A couple weeks ago I made a Jane's Addiction playlist, inspired by their current tour with Smashing Pumpkins. Then the news broke that Jane's Addiciton would miss a few dates of the tour mostly in Canada, due to a health issue, and that Canada's own Our Lady Peace would be filling in at those concerts. This is notable partly because Billy Corgan made some typically obnoxious comments about the band in 1998 ("Our Lady Peace sounds an awful lot like the Pumpkins to me...More power to them. They're imitating us third generation. Even better."). But it seems like the shows went well. And I was reminded that I've been wanting to make an Our Lady Peace playlist for ages. 

1. Julia

2. Denied

3. Is It Safe

4. Car Crash

5. Big Dumb Rocket

6. Hello Oskar

7. Stealing Babies

8. Potato Girl

9. R.K. 2029

10. Made To Heal

11. R.K. 2029 (Part 2)

12. Are You Sad

13. R.K. On Death

14. Not Enough

15. Sorry

16. All For You

17. Picture

18. Love And Trust

19. White Flags

20. Fire In The Henhouse

21. Head Down

22. RK3.UBI

23. Wish You Well

Tracks 1, 2 and 3 from Naveed (1994)

Tracks 4, 5 and 6 from Clumsy (1997)

Tracks 7 and 8 from Happiness... Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch (1999)

Tracks 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 from Spiritual Machines (2000)

Tracks 14, 15 and 16 from Gravity (2002)

Tracks 17 and 18 from Healthy In Paranoid Times (2006)

Track 19 from Burn Burn (2009)

Track 20 from Curve (2012)

Track 21 from Somethingness (2018)

I really loved "Starseed" and the other singles from Naveed when that record first came out. But there were so many CDs I wanted to buy in 1994-1995 and I had a limited budget, so I never picked that one up at the time (also, I remember the first few times I heard "Possum Kingdom" by the Toadies I thought it was the same band, which seems funny now). Anyway, I enjoyed Our Lady Peace as a singles band for a number of years, and then in 2002 I began dating Jennifer, and Our Lady Peace is one of her favorite bands, so I became much more familiar with their catalog. 

I think Jen and I have seen Our Lady Peace together four times -- the first, at the 9:30 Club in 2002, was great, although the opening act was a laughable nascent 30 Seconds To Mars. The third time, also at the 9:30, she was pregnant, so in a way that was our son James's first concert. Excellent live band, I think I'm more fond of Healthy In Paranoid Times than most because those songs sounded so good live when they toured that record. 

Clumsy is easily the band's biggest album, selling a million each in America and Canada (meaning it's platinum here, and diamond up north). But I think each of the first few albums is pretty good, and Spiritual Machines stands out as the cult favorite concept album that the band released a sequel to this year. I included some of the spoken interludes featuring futurist Raymond Kurzweil, who inspired both albums. And legendary John Coltrane drummer Elvin Jones made a pretty cool surprising cameo on "Stealing Babies" from Happiness...Is Not A Fish You Can Catch. 

Original guitarist Mike Turner left the band in 2001 and drummer Jeremy Taggert left in 2014, and I consider those guys really key to Our Lady Peace's best records, they're both tremendous musicians. But Raine Maida is such a unique, distinctive vocalist that the later albums still very much have the Our Lady Peace sound. And Turner returned to the fold this year to play on Spiritual Machines 2 and make some live appearances with the band. 

Like quite a few other contemporary rock bands, one of Our Lady Peace's most popular non-singles is a track that was used as theme music for a WWE wrestler. Unfortunately, the wrestler that used their song "Whatever" for several years was Chris Benoit. And after Benoit's shocking 2007 murder/suicide of his family, the band made a decision to never perform the song again, which I understand, and I decided to steer clear of including the track. 

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