RushRushMy audio CD collection is pretty varied, with heavy doses of REM, U2, Chicago, 10000 Maniacs, Sugar, Van Morrison, and Ray Charles. But there is no doubt that Alex, Ged, and Neil reign as the most frequently played, and the most beloved.
Topics for your perusal:
Test For Echo: a gushing review
Desert Island Disk: A survey from alt.music.rush
Favorites: Songs, albums, concerts
Concert Review: December 9, 1996 at the
Ice Palace in Tampa
Poetry: Yikes! Poetry!
Link to the national midnight
star homepage
Test For Echo Review
I give the album 4 stars on a 5 star scale. I think it is the band's best album since Hold Your Fire, which I enjoyed quite a bit. There was a fair amount of discussion on alt.music.rush that Test For Echo was poorly produced, but I don't see that. The instruments are nicely separated, but the songs remain warm and full in sound.
The highlight of the album, in my opinion, is Totem. This song features first-rate lyrics from Neil, some of which appeared on my screen saver for awhile: "I've got celestial mechanics to synchronize my stars/Seasonal migrations, daily variations/World of the unlikely and bizarre." The music is unusually upbeat for Rush.
Another song that is growing on me is Time and Motion. Rebekah (see the link to my fiancee's page on my home page), who doesn't dig Rush at all, called the lyrics to this one "poetry". They made my screen saver for a time too: "Time and motion, wind and sun and rain/Days connect like boxcars in a train/ Fill them up with precious cargo/Squeeze in all that you can find." A frequent post on alt.music.rush about this song was that it harkened back, musically, to Natural Science.
Alex's guitar work is prominent on Test For Echo. The riffs in the title track, Virtuality, and Driven rock as hard as the very best songs on previous albums, in the class of Dreamline, Superconductor, or Analog Kid.
Buy it!
Some time ago, after the release of Counterparts, I posed a question to the readers of alt.music.rush. Basically, it asked people to create a 10-song CD (length irrelevant) of Rush music to last them for the rest of their lives if they were stranded with no other music on a desert island. I got about 20 responses.
If you are a Rush fan, I'd love to hear what your top ten are. Please take the time to submit your own Desert Island Disk before leaving this page.
Here were the results of my totally unscientific poll. The consensus desert island disk ended up with 13 songs, because I didn't want to break any ties. The number in parenthesis is the number of people that included the song on their disk.
Now, more stats. A few people cheated, so I counted 202 tracks on the 20 CDs, rather than 200. Of those 202, there were 73 different selections. Using the stages of Rush according to where the live albums fall, they were broken down like this:
Stage I (RUSH to 2112): 14 songs chosen 38 times
Stage II (FTK to MP/ESL): 19 songs chosen 80 times
Stage III (SIG to HYF): 20 songs chosen 47 times
Stage IV (PRES to CP): 20 songs chosen 37 times
Thus, the votes were pretty evenly distributed, except that the 19 songs of Stage II were very popular and eight of those songs made it to the consesus DID.
Now, by album:
RUSH: 3 songs taken 5 times
FBN: 4 songs taken 10 times
COS: 4 songs taken 8 times, only Lakeside Park not chosen
2112: 3 songs taken 15 times
FTK: 3 songs taken 15 times, but the one CTTH choice was really
ASOH
HEMI: All 4 tunes taken (22 times), I'd be happy w/HEMI on the
island
PeW: 4 songs taken 13 times, not Entre Nous or Different Strings
MP: All 7 tunes taken 28 times (the best)
ESL: 2 people wanted Broon's Bane/The Trees
SIG: 3 songs taken 16 times, 2 on consensus DID + Losing It (2)
GUP: 4 songs taken only 5 times (great disk, but not so many standouts
PoW: 7 songs taken 13 times, not Emotion Detector
HYF: 6 songs taken 13 times
PRES: 6 songs taken 10 times
RTB: 6 songs taken 13 times
CP: 8 songs taken 14 times, not Speed of Love, BS&M, or Cut
to (!)
