Duck

QUOTE (Ron2112 @ Dec 28 2010, 06:42 AM) QUOTE (Duck @ Dec 26 2010, 01:11 PM) - Eddie wrote a song called the "Pleasure Dome." Listen to it. It is a homage to Rush's Xanadu and there is a riff taken almost directly from the Rush material -- not to mention the subject matter. Uh........no. You do realize that both songs are rip-offs of the poem "Kubla Khan," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, right? Uh....no? Have you bothered to listen to the VH tune? It opens up with a tone and a riff that are clearly influenced by some of the music Rush wrote in Xanadu. This isn't just my observation, mmmkay? Do some Googling and look around a bit before you "Um...no, blah blah..." Here is just one link on the VH tune: "The opening riff of "Pleasure Dome" is highly similar, and most likely an homage, to a prominent guitar line in the Rush song "Xanadu," which is about the fabled "pleasure dome" of Mongol/Chinese emperor Kublai Khan. Coincidentally, Rush signed to Atlantic Records, a sister label to Van Halen's then-label Warner Bros. Records in 1989, and Van Halen would later be represented by Rush's long-time manager Ray Danniels."

This is all bullshit. Story comes around periodically on the VHLinks site too. While both bands probably don't have a huge liking for each other's work, they don't hate each other at all. Some facts: - I directly recall Roth in a 1980's video discussing Rush -- basically wasn't his cup of tea, called them "Techo-rock" which descibes the synth-era Rush at the time - Alex Lifeson has complemented Eddie in numerous interviews and has even used Eddie's line of 5150 Amps. - VH used Ray Daniels as their manager. Why would they if they absolutely hated Rush, since that was Ray's prime client at the time? - Eddie wrote a song called the "Pleasure Dome." Listen to it. It is a homage to Rush's Xanadu and there is a riff taken almost directly from the Rush material -- not to mention the subject matter. Also, IMO, Eddie Van Halen is one of those few guitarists that was an absolute game-changer in the theater of guitar driven Rock&Roll. Say what you want about his ego and personality, but the man changed music for over a decade and his influence reverberates even today. A true great.

Add: Fly By Night Lessons (or Something for Nothing) A Farewell to Kings Changes: Switch out Faithless for Hope. One bad S&A song for a good one, you can't lose! Add Countdown (since the Shuttle era and possibly all American manned spaceflight is over next year).

QUOTE (gazza65 @ Dec 14 2010, 09:28 AM)Can anyone tell me ...have they dumped the lasers on the Time machine tour ??????...if so WHY ???

Well, I looked at the code some more today. It isn't ASCII. I'm sadly getting the feeling it is just random bits which is a little disappointing. I even Googled up a binary ASCII to text web app to make testing snippets of the Counterparts binary code easier to check without going through it manually, but no luck. Looks like garbage in ASCII. Anyway, here is a real message in binary ASCII, which should go well with a movie often seen during these times around Christmas... 010000100110010100100000011100110111010101110010011001 010010000001110100011011110010000001100100011100100110 100101101110011010110010000001111001011011110111010101 110010001000000100111101110110011000010110110001110100 01101001011011100110010100101110

http://www.animatedgif.net/games/pacman-ln_e0.gif

QUOTE (FoG @ Dec 1 2010, 02:54 PM)Speaking of the back cover of Counterparts, has anyone tried to decode the binary on the back of the cover? I never even thought about that until I read your post. I took a quick look at the binary. I thought the simplest encoding might be ASCII. Each 8 bits is a byte...and each byte is a number that is mapped to a character. So the beginning of the sequence looks like this in different bases... [1010 1001] [0101 0110] [1001 1010] ... binary bytes (base 2) [ A9 ] [ 56 ] [ 9A ] ...same things in hexadecimal (base 16) [ 169 ] [ 86 ] [ 154 ] ...and in decimal (base 10) Now in an extended ASCII table (see http://www.plcdev.com/ascii_chart), these three bytes above at the beginning of the sequence convert to an underscore '_' followed by a 'V' and then something that looks like a U with an umlaut over it... Not promising that this is ASCII as these first three characters seem nonsensical! I would have figured most of them would be letters and this would start out by spelling a word. So then I was thinking it might still be ASCII, but the sequence is in the middle of a message, so that we might not be looking at the very beginning, but at some unknown offset into the message. The most common letter in English is 'E', which looks like 0100 0101 in binary when ASCII encoded. I figured if I could find some E's in there, then I could easily continue the encoding sequnce on either side of it. But just scanning it once over, I don't see that sequence in there. Bah!

QUOTE (irish_matt @ Nov 30 2010, 02:23 PM) Interviews with Ray Daniels, Alex and Geddy in the last few months have hinted at the album being finished in 2011 with a 2012 release. They are doing things at their own pace. In the past, they would have played longer tours with less time between shows. Now they are playing 3 shows a week without back to back nights. Fans want to see this tour... 8 months ago European fans were pissed that they where not included... same with cities missed on the first run. If they finish the last leg of the US tour by mid summer, that'll give them plenty of time, while still sharp, to finish the album in the fall, take a holiday break and drop CA in the spring. That would give us yet another Tour in the summer of 2012. Complaints aside, this is the busiest they have chosen to be in years. I'm all for it. As for cashing in.....? were people complaining in the past when they played 60-70 date or more, US tours? Rush not touring... complaints Rush tour is tour short and not hitting Europe... complaints Rush now touring too much??? complaints? there's no pleasing some people.... Be happy that they still choose to do anything at all. -Matt

This makes me wonder whether anything can be done about it. I was listening to 2112 today and kind of miss Geddy singing like that -- although I also really enjoy Geddy's mid-range stuff as much (e.g. Subdivisions). Maybe there is a kind of vocal exercise or something along with some hot tea :-) I bet Geddy can still hit some of those notes but the risk of his voice cracking is too much to risk during concerts.

