On the bad side I just found out Neil Peart is dead. There goes my hero.
Yeah
Fell off the wagon last night and watched live concert vid till the wee hours.
When the era comes when rock and roll has shot its bolt and has become the domain of enthusiasts of obscura and academic musicologists I am pretty sure RUSH will be on the short list of bands that people have actually heard of. It is something of an acquired taste, demanding much of the listener rather than spoonfeeding pap. Not the most accessible, but with an undeniable brilliance and variety that will stand the test of time.
For me the thing that cements them as all timers is their manifest dedication to their craft. RUSH shows were a spectacle rarely paralleled, and their effort to produce a true SHOW went above and beyond. Many years ago they built a tractor trailer mobile power system that allowed them to take tours to remote Canadian towns lacking the infrastructure to otherwise support such endeavor. In more recent decades they toured with more prepared material, props, staff, and interstitial video (their intro and break video productions are great by the way) than they needed. Every night was different. In short, they spent waaay more money on
US than they had to.
While there was a rough period before Lee overcame his denial around aging and upped his vocal prep game, generally their level of preparation and production were truly first rate.
Peart, as most of you will know, was very much a drummers drummer, earning widespread respect among other practitioners of his craft for his accuracy, creativity and stamina, unquestionably one of the premier exponents of rock percussion we have yet seen. It is rare that I wax poetic around the passing of a musician, but this guy was special.
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