My favorite albums are Hemispheres and Grace Under Pressure. My favorite songs are La Villa Strangiato and Prime Mover. The best Rush show I have seen was December 9, 1996 at the Ice Palace in Tampa. We had average seats (for $40), but it was a well-spent $40. A two-set marathon on the Test For Echo tour. See concert review. Before that, the best Rush show I saw was in Jacksonville on the Roll the Bones tour, because I was on the floor and they treated us to The Trees and Analog Kid. Runner-up goes to the Alpine Valley, WI show during the Presto tour. (I'm something of a Rush neophyte, catching on just after Hold Your Fire).
Warning! If you don't want to see the setlist for the Test For
Echo tour, then you'd better stop now. After I tell you it was amazing.
The ticket said the concert would start at eight, and Rush hit the stage at exactly eight. The opening video footage was the same as they used on the Counterparts tour, with a giant nut and bolt spinning towards one another in space while Thus Spake Zarathrustra played.
They opened predictably with Dreamline, the opener from the last tour. Unfortunately, the sound quality was poor, as it always seems to be on Rush opening numbers. They followed with The Big Money, and Neil sent the drumstick flying a good 20 feet in the air in that pause near the end of the song. He caught it. I counted him going 4 for 4 on the evening, catching drumsticks. Rush then kicked into two new songs, Driven and Half The World. Driven featured a goofy video and equally goofy bass solo, in which Geddy mimicked a car with engine trouble.
The first goosebumps of the night were brought on by Red Barchetta. For the first time I can remember, Rush used live cameras on the big screen. That was greatly effective. It really made you feel like you were right up in row 2. They played this tune to perfection, and it made me realize this was one of my very favorite Rush songs. And a dangerous one to listen to while driving.
Next came Animate, with a lot of cool video of the Counterparts jacket. This was a great choice to play from the previous album; they dropped Stick It Out, Double Agent, and Cold Fire from the setlist, but Animate may stay as a concert classic.
Enter the new instrumental Limbo. Rush played three of their instrumentals in this show (but not La Villa!), probably to save poor Geddy's voice. They followed that up with The Trees, Red Sector A, and Virtuality. My only complaint here was that I missed a drumbeat horribly during the middle bit of The Trees, seriously calling into question my air drumming abilities. Another complaint would be the fact that of all the new songs they played (6), they didn't play my two faves from the new CD-- Totem and Time And Motion. And while I missed Distant Early Warning, I must admit that Red Sector A, complete with a wall of laser beams, kicked ass.
Then they played Nobody's Hero, introducing it as one of their favorite songs to play.
The next 25 minutes were sustained pure bliss. They played Closer To The Heart, accompanied by the singing of everyone in the Ice Palace and a smattering of lighters. They played the long version of the song, as featured on A Show Of Hands, which makes a great song an absolutely unbelieveable song. Also heightening the mood was the return of those live action cameras. Without a doubt, this song and Red Barchetta drive me craziest played live.
And then it happened. Before it happened, I think I stood a 50-50 shot of dying happy. After it happened, I'm sure I will die happy. They played Overture, great, they played Temples of Syrinx, great. But when Alex started soloing with the pure sound of the guitar on Soliloquy, I about shit my pants. And when they blasted into Presentation, the floor erupted in maniacal slam dancing. And no matter how loud I might crank my stereo up at home, hearing Attention all planets of the solar federation... in the concert hall beat all.
They took their break then, which was excellent timing. It let everyone get a chance to turn to the person standing next to them all glassy eyed, and attempt to form words. (Incidentally, I really liked this concert.)
After some goofy movie trailers for some old motorcycle movies, they were back. A haunting video scene of a cold landascape, flickering in and out of static, then four satellite dishes on stage sent out green lasers, and the boys kicked into Test For Echo. Next came good old Subdivisions, and the live action video came back for Freewill. I can play bits and pieces of this song on the guitar (being in the bare early stages of learning how to play), so after attentively watching Alex play the solo on the big screen, I turned to my guitar guru Nick and said 'Ah, so that's how he does it. No problem.' Fortunately, Nick caught my sarcasm.
