Origin of the name Gradual Upgrade

One of the more common questions we get is, where did the name Gradual Upgrade come from? To get the origins of the this super cool name we have to leave the film world and enter the music world.

Back in 1999 my friend Andrew and I decided to start a band after seeing Our Lady Peace in Saint John, NB.

After a while, Andrew and I had gathered a ragtag group which originallly consisted of Fraser, who would go on to score one of our early films "Fixxers" on keyboards (and what a piece of shit keyboard he had, it looked like it had come from the kids section at Toys R Us), My childhood friend Adam on guitar, and Liz, Adam's girlfriend at the time on another guitar(both acoustic).

The very first song we ever tried to cover was Wonderwall from Oasis. It was pretty lotech. We rented out a disgusting place to practice called "the shack". We had a CD player and we'd play the CD with the volume down that way Adam and the rest could attempt to play along, and I would belt out the vocals.

After a few practices we decided that the world's greatest band needed a name.

I challenge anyone to try and come up with a name that isn't lame and has some relevance to the persona of the band. I've always felt the name should reflect something from the band. For a good week I thought and thought, until one day I was looking around at our ragtag little group and all the shitty instruments we had and thought to myself how truly crappy a band we were. I remember thinking, "this band can only get better, there is no way this could get any shittier. We'll get better, it'll be slow but a steady gradual climb."

Then something in my head clicked. The second I had that thought, images of a nerd fixing up computers entered my brain... and then I had it, we would be called Gradual Upgrade.

Since then I've kept the name and have used it for anything related to the entertainment business.

The name is just as appropriate in the film world as it was in the music world, I think the logo we came up with explains everything.

Travis