Rush: Classic or Dud?

Rush Rock Like No One Ex-Cept May-Be Pla-Ce-Bo Neil Peart, Wow, He's Good.

you and my spacey invade

ers get by on you

"Non. Vous etes Le Chien d'Neige." <------------

"Les pommes frites! Mon dieu!!!"

"Begin the day with a friendly voice/A companion, unobtrusive/ Plays the song that's so elusive/And the magic music makes your morning mood"

Dud for that alone.

x0x0

Are you describing your personal development or that of the band? Because, if anything, the band got less and less showy as the years went on. "Counterparts" (the last one I heard) was even "grunge" influenced, allegedly. Rush was my favorite band all throughout high school.

Guitar mag gruel
Less smart than it wants to be
Pretty harmless now

Hey, gimme a break, I've never written a haiku before.

'Tom Sawyer' plays through art class

Turn that shit off now!

*( I reluctantly but freely admit that both Tom Sawyer and YYZ are both decent songs.)

da BA BA BA BA da-da

BA da BA BA BA...

subdivisions rocks
which counters all that i've been
told about this band

the lyrics are too
obvious but what can you
expect from hosers?

http://www.clevernet.on.ca/pierre_trudeau/images/pic_trudeau_beer.jpg

DUD thereafter

Space-jazz-rock-tronic
If rednecks didn't like them
They'd be Kraftwerk-hip

Geddyvox

Less boy or girl than
Alien; Precise
Enunciation

Great band, I think.

I think the reason it's so fun to watch other people play Peart's parts is that they are so precise and specific. There's not a ton of room to add your own personal touches, the joy of achievement is in replication. So whether you're Taylor Hawkins or Danny Carey, the challenge of getting it right is as much about memory, discipline and efficiency as skill, which is the tribute Peart deserves. I, too, trust they'll at least try and get it right. I like that it's a relatively limited tour. Did they mention venues

I'll give Portnoy this much, he posted an enthusiastic message about the reunion and called Nilles awesome.

Why are we assuming bad things about Portnoy, seems like a really nice guy in interviews

Also this so called sexist backlash from the comments, honestly much more supportive of the move and trusting in Alex and Geddy's judgment than I think people are assuming

I can't help but think about poor Tim Alexander who mastered all these parts when Primus did the Farewell to Kings tribute tour and then promptly retired from drumming

xxpost My deep-seated musical disdain for Dream Theater and all its subsequent works is...deep. But it's not like he's a fucking MAGA dolt like Petrucci, I grant.

And your other point is sound, I've seen more comments around *about* the perceived ills of the fanbase than actually ills from the fanbase, and said comments are coming from a misunderstanding about who actually likes Rush that's pretty profound. Hell, the event Sunday night where they revealed the news was introduced by Donna Halper, she's the key reason why the band broke out big, pretty much!

Geddy no longer being able to sing the high parts is maybe an improvement, and not a detriment

Portnoy seems like a decent dude, happy to help out other acts etc. I hate his style of drumming though (imagine Lars with jazz chops and still no swing) and think it would have been awful for Rush, he seems like he might have been an obvious choice too so bullet dodged. Phew!

I've seen more comments around *about* the perceived ills of the fanbase than actually ills from the fanbase, and said comments are coming from a misunderstanding about who actually likes Rush that's pretty profound.

very otm

Mike Mangini was a much better drummer for Dream Theater than Mike Portnoy, while still being a Dream Theater drummer.

The Drumeo channel on YouTube has a series of challenges where a drummer makes up a drum part to a song they've never heard before - only the drum tracks have been removed. Most of these are great: Kenny Aronoff hears Yes for the first time, Stewart Copeland hears Limp Bizkit for the first time, Mars Volta drummer Philo Tsoungui hears Rush's 'Limelight' for the first time...

