Bhawk2112

In my experience over the years, people seem to decide whether or not they like Rush within the first 30 seconds of hearing Ged's voice. Not many people will seriously doubt their musicianship. That said, Moving Pictures. I absolutely despise the ammo this film gave people already prone to bagging on Rush fans. Probably in a tiny minority, but I find everything about it just stupid.

Alright, here it is. Everything here is how it happened. Can't believe it's already been 17 years ago now.

Had a really cool experience meeting Alex in The Orbit Room. I wrote it all down but every time I've ever posted it on a Rush forum I get relentlessly skewered for how long it is. It was a pretty amazing evening, and he's everything everyone says he is when it comes to being a pleasant, funny gentleman.

When he talks about doing 11 weeks of rehearsal before playing in front of an audience, that is quite a reality check when people wonder about possible one-off shows in the future. If it ain't as good as it can be, they ain't going on stage.

I don't even compare Rush to all the other bands I enjoy. They stand alone, apart. I'm a pretty accomplished Deadhead and will go from funk to bagpipes depending on the winds. Can get nostalgic with 80s pop, relive my early 20s with grunge, dance around with my 12 year old daughter with whatever happens to be the bubblegum pop flavor of the day. Done deep explorations with obscure prog as well as the most gangsta of hip-hop. But, Rush has been my best musical friend since I was 12. The sounds and the lyrics are irreversibly intertwined with stages and eras of my life. Months without listening to them can turn to weeks of nothing but them. For me, when it comes to music, Rush is...home.

It's the dark side of fandom, isn't it? Narcissistic, obsessive, self-righteous people who judge every single thing that the band or one of its members says or does. The tiniest little thing is put under their judgemental microscopes, and they spend as long as they like scrutinizing, criticizing, and condemning it. Fortunately, such dysfunctional people do not make up the majority of the fanbase. But...what's the line of proper response? Guy posted a post on his blog, people are going to react to that. If you criticize too much or too deeply, then you're a selfish, self-righteous tool that doesn't appreciate what you've been privileged to have bestowed upon you.. Gush, praise and defend too much, then you're a comical, caricature of a slobbering fanboi. In my opinion, the solution is to take one's selfishness out of it. Be it rose-colored glasses or grey-colored, we have to take them OFF when reading anything about the band or anyone else. It's what any fan should do. Rock fans, football fans, movie star fans.......we're all guilty of putting our "heroes" up on pedestals and then tearing them down when we're disappointed by their human flaws. They're just normal human beings. They're just like us. They have good virtues and vices. They do great things and they make mistakes. And when they write or talk about themselves publically, we MUST take their words in the proper context. We will NEVER fully know their lives, so we shouldn't try to do so. The best solution regarding Neil Peart's journal entries is to not read them. If we can't read them with 20/20 vision, then we shouldn't even open the book. Read it and shut up because we don't know them? Really? What is this world you describe where there is no action, reaction, random interaction? Are you afraid of a little abstraction? :D I'll read his journal entries like I've read his lyrics and his books, and I'll form opinions (or not) accordingly, like countless others will as well. It seems contradictory to scold fans for placing people on pedestals and yet take the position that those same people are not to be questioned in any way, shape or form. Is that not a pedestal as well? If the words are taken in the proper context, can people still react to that, or is it all off limits?

It's the dark side of fandom, isn't it? Narcissistic, obsessive, self-righteous people who judge every single thing that the band or one of its members says or does. The tiniest little thing is put under their judgemental microscopes, and they spend as long as they like scrutinizing, criticizing, and condemning it. Fortunately, such dysfunctional people do not make up the majority of the fanbase. But...what's the line of proper response? Guy posted a post on his blog, people are going to react to that. If you criticize too much or too deeply, then you're a selfish, self-righteous tool that doesn't appreciate what you've been privileged to have bestowed upon you. Gush, praise and defend too much, then you're a comical caricature of a slobbering fanboi. Rush is most likely over because Peart doesn't want to do it anymore. Alright then. Him making that proclamation at any point shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone beyond a casual fan. Dude said it 40 years ago. "It was for me, not you, that I came to write this song." Pretty much been on point ever since. He wants to do something else, cool, thanks for the memories, wish him all the best. His motorcycle adventures have always been a bit of a mystery to me (but that's more of my viewing that context over the last few years with him being a Dad and me being a Dad), and his depiction over the years of touring being such an ordeal and a struggle have always come across as over the top. But, hell, that's just my opinion...and I already know that the person least concerned with mine or anyone else's opinion is Peart. Which, hey, that's cool too.

http://www.seymourdu...ti-neck-guitars What's that about Alex having an accident with his Gibson? I haven't heard about that before. In one of the tour books, possibly GUP, he says that an elephant sat on his doubleneck and broke it. I always assumed the elephant line was a reference to long epic songs like Xanadu becoming white elephants to them at the time.

