Our Lady Peace + Collective Soul + Wintersleep @ Place Bell▪

WinterSleep

Opener WinterSleep heroically pumped through their set as ’90s rock fans flowed into all corners of Place Bell. Like ants with tiny Heinekens and snap-up Western shirts after a hard day’s work.

WinterSleep was fantastic as always, oozing faux slacker charm and seeming loose and so happy to be there. Playing for ants. Try to read the next paragraph without the Zoolander voice in your mind. I don’t think you can do it.

Collective Soul

Now for Collective Soul. I’m conflicted. I was there to see Ed Roland. This was a great bill for alt ’90s fans, but Collective Soul’s monster riffs—oh my soul. I couldn’t wait to be in a room with my Gen X peers rocking out. But that’s not what happened exactly.

I specifically remember and will forever tie the memory of the unholy Precious Declaration riff to my soul rising up out of my body and then tugging my body up out of my seat to dance before that soul could fully escape. Arms swaying, fingers strumming air guitar in a way that would make one think I knew how to really play, feet stomping on the 2 & 4, 107 BPMs of CPR-certified life-saving rock.

As the song ended, I turned to feel the collective love (pun) of the Centre Bell crowd, and I swear there were people sleeping.

I was too angry to be embarrassed. Well, no, that’s not true. I’m not embarrassed of myself, but I am embarrassed for my city for that. Was it just the long day of work? How dare we treat Collective Soul like an opener?

Do you see what Ed is wearing? He looks like Pimp Gandalf. (Note to self: head to Midjourney and prompt for “Dutch angle shot of a Pimp-clothed Ian McKellen playing an E5 chord on a natural wood grain Gibson Explorer on a hilltop in the Shire facing Mordor as the Marshall stack behind him blasts sonic lines that morph into eagles dropping the ring into Mount Doom, abstract, oil painting, realistic, velvet —ar16:9.”)

But I kept on enjoying myself. I don’t know what’s happening in the rest of my section, but from Gel, Heavy, Where the River Flows, The World I Know—all the hits, all killer, all night. I loved it.

Setlist

Mother’s Love
Heavy
Right as Rain
Shine (With “Livin’ on the Edge” snippet by Aerosmith)
Precious Declaration
Keep It on Track
The World I Know
December
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (AC/DC cover)
Gel
Where the River Flows

OLP

I think what might have happened is the crowd all made a pact to save their energy for Our Lady Peace. But they found it tough because we in the crowd are from the ’90s, and that was so very long ago.

It was literally in the 1900s, guys. And the definition of literally I’m going with is the one from the 1900s that made sense—not like today when some Gen Z says, “Like, it’s literally hotter than the surface of the sun—ahh, David!” when they really mean, “It is figuratively hotter than the surface of the sun, David, quite hot, to be fair.”

Maybe that’s why we are all so tired. These people are in the workforce; we all deal with these exhausting situations every day. Why doesn’t the fictional David fight back? Because David’s busted too.

The question, therefore, becomes: is Superman truly dead? Or is there enough life left in this crowd to fight back the Kryptonite of time and the Lex Luthor of baldness and materialism?

From the misdirecting opening strums of acoustic guitar before Superman’s Dead erupts into what it ultimately becomes, there is an abrupt change in the crowd. In this moment, I realized we were about to time travel. So I better start thinking warm thoughts of my travelling companions.

Over the next two hours, I would text so many friends I’d lost track—telling them I love them and sending tiny clips. I surrendered my show notes and bought into the same emotions I had as a teen. It was awesome!

After all, it was OLP30, marking an impressive milestone for a Canadian band. Raine and Co. are still here, still looking great, still sounding great!

All the hits were there: Life, Somewhere Out There, Innocent, One Man Army… Everything you could possibly want in your time travel experiment.

Even the new song I Want To Be Your Drug popped. It sounded new but old, which is hard to pull off. But for the first time in a while, I found myself excited and contemplating a new OLP album in the future.

Any time I’m too overtaken by the music to take notes, I get a little anxious I might not remember important details. But truly, dear reader, I’m not going to ever forget the overdue pregnancy that was the Starseed guitar intro.

At one point, I and others had our heads in our hands in anticipation. Could it be Starseed? That reimagined intro was absolutely killer. Guitarist Steve Mazur conjured a different enough guitar part that the crowd was enthralled with the process—right up there with Don Felder’s reimagining of the Hotel California acoustic version.

It was awesome. I could talk about it for an hour more.

But I’m kinda tired.

6/10 would see them all again. 4 points lost because the sound guy EQ’d out Raine’s nasal sound.