One of the best moments of the night followed, with a great rendition of Roll The Bones. The crowd, which has a tendency to be less into the post-Signals stuff, was surprisingly into this classic from their 90s-era body of work. Then came a beautiful rendition of Resist which, unless there was an unseen keyboard player somewhere, must have been tightly played along with a pre-recorded track.
Geddy got a long break for his voice as they started into Leave That Thing Alone, followed by Neil's solo. Neil's solo was about 70% the same as the last tour, but what was new was fantastic. One new feature was live video from above his kit, so if you weren't already blown away by the sounds you had to be by his flying appendages (he still only uses four, FYI). The kit rotated 180 degrees twice, breaking the solo up into three parts, the middle part having a very different beat and using a mostly different array of drums. This part was new, and was accompanied by a funny video of clips of dancers from old movies and other sources. This drum solo seemed like his longest that I have seen, and also seemed the most rhythmic... every bit of it was enjoyable to listen to, and you never wanted it to stop. The applause afterward was deservingly thunderous.
Neil's limbs got a brief respite at the beginning of the evening's biggest surprise (I knew they would play 2112, and had heard most of the other song played live.) The band began Natural Science, the second of three tunes from Permanent Waves. Either Ged or I messed up some of the lyrics in the third movement, I'm not sure who. Doesn't matter, it was great.
They played Force Ten, the only tune from Hold Your Fire of the evening. Then, you knew it was coming, ten minutes of ecstasy. The Spirit of Radio and Tom Sawyer, each played with sincere enthusiasm despite their constant inclusion as part of the set. The place was an absolute madhouse during both songs, again with the live action video showing Alex and Ged's flying fingers. After a brief encore, one final fan favorite, complete with more live action... good old YYZ, a song that hadn't been played for awhile due to the recent albums containing new instrumentals. But they played it, and it kicked ass.
I bought Neil's book as a souvenir, and it is turning out to be excellent.
Everybody was in a pretty high flying mood after the show, including the guy who hurdled the hood of my car, and much to my relief, cleared it with ease.
What a show!
A poem published in Departure: GNV, an undergraduate literary magazine at the University of Florida. Now, I know it's not the greatest, but it was featured on the last page of the Spring, 1990 issue. It turns out that the editor was a Rush fan, too. I wrote it after seeing a show in Jacksonville on the Presto tour. I still like some of the double entendres, using song titles here and there. It would be fun to rewrite it with even more allusions for the Rush fan.
The air tastes salty outside the blue-domed coliseum
Against the St. John's River.
It tastes sweaty as thousands of dripping, spent
Rush enthusiasts
Drip down the arena's steps
Into their cold, wet cars.
The sound is muffled in my ringing ears--
Talk of Peart's drum solo
Or Geddy's thumping bass
Or Lifeson's driving, infatuating, ear-blowing riffs.
There is a far clearer sound
Still echoing,
Note-perfect
In my sizzled, soldered nerves--
The notes of 'La Villa Streangiato'
Or the infectious singing of
'Superconductor'
Crispness
Comes to my nostrils
Like a shaft of sunlight, Jacob's Ladder, after a tempest.
The wind returns me to the outside,
Bringing me the scent of wet grass
And the not-unpleasant smell
Of exhausted humanity
And revving engines
As the stifled sense of scent
Wants sensation
After the ears received so much attention.
I feel nothing on the outside;
Like the sound muffled by my half-deaf ears
The sensations are muffled by my exhausted skin.
On the inside I feel electric,
The urge to run, to dance, to jump, to sing!
Then a numbness, a sweeping high--
I hope to hold this strange euphoria.
I see faces applauding
And torsos cheering.
The night is filled with the music
Of air drummers and invisible guitars.
Red taillights, like a benign red tide
Washing away from a sea of sound.
These people, my brothers and sisters for one night,
Wish me a fond goodbye with their eyes and expressions
And I return the smile.
Well, that's a bit much I suppose. But hey, I wrote it along time ago. Who knows what kind of sap I'd write today.
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