That moment when you realize that the boys have been around so long that the music media have run out of new questions to ask them. How many of those that listened found themselves answering the questions in our own heads?

1982. First two albums I bought with my own money (on cassette) were Moving Pictures and Men at Work's Business as Usual. I was 12.

What's really cool about this one is that at the time, no one in the general public knew what KISS looked like without their makeup. My older brother was a member of the KISS Army and him and his friends used to go on about how much of a mystery their identities were. I'll give KISS credit...they managed to find the one gimmick that you could only do once.

They made it pretty clear that they always wanted to get better as musicians, and it's obvious that the path they chose to achieve that goal was to make complicated and ethereal creations whilst exploring variations of sounds, time signatures and meter. In order to do that (at least in the instance of the music they ended up making), you better have a drummer that can get on down in all the variants of eights. So, having a guy of Neil's ability certainly didn't hurt. :D

Geddy and Danny Carey, and I really don't care who else is on whatever other instrument... :D

Geddy is 100 times the bass player he was 30 years ago. Watching his fingers and hands still provides a ton of entertainment. :D

I was told there would be no math.

Recorded in the middle of the night by 20 year olds. What's not to like?

Given that bum note they left in the Xanadu on R40, who cares at this point? RELEASE IT ALL!!!! :D

It's all Rush to me, there's just songs here and there I care for more (or less) than others. Since I've listened to so much Rush for most of my days, I've found that I listen or not listen to albums because of what was going on in life at the time. I love Counterparts, but that wasn't during a very good spell so listening to it takes me back to a place I'd rather not revisit in any case. That said, 99% of the time I listen to the live albums anyway. It's a live band.

Regardless of whether or not one likes the music, jam bands have been all over this for a while. The Widespread Panic business model for this is breathtaking. You can buy a single from any show, or complete shows in MP3, Lossless, HD-Audio or on CD. They also just launched an on demand app that gives on access to over 800 shows. http://www.livewidespreadpanic.com/ It will never cease to amaze me how much money that musicians and bands leave on the table.

A ton of dough was left on the table by not at least considering an Instant Live approach to the R40 Tour. Who wouldn't have wanted to go home (or download the next day) what in all probability was their last show?

Everyone knows they should have broken up after Moving Pictures anyway.

Only been there once, in 1995. Some fence-crashing a-holes ruined the entire evening.

In a way, the whole R40 experience was the last of all the "Will they tour again?" gravy, because if one looks back at recent years, the true catalyst in the retirement motivation was most likely the publishing rights sale. When someone throws in a humble brag in a post on his website about now owning a $280,000 sports car, one can deduce he recently came into some next-level major cash. Not that he couldn't afford it before, of course, but from the point of view of, "I wrote something and I helped build something and I worked hard for decades and I sold it off for a retirement profit," well, just about any working man has that dream in some sense.

I was wondering when someone would bring that up. Also...not for nothing but after Nat Sci Geddy said they are on the "..right on the verge of the 70's" before playing Jacob's Ladder. Hence - Geddy CONFIRMS that Permanent Waves is an 80's album. Well stated!!! Lee can't be trusted. He thought they'd never played Jacob's Ladder. He apparently thinks Cygnus X-1 part 1 is from Hemispheres. He can't be trusted to remember when they wrote, recorded, mixed, mastered, and packaged Permanent Waves, which was all in 1979. Dude can barely remember what city he's in sometimes. Yeah, it's a mystery why recollections of that era are so difficult for the guys. http://www.rushisaband.com/images/200511/28.f.jpg

Moving Pictures was the pinnacle of the work done with Terry Brown. The drum sound is absolutely perfect. Perhaps there was nowhere left to go as far as production and creativity together? Sometimes you just need a change. Much has changed with the advent of technology and time with remasters and such, but when Signals first came out it sounded like it was recorded in a coffee can, especially on cassette.