Rush: Classic or Dud?

Lots of lovely direct memories of her on the memorial page:

https://benjaminsparkmemorialchapel.ca/MemorialBook.aspx?snum=137677&sid=206477

There are people alive today who will be alive in the year 2112.

Assuming anyone is by then I guess.

the priests of the temples of Syrinx?

I'm hiding a guitar behind a nearby waterfall just in case.

It strikes me that those guitar strings would have rusted being in a damp environment like that for a century.

Maybe they were gut?

as much as I love 2112, spending several minutes on guitar tuning in the middle of your epic track is kind of a bad move. I'm glad they didn't replicate that part in concert.

That was their Sarah Brand tribute.

dude in 2112 is the fastest study on guitar in the history of the universe

won't you hear my music

(plays "Smoke on the Water" variants, with awkward silence between chord changes)

Can't remember, do they specify it's an electric guitar? Or could it be nylon stringed?

chapman stick

It sounds like a clean-toned electric, there must have been an amp plugged in behind the waterfall as well.

It's a little illogical to write a musical about a place and time where music is outlawed, and have the villains sing about how they hate music.

look Hitler wasn't an Aryan

Haha I always just assumed it was a classical guitar.

And I'm not going to argue that 2112 is airtight in its logic but I also thought the Priests are supposed to be chanting and screaming more than singing. (The distinction is debatable in musical terms but they wouldn't be the first religious group to make a distinction like that.)

lots of backpack rappers rap about how much they hate rap

I mean, I can hear that it's an electric; just thought it was standing in for an acoustic instrument.

I thought it was an amplified electric standing in for an unplugged electric.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTRluWPw08M

Awesome.

BTW, Geddy has a memoir coming this ... spring?

"How Did My Voice Get So High?: A Memoir"

https://www.instagram.com/p/CUFgwgYAZYs/

So, how did I kill time during the pandemic? Little did I know that as of March 2020 I'd be locked down for over a year and a half—the longest time I'd spent in Toronto since I was nineteen and hit the Northern Ontario bar circuit with Rush.

Although Nancy and I had to cancel a bunch of adventures we'd been planning, there were some shiny silver linings to be found at home: teaching my grandson the finer points of baseball and birdwatching, tending to my pups (one of whom was quite ill) and spending the evenings with my lovely better half, glass of Armagnac in hand, as we watched every European mystery show ever produced. Oh, and another thing: I began to write. Words, that is.

My friend and collaborator on the Big Beautiful Book of Bass, Daniel Richler, saw how I was struggling in the aftermath of Neil's passing, and tried coaxing me out of my blues with some funny tales from his youth, daring me to share my own in return. So I did—reluctantly at first, but then remembering, oh yeah, I like wrestling with words. It's a less physical version of arguing with musical notes, without a Ricky doubleneck breaking my back! And soon my baby-step stories were becoming grownup chapters. Being the nuclear obsessive that I am, I'd write and re-write them, reassessing perspectives in the narrative not just by scouring my memory banks but my diaries and piles of photo albums too. I was piecing together a mystery of a different kind.

I'd then send these improved and even illustrated stories to Daniel, who'd clean up some of the grammar and remove a lot of the swearing (I love to fucking swear), and presto! In a voice that sounded, well, just like me, a presentable, epic-length account of my life on and off the stage was taking shape: my childhood, my family, the story of my parents' survival, my travels and all sorts of nonsense I've spent too much time obsessing over. And Daniel said, "I think you're writing a book. An actual memoir, in fact." To which I replied, “Hmm… I guess I am.”

I'm rounding third on this as-of-yet untitled memoir, which will be published by HarperCollins, edited by Noah Eaker, and is scheduled for release in Fall 2022.

I saw that they had done that but really the OSU band did an amazing job, it was even better than I would have expected. Quite a bit of subtext in the moves of the group like when they formed up the motorcycle during the Limelight section. Very well done.

Ohio State marching band doesn't mess around.