There is not a lot that can go wrong in an electric guitar. Electrically, the instrument is essentially a set of pickups -- magnets and coils that make a tiny bit of current that gets generated by steel strings vibrating in the field lines. Very simple. I have a couple electric guitars and nothing has ever gone wrong with them electrically aside some the dials getting a little gunked up over the years (a little spray electronics cleaner fixed them up). Its the other end of the equation -- the rig basically. From the guitar we go into a wireless and then the receiver sends its output into preamps/rack effects/amps which then get fed to the cabinets. There are sensitive electronics and computer chips on that end. And yeah, if the pyro was generating any kind of surge or spike or EMF that could effect something like computers/electronics but would not likely do anything to the guitars.

QUOTE (ColdFireYYZ @ Aug 22 2010, 10:25 PM) http://www.youtube.com/xliberatorx#p/u/35/tAECKBCBJZk I doubt he is a threat to the band. His videos are actually funny. "When I'm thirsty I drink A&W root beer. It's the best beverage for a hot day in the mountains." I think he is a real whackjob. I pray he stays the hell away from the band. Reminds me of the kind of guy that killed John Lennon. Nothing funny about this shit. http://www.youtube.com/zahn#p/search/6/W7AaUO1NdVI

Right: Flaunt the fruits of noble birth Wash the salt into the earth What me & friend heard first time playing this song: f**k the future, an' Mother Earth Wash the salt into the earth We had to get the lyrics out to dissuade our ears. To this day, I know if I play that sound, we will both hear that again.

Great pics! Wonder if Geddy's throat was bugging him. maybe the air was cold. He has a scarf around it in the encore.

Who else was thinking of this? http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/shakes4/chili.png

QUOTE (tpn911 @ Oct 7 2010, 04:53 PM)I must be in the minority here, but if anything, I'd say it seems like the bulk of shows I've been to since T4E have been virtually pot free. I'm not a smoker but was also kind of disappointed at how clean the air was during "Bangkok"! With my 1st tour being Presto in 90, I'd have to say the Counterparts was the tour with the most "smoking" although I think Primus being the opener and one of the more vocally pro pot bands had a lot to do with it. Saw the tour 3 times (and Primus a handful of other times) and we always judged how stoned Les was by how long he would sit on those 2 notes in middle of "Those Damned Blue Collared Tweekers" Did Bush cause this? Just curious.

"Beer, if drank with moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit and promotes health." -- Thomas Jefferson I don't care to see any other recreational drug at a public venue because it is simply illegal to use. That said, I tolerate it / ignore it so long as the people using it remain respectful and don't f**k up the show for anyone around them. Any drunk or drugged out fools doing that should get their ass kicked out of the show (and in jail if they assault or puke on anyone).

My guess is the 'G' guy was annoyed by it but didn't want to hurt her feelings directly, so he elisted VS to do the dirty work

QUOTE (RushFanForever @ Sep 1 2010, 01:02 PM) It is a shame these days that concert etiquette has fallen by the wayside. If an individual is assigned a seat to go see a movie, that is where they go. A concert should not be any different. A concert is supposed to be of equality and democracy - not one trying to be more popular than the others. A good book that should be read by everyone is 'How to Win Friends and Influence People'. Some recognizable shtick tends to get old overtime. Regardless if someone is a long time fan or not should not be given any special treatment. What you buy is what you get. If I saw a fan from the stage doing anything that was disrespectful to other fans, they would be exited from the building. That is not normal behavior. This is not directed to any particular person, but general etiquette. Agree. I'm new around these forums, but been a Rush fan all my life. I never tried to sit anywhere I didn't have tickets for, even when seeing an empty one down in the second row. Yeah, I'd love to be up there, but so would everyone else that have seats further back. I think it is OK to switch with someone if it is agreed between those two people and if it doesn't become a disruption, such as a single switch during intermission. But taking this to an extreme, one could abuse this by buying one front row seat and rotating 10 different people in there over the course of a show. That is distracting and takes away enjoyment from everyone around that seat. The key here is to be respectful and discreet. But to squeeze a 2-for-1 deal in there while expecting most everyone else to abide by the general rule of one per seat isn't right. Naturally there is far greater value attached to seats in the front. And the response by legitimate ticket holders for these that feel they are getting ripped off by people that cause disruptions or sit or frequently move where they haven't paid for is legit and proportionate to the "value" being lost by that behavior. Isn't that what Alex was getting pissed off about with a front row fan at the Irvine show in the "When Alex Gets Mad" thread??

This vid seems a better view of the trouble area. Note that the girl in the earings to the left of the guy in the '30' shirt seems to appear to his left periodically from time to time. Maybe she is the seat shifter/beer spiller/CTTH interrupter.. Check 1:49 you see her crowd out this dude... The irony is seeing Alex all tense for this show and Neil looks like he is having a great time

This is just great. The Limelight vid shows Alex looking really ticked off at 2:50 as well. Never seen Alex look so pissed. Whoever this lady was at the Irvine show, she is going to cause Rush to quit touring! Because you know if Alex starts complaining about it, Neil will be right there backing him up and then it is 2-to-1 in favor of quitting!