Jason Mraz at We Day Concert | Bob Probert Gone from "Battle of the Blades" | Matthew Good's Latest CD

By Joe Leary | Oct 8, 2009

To his millions of fans, he may be identified as one of the most popular singer/songwriters on the music charts today but Jason Mraz has proven to be much more than just that.

Born in Virginia, but more associated lately with Southern California, the 32 year old has evolved into something of a modern day humanitarian and activist, and realizing that he possesses such a huge following within the youth rank, feels it incumbent upon himself to do his part and get involved with organizations such as the ‘We to Me Movement’ and the annual ‘We Day’ events. During his visit to Vancouver last week - where he performed to a packed ‘We Day’ crowd, before headlining GM Place the following night – the always-engaging Mraz told me that he’s encouraged to see not only that today’s young people actually care about the planet, but they seem to take their cue from the young folk right here in our country.

“More and more youth are waking up to realizing that their life is in their hands and the whole state of the earth is in their hands,” says Mraz. “I think that they’re growing up in this recession that we’re experiencing now; growing up having known about climate crisis, and they’re looking at the generations past and saying, “Where did you guys screw this up and what can we do to sort of amend it?” And, these kids are growing up online, so they’re dialed in to the entire planet and they can communicate with communities all over the world, which is a powerful tool. I think it creates less enemies and creates a tighter community.

The way that these kids are so enrolled and the way that the families support it in the school system, and the way that Canada is actually giving a damn about the rest of the world; the outreach has been phenomenal, so I really want to do my part as a U.S. citizen to see if I can’t bring this program down south and infect families with all this goodness.”

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Despite the fact he may have been regarded as being the toughest and most-feared fighter in the history of the NHL and known as an on-ice enforcer, veteran tough guy Bob Probert was anything but, and surprisingly, nimble during his opening night routine for the CBC series, ‘Battle of the Blades’. Thus, it was a bittersweet twirl on the ice as Probert was the first to be sent packing from the weekly competition.

Just hours after being eliminated, I asked him if he actually ended up enjoying his time as a figure skater, albeit a brief one.

“I definitely learned some new moves and I learned some figure skating lingo and it was fun working with a partner,” he says. “Usually when you’re playing hockey, you don’t have to think that much; you just go out there and have a shift and everything comes naturally. In these routines, I had to work a little bit more. I had to learn the moves; learn the routines and then put them all together without forgetting anything. It was a lot of fun and in the end, it was unfortunate that we had to be the first ones out but it was a great experience and I’d like to get involved in another show like this.”

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I had the chance to catch up with local rocker Matthew Good this week to coincide with the release of his latest CD, ‘Vancouver’. The always outspoken Coquitlam-born singer and activist and blogger had some keen observations as to the changes the music industry has undergone prior to, and since the advent of internet technology.

“In the nineties what happened to the music industry can be equated to what’s known as the Eastman-Kodak syndrome,” says Good. “It’s when Kodak decided that this digital thing was not going to become big and they were going to stick with film, and they ended up taking a huge hit because they didn’t switch to a digital format. What happened with major record companies was that they viewed the internet - not as a tool with which to accelerate the business - but as a tool that was stealing their business. The music industry is bizarrely-tiered. You’ll have your five to ten percent of artists, who’ll sell millions of records worldwide and will make money doing so, then you’ll have the rest in the middle and they’re usually the ones who make their living on the road; they never recoup from album sales and they’re actually the low man on the totem pole. When you look at it like that and realize that’s the bread and butter of the label, the jobs become more important than the promotion of the art.”