That was really impressive but what is the story behind why they did this? Does this university or this band director have some kind of history related to Rush? They're in Columbus, not Cleveland, right? I can't even imagine something like this happening at a Toronto university. Version of "YYZ" with all the drums was awesome.

The stick-figure Peart hitting a cymbal was insane.

Never underestimate the love of Neil Peart by drum corp nerds. That whole drum corp world is a kinda wild musical culture that I think the wider world often does not know about. Tommy Lee of Motley Crue was in one.

OSU's marching band is one of the best of that ilk. In those band circles, just a top level thing as playing for OSU's football team by comparison.

Yeah, I even hear a lot of these people get recruited by North Korea after they graduate.

I never was in marching band but I have been to one of those big football stadium DCI competitions. The fans into that thing are as bloodthirsty in their own way as any football or Nascar fan. Totally weird scene.

A different Big Ten school, but was casual friends with a couple of marching band guys. Yeah, it was a wild culture shock hanging out at their parties (only rivaled the one rugby team party I somehow ended up at in terms of pure debauchery), it's a whole big lifestyle thing. Though the guys I knew were more into Ween and mushrooms than Rush.

I have friends whose daughter plays in the band at Indiana, and yeah, it's practically a varsity sport, in terms of competition, commitments and esteem.

Yeah, I even hear a lot of these people get recruited by North Korea after they graduate.

"Hang On Sloopy" is the American "Arirang".

Never underestimate the love of Neil Peart by drum corp nerds.

Can confirm

That whole drum corp world is a kinda wild musical culture that I think the wider world often does not know about. Tommy Lee of Motley Crue was in one.

Billy Cobham, too.

how about 5:40 in that video when I thought they were messing up their lines walking inward, then realised they were animating "YYZ" as spinning letters ...

I know this wasn't what they were going for, but I'd like to think the shapes that they were forming at the very beginning were a bunch of 1s and 0s meant as a subtle reference to "The Body Electric"

also was hoping the major was going to run into the middle of the star formation and do the naked Rush dude pose

Alex Lifeson has a new project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV-IZRh22mo

Heh, not what I expected - I didn't even really notice the guitar playing!

Yeah, I was going to come here and, er, make fun of it; it sounds like Alex just discovered 1995. But to his credit, it's not even remotely trying to sound like Rush. Though I don't know what it offers by trying to sound like, I dunno, How to Destroy Angels.

Might be out of the price range for most of us tbh

https://www.juliensauctions.com/about-auction?id=405

Part of our “Music Icons” auction happening on May 20th, 21st and 22nd, “Property From The Archives of Alex Lifeson” will feature over 60 vintage guitars and other career memorabilia from the personal collection of Alex Lifeson

Wow, he's selling his white Gibson! There's no way of seeing the whole catalog without paying for it, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrstPbrL1ss

In this interview on GL’s bass book, someone asks him if he could envisage doing a similar book on guitar; He says something about seeing his guitars much more in terms of tools rather than viewing them with the degree of sentimentality Geddy has for his (and others’) basses

The white 355 he’s on record saying that is the ‘iconic’ Rush guitar, but again - in the context of Rush; it could be that he wants a clean break now that the band is done. In a roundabout way there could be too much association with Rush and those guitars.

From the new Brad Mehldau (there's also a version of Yes's "Starship Trooper"); tbh I liked the Bad Plus version better but this is interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJJTF94QvLc

Yeah, that's OK, especially when it gets all spacey where the guitar solo would be. But maybe because there are no vocals the Bad Plus one does a better job deconstructing it.

I finally got into Caress of Steel after being a Rush fan since 88, the only album of their pre-91 albums that I never connected with. I never owned the album back in the day even though I've probably heard it a handful of times. Just cleaned a rough vinyl copy someone a number of years ago and it sounds good now. It reminds me of Led Zeppelin III - that mix of rock and the pastoral. The Necromancer is just the best.