Our Lady Peace has abruptly, spectacularly become Canada's biggest band.

Like the exponents most of the band's fans study in high school calculus, Our Lady Peace's rise to fame in Canada has been a mathematical progression. Look at their recent track record in Edmonton for proof.
Three years ago, the Toronto-based four-piece played for a couple of hundred die-hard supporters at The Rev.
Just 11 months ago, they played to a packed house of 600-plus at the University of Alberta's Dinwoodie Lounge.
In August, they headlined Edgefest at Commonwealth Stadium. About 30,000 fans, already pummelled by nine hours of shimmering sun and deafening music, erupted with their loudest cheers when Our Lady Peace finally took the stage. And on Friday night, they'll put on the first big rock show of 1998, at the Edmonton Coliseum.
With apologies to The Tragically Hip, Our Lady Peace has abruptly, spectacularly, become Canada's biggest band.
"Man, can you believe it? It's unreal to think we're playing arenas," lead singer Raine Maida said recently from the road, a day before kicking off the band's 25-date cross-country tour in Saint John, NB. "You can't predict that stuff or even hope for it. We've just tried to take it one step at a time, and tried to make each step more important."
Maida sees Our Lady Peace's homegrown success-their records Naveed and Clumsy have sold nearly 1.5 million copies combined-as a part of a Canadian rock renaissance. he said as much during Edgefest, a 12-band bill dominated by domestic acts such as I Mother Earth,The Tea Party and up-and-comers Age of Electric and Econoline Crush.
Midway through Our Lady Peace's set, as the moshers up front settled down, Maida paused and intoned "I think what we're doing on this tour is making Canadian musical history."
He still feels that way.
"I can't remember a time growing up when there were that many good Canadian bands that could play together," said Maida, who's in his mid-20's.
"And there are a ton of other bands that could have easily been on that bill, bands with huge sales and audiences, like Moist or whoever. That's a testament to how far the Canadian music scene has come in the past five years."
Maida said he thinks the turning point was 1993, the year Our Lady Peace released Naveed alongside notable debuts from like-minded modern rockers such as I Mother Earth (who put out Dig), Moist (silver), Tea Party (Splendor Solis) and Sloan (Smeared). "For whatever reason, that was the year everything popped up. I guess the scene before that was dry enough that it created bands that were trying to do something different, something other than what the Canadian stigma of music was," he said.
Maida said he still saw evidence of that "stigma" during Our Lady Peace's lengthy tours of the U.S., where the band is slowly but surely breaking through. (At last count, OLP's sophomore release Clumsy had sold 230,000 copies south of the border, about halfway to gold.) "The perceptionof Canadian music outside of Canada is still pretty horrendous," said Maida, whose most recent American tourmates, Portland's Everclear, will open Friday night's Coliseum show.
"Alanis (Morissette) kind of bypassed that stuff for whatever reason. People don't really view her as Canadian, somehow. But it's still, you know, Celine Dion, Bryan Adams and that's about it." "And Loverboy. Loverboy hurt us a lot. They all thought we were going to wear those headbands down there."
Maida hopes Our Lady Peace's success in America will open the ears of radio and video programmers to more Canuck acts like The Hip, whose well-documented failure to break through in the U.S. he calls "a real shame." "It's nice to see that our music is crossing the boundaries or borders that seem to make it difficult for way too many bands in this country," he said.
"We hope to carry a torch for Canada down there."
Maida In Canada
Some other thoughts from Our Lady Peace super-patriot Raine Maida:
On one of the surprises fans can expect at friday night's show-"We've got a screen that'll show some of the characters that are important to the band. Everyone's always asking us about the guy on our album covers (75-year-old Saul Fox), so we've shot a few vignettes of him to show what he means to us."
On Maida's intense on-stage perona- "It's tough to be on level 10 every night. But for the most part, I take good care of trying to put myself in the right frame of mind half an hour before each show. I meditate to try to put myself in that space. If you go on stage with a million buisness things going through your mind, it's impossible."
On the release of OLP's next album-"We're looking at 1999. That's the most realistic time."


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