Author: Steven Garrity

our lady peace: the age of spiritual rock stars

by Steven Garrity

My opinions on Our Lady Peace vary wildly. On one hand, songs like Julia and Naveed from their first album, Naveed are truly great songs. They have impressed me in concert when I expected to be bored on several occasions: Letting six thousand people sing 4AM from start to finish; Hearing them cover the late Jeff Buckley’s song Eternal Life at dusk under a full moon; Playing a piano version of Julia they heard from a fan (this one is on schmaptser if you are a thief). These are good concert moments. The last time I saw them, I felt like I was an oldie-olson, since everyone else in the arena was a big-pants 14 year old (most of them passing around one communal joint). As we waited for the concert to start, I was seriously regretting attending, but once they took the stage, they impressed me once again.

On the other hand, I find Raine Maida (OLP’s singer) to be a pompous Bono / Thom Yorke wannabe. He is quite good at handling a stadium (a noteworthy skill for a rock star). However, he sometimes goes a little too far. At one concert, he had the audience in the palm of his hands until he went on an aside about how “it’s all about the music”. Dude, look in the mirror and repeat three times: “I am not Bono”.

I can assure you that my opinions are not at all swayed by the time Raine closed an elevator door in Matt’s face (ask him about it, he’ll be glad to tell you).

The Age of Spiritual MachinesAnyway, Now that you have my personal history of Our Lady Peace, I am going somewhere with this. Their new album, Spiritual Machines, is based on the book The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil. This guy has an impressive resume:

  • invented the first text-to-speech machine in 1976
  • invented the CCD (flat-bed scanner) in 1975
  • invented the first font-indepented optical character recognition (OCR) in 1976
  • invented the first useful musical synthesizer in 1984

Kurzweil has also written on the subject of artificial intelligence. While I haven’t read Spiritual Machines yet, it’s in the mail. The flash animation currently on the front page of ourladypeace.com elegantly illustrates the transition point at which the resolution of a digital medium exceeds our ability to perceive. View the animation »

Our Lady Peace has also made a Napter-savvy marketing move. They have seeded Napster with full copies of the new album, only with a few voice-overs (from Ray Kurzweil himself, actually) identifying the album in each song. It’s not so much that you can’t enjoy the song, but enough that if you wanted to keep it, you’d still have to buy the real thing.

My point, if I have one, is that Our Lady Peace have done something somewhat interesting in their interpretation of Kurzweil’s book in a pop album.

I should also thank Our Lady Peace for bringing me the unlikely opportunity to see the worlds greatest and most underrated band, Catherine Wheel, at Summersault in Halifax last year.

 

FutureShop: the straw that broke the camels back

by Steven Garrity

I was silly enough to go to the FutureShop today and I got a creepy feeling as though I was in Rome at the peak of Roman excess and gluttony. I was overcome by 5 foot tall TVs (the picture quality of a TV signal will only stretch so far) and stereos that look like totally x-treme moon landers. Egypt, Rome, Maya, and now America. I smell a civilization ripe for collapse!

This got me to thinking about a critical failing of capitalism (NOTE: this not constructive criticism, it’s just plain criticism). Companies exist to make a profit. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with this but it does have dangerous side effects. One of these side effects is that products are designed to make the sale in the showroom rather than actually perform well in day-to-day use. For example the automatic seatbelt in old Saturn cars. It was so cool on the lot, but two days later once you had bought the car it was like fingernails on a chalkboard. I should note that Saturn is the only car company I know of with a 30 money-back guarantee (GM deserves a nobel prize for mass consumer manipulation for the Saturn project).

The FutureShop salesman (or “associates” as they call themselves) may as well have ‘I get paid commission’ written on their foreheads. The company has overlooked the fact that generating more sales in the short-term is less profitable then creating long-term relationships with customers by being helpful rather than pushy. The sad truth is that I may be wrong about this.

 

merry christmas, charlie brown.

by Steven Garrity

Right now, Matt is sitting in the architecturally bewildering Queen Elizabeth Hospital, sans-appendix. With 2/3 of the aov geniuses now in the hospital (don’t panic, everyone is ok), I fell like there is some kind of karmic crosshair on my forehead. Perhaps, due to our cunning wit, God sees us as formidable adversaries and is playfully striking us down. Play fair dude.

Now, a few who do not deserve your pity: one of my co-workers is basking in the glow of the southern-hemisphere summer in New Zealand and two other co-workers are basking in the glow of communism in Cuba (check out the CBC’s interview with Castro) for the holidays.

I’m going to Sherwood for Christmas.

I should clarify. I don’t mind going to Sherwood for Christmas. That’s where Christmas has been for the last 22 years. Actually, that’s kind of what Christmas is as far as I’m concerned.

I hope you appreciate these seasonal dwellings. While they may seem stark and joyless, they are really quite admirably jolly, considering I generally find Christmas to be little more than a promotional gimmick for the wrapping paper industry (I’d make a Grinch reference, but he has been co-opted – God rest your soul, Ted Geisel).

To everyone, Merry Christmas (in the ‘talk to your family for once’ way, not the ‘buy things for people you don’t really like’ way) and to my fellow aov geniuses, get well soon, the world needs you and I need someone to play Tony Hawk Pro Skateboarded 2 with.

 

sixpence none the richer is good. no seriously, hear me out.

by Steven Garrity

Ok, so you’re pretty cool, you like Kid A, and you don’t like VH1 or top 40 radio.

Chances are, if you are reading this site, you fit this profile, at least roughly. And, if you fit this profile, chances are you hate the song Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer. That’s fair, I respect that (I know matt hates this song).

sixpence none the richer

You shouldn’t write Sixpence off for this song (or their follow-up radio friendly cover). Hear me out. Sixpence None the Richer is a great band. No irony intended. Let me explain:

The band didn’t even plan to include the song Kiss Me on the album. It was a throwaway bubble gum song. The record company thought it would be gold. It was. Can you blame them for that? I can just hear matt saying “Damn right you can blame them!”. Calm down imaginary matt voice. There’s more.

At it’s foundation, Sixpence is Matt Slocum. He is a gifted guitar player, songwriter, and arranger. Their non-single tracks show a smart and interesting U2 influence. About the Kiss Me fiasco, Matt has said: ␄…somedays I feel as if we’ve been pushed to a precipice overhanging the sea of one-hit wonders, and until this next album comes out, who’s to say we won’t all fall in?”.

Matt also “…composed [and recorded] a piece for chamber orchestra two years ago based on C.S. Lewis’ novel The Great Divorce”. How cool is that!?

Want proof that they are worth a listen? It you are not Lars from Metallica, and then search for “This Beautiful Mess” on Schmapster. But first, take 1 minute and 10 seconds of your precious top 40 hating time and watch this video of Leigh Nash (lead singer) and Matt Slocum performing an abbreviated version of The Lines of My Earth.

The Lines of My Earth (performed live by Leigh Nash and Matt Slocum) – Windows Media Player:

 

IDEO: people who get paid to play

by Steven Garrity

IDEO Corporate ID
IDEO is the über-cool corporation, complete with corporate identity hand made by the logo master Paul Rand (you might know some of his logos: IBM, ABC, Westinghouse), that designed such ass-kicking consumer electronic as the Palm V and the Handspring Visor.

They have a bunch of smart asses working around the clock coming up with cool stuff (just what we need more of, don’t you think).

I particularly recommend checking out the Identity Card Project (see link on the front page) and the space vacuum.