Rush on tour

Tour started last night. Setlist is at Rush.com.

A couple of minor spoilers, for those who do not wish to look:

- The show still is quite lengthy, and worth your money.
- Still some weird song choices/dead spots, akin to their insistence on playing "Secret Touch" or five consecutive new tunes last time around.
- Jacob's Ladder, despite what Alex Lifeson said in an interview, did NOT make the list this time. Maybe next year.

 

Gotta see if I can break to catch a show. Big concert date conflicts here ...

The Globe and Mail put a headline on a recent piece on the band that will make many a head explode on this board:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/music/oh-what-a-rush/article1592653/

My favorite excerpt:

It’s not in the film, but a line from Rolling Stone magazine’s David Fricke, in his review of the Rush album Permanent Waves, is often used to explain the band’s spiteful critics. “It's easy to criticize what you don't understand,” Fricke wrote in 1980, “which at least partly explains why Canadian power trio Rush have suffered so much at the hands of rock journalists since the band's debut album in 1974. Critics find bassist-lead singer Geddy Lee's stratospheric wails and drummer Neil Peart's lyrical excursions into philosophy, science fiction and fantasy easy targets, and usually dismiss Rush as a head-banger's Genesis.…”

Interesting parallel ... a headbanger's Genesis? Really?

 

Thanks for the link, Sam. I liked this bit from the sidebar charting Rush through the years:

A headbanger's Genesis? Well, as a fan of both bands (like Sam Mills 51), I'm not sure I buy that. Musically, you might have an argument. There's no doubt Rush is heavier and has stayed heavier in its sound. Tony Banks loves his keyboards, and has from the start, while for Geddy Lee I believe they're a necessary evil.

Both bands have tremendous chops. And it would really be splitting hairs to compare Steve Hackett and Alex Lifeson -- two unbelievable guitarists.

However, lyrically the bands are very different. Neil Peart writes relatively straightforward lyrics that, sometimes subtly, push his philosophy and occasionally his politics. Fans can easily understand what he's trying to say, agree with it or not.

Peter Gabriel (we'll use him as the Genesis lyricist, since I like their early albums best) put forth a byzantine labyrinth of words whose meaning open to interpretation. Fans could see what they wanted to see in there.

 

So The Globe and Mail is now the arbiter of cool?

 

Genesis was fantasy and usually humor. Rush has a sense of humor, but with Neil Peart writing the lyrics it's not bubbling through to the surface.

Tony Banks is the backbone of Genesis' timbre. Geddy Lee enjoys the synth stuff, but Alex wanted a little bit more of his work to not be as overshadowed by the synth direction Rush starting taking with "Moving Pictures" and "Signals" which became full-blown by "Grace Under Pressure." But comparing Lee to Banks on synths is as funny as trying to turn the tables comparing the bass.

Both are musically superior, and both wrote lyrics that were more than just P&P or the Mating Ritual. Genesis almost went off in that direction with "Invisible Touch" but went a little more prog with "We Can't Dance.

Rush's politics is a little more subtle with Peart piecing it in whereas Genesis made no secret with tracks like "Land of Confusion." And only a British group could take a look at televangelism from an outside point of view and poke fun at it with "Jesus He Knows Me."

Genesis has a little more subtle sound, but who knows what could have been. Peter Gabriel left, and people thought the band was finished. Steve Hackett left two albums later - without question, two of the best albums mastered - and no one seemed to realize that he couldn't be replaced.

Meanwhile, John Rutsey left Rush after the group's first album and in came some guy named Peart. Dunno if that one worked. Genesis got it right with its fourth percussionist. So there's a similarity, right?

Don't really see the comparison the writer did, though. It's much more than a difference in a heavier sound.

 

I think he's simply saying they're both prog bands, but Rush rocked harder.
I suspect you're reading too much into it.

 

The comparisons between bands are often amusing.

I forget which Rush record it was (Power Windows?) but the Rolling Stone review said that Rush was great, now that they were sounding more like the Police.

 

I've seen Rush twice, and really hope to catch them when they come here in September.
But I'm still a bit of a newb... so for those that did look at the setlist... and without posting spoilers, when was the last time they played the song that's the third song after Vital Signs in Set 2?

 

I like it myself, but it seems like they blew their "Crazy Rarities" list on the last tour. No one expected Digital Man, Circumstances, Entre Nous or A Passage to Bangkok.

This time, the rarities are a bit less impressive, except for the one they announced before the tour. I'm excited (especially for the Power Windows song), but man I wish Jacob's Ladder had made it.

 

FWIW I was walking on Hollywood Blvd the other day and they were installing a Rush star...I suppose a ceremony is coming soon.

 

Ditto that, without the middle ages. I chose Aerosmith. It wasn't a tough choice, but I do like Rush.

 

That's probably correct. And there's a grain of truth to that, but while people aren't the least bit interested in the obscure levels of stuff I Should Coco and I went into, it's still a little off.

The only serious link is the fact that Alex Lifeson was influenced by Steve Hackett. And that's a great thing.

Piotr, the comparisons can certainly be amusing, but sometimes they're much too general, especially if it comes from a supposed rock music publication of repute such as Rolling Stone.