now replaced O.L.P's first drummer Jim Newell. At the age of 25 he has won two drummer of the week awards from DRUMMER magazine. Some of Jeremy's influences are Miles Davis and John Coltrane.
Now that you know about the band members let's talk about there history. You might be wondering why did these four guys pick Our Lady Peace to be their name. Well they got it from
a poem entitled Our Lady Peace. Mark Van Doren wrote this poem in 1946.
Our Lady Peace was formed in Toronto, in 1992 by Mike Turner and Raine Maida. When there original group refused to get serious Mike and Raine decided to audition more committed band members. This is were they found Jeremy and there original bassist Chris Eacrett. This was just the beginning of Our Lady Peace. Now that there was a band the only thing to do was to get signed by a record company. This happened in 1993. With limited finances the band went to Arnyard Studios and recorded a demo tape which consisted of three songs. Raine and one of his friends brought the tape to many different record companies at the New York CMJ music conference. Geffen and Interscope showed interest in the band. This then attracted Sony Music Canada. Once all was said and done Our Lady Peace decided to sign with Sony in Canada and Relatively Records in the United States. About a year after on February 28th, 1994 Our Lady Peace released the single Birdman. About a month later the band released there first album entitled Naveed. Naveed in plain English means bearer of good news. With the release of
this album also came many hits such as Starseed and Naveed. This is the album that made Our Lady Peace what it is today. Just three years later on January 23, 1997 Our Lady Peace released their second album entitled Clumsy. Some of the hit songs from this album were Clumsy, Superman's Dead, Automatic Flowers and Carnival. In Raine's opinion this album is more personal than Naveed. Finally, on September 21st 1999 came their latest album entitled Happiness…. Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch? After being out for only a couple months this
CD has already had two hits, which include One Man Army, and Is Anybody Home.
Our Lady Peace has made many videos to go with the music. Naveed, Starseed, Clumsy, Superman's Dead, and Is Anybody Home are just some of the music videos that they have created.
Our Lady Peace has won many awards. They won three awards at the CASBY awards.
At this award ceremony they won awards for favorite new artist, favorite new release for Naveed, and new favorite song Naveed. They've also have won two Muchmusic in 1997 for favorite group and favorite video for Superman's Dead. Also they have won two Junos in 1998.
They also picked up the blockbuster rock album of the year for clumsy and the best group award.
Some shows that Our Lady Peace has performed on are The Jon Stewart Show, The Conan
O' Brien Show, MTV and they also played at the Junos.
OLP has performed with many bands such as 54-40, I Mother Earth, Bush, Elastica, Cake
…. the list goes on and on. They have also opened for Page & Planet and Van Halen.
Finally, I will tell you some frequently asked questions about them. One frequently asked question is why original bassist Chris Eacrett leave the band? The answer is that the band and Chris felt that they were going in separate directions, both musically and personally and they both decided that it would be best if they went their separate ways. Another frequently asked question is what does the writing on Raine's guitar in Naveed say? The answer is Persain for Naveed.
I hope you have learned a little more about Canada's favorite band and I hope you enjoyed my project.
Bio written by: anon |
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