But one of the best is Mike Portnoy hears Taylor Swift for the first time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHl_gsd0OR0

kind of like what he did with taylor's bridge tbh

I don't like Dream Theater at all but Portnoy seems like a good dude. fwiw I thought Steve Vai was the wrong guy for BEAT but that wound up working quite well, maybe Portnoy would be interesting here

I was considering trying for tickets, but you know what? Fuck that, they're going to be soooooo expensive, and I've got nine months to see if any better options pop up.

lol, saw this exchange on the Rush reddit:

Pizzahut600
MSG Aug 3rd lower bowl 101 row 12, $500
Ticket in account already, transfers today

rsquared1987
6m ago
Oh shit, your plans changed that quickly, and now you can't go? I'm sorry to hear that

Pizzahut600
OP
5m ago
No, just trying to make a flip tbh. Paid $390

Raichu4u
•
2m ago
Eat a bag of dicks

I've read a few defenses of Slayer's "Angel of Death" (if it needs defending at all, though I get it) saying that as gruesome as the lyrics are, it was not necessarily commonplace at the time for the Holocaust to be taught in schools, and that's how some people first learned about the extent of the horror. Dunno how accurate or common that is, but "Red Sector A" got there a few years earlier and was a lot less of an exercise in blunt force trauma. Which ... yeah, I mean, it's Slayer, it's not subtle, but I thought Peart handled the subject really well in the Rush song. Dunno who else was even writing about the Holocaust before that.

I've posted before about Peart's humanism, and there are actually a lot of examples of him explicitly calling out racism and prejudice and praising tolerance and inclusion. In "Witch Hunt" ("Quick to judge, quick to anger/Slow to understand/Ignorance and prejudice/And fear, walk hand in hand"), in "Territories" ("Better the pride that resides/In a citizen of the world/Than the pride that divides/When a colorful rag is unfurled"), in the clunky but heartfelt "Nobody's Hero" ("I knew he was different in his sexuality/I went to his parties as a straight minority/It never seemed a threat to my masculinity/He only introduced me to a wider reality"). Not a lot of bands as forthright in addressing this stuff.

That's so well stated, and I agree. Peart was as keen an observer of the world and the human condition as I have ever seen. The ultimate seeker.

I've only been loosely following various news blurbs and whatnot, but it looks like the guys have confirmed they will have a keyboard player/singer on tour, Loren Gold, who has played for the Who. They also confirmed there will be a UK leg of the tour next spring (2027). Found it interesting, from a practical standpoint, that Geddy and Alex went to a health clinic for two weeks in January just to make sure they can physically do what they need to do, especially Alex (who has had a few health things); I imagine plenty of older performers do the same thing. They've also confirmed the shows will be two hour-long sets with an intermission.

The new Terry Brown mix of Grace Under Pressure is breaking my brain. Lacks the icy spaciousness of the original, sacrificing all nuance for thudding bass. "Hey, let's make this album sound more like Vapour Trails." It pretty much confirms that he was in no way the right guy to produce it in the first place. Big fat thumbs-down for this one.

yeah I don't like it, I also sort of hate the idea of trying to take albums "out of their era", most music is very much of its time and better for it

seeing the new AI generated cover art def gave me a bad feeling about this

thanks for the heads up. I love this record and wouldn't change a thing, so the fact that it is noticeably different is a big red flag for me.

xpost - yeah that cover are is horrible yuck, always loved the original art

the new cover art on these reissues is criminal. I actually bagged on the Hemispheres one on FB and got a thumbs up on my comment from Alex Lifeson himself.

(might have been farewell to kings, can't remember...I do remember I left the comment several years ago and got the reaction from him very recently)

all the new cover art makes me think of an AI that was trained on the cover of Presto

I love Presto, but, lol.

Is the GUP reissue AI? Hugh Syme has been doing this stuff for ages now. I can't find a straight answer.

I dunno, whatever Syme is doing/using now is ugly and lame. Guy used to have some great arresting visuals and this shit all looks the same.

xpost I saw something on the Rush subreddit that suggested it was known he's been working with AI, but wasn't real specific

it's a parallax, u dig?

Now this is indeed full of odd stuff

https://www.rush-oddities.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVw-4L59Tw0

They sounded great tonight!

Foooommooooooooo

she's got it down

geddy can't really sing that stuff anymore, but \m/ anyway

also just from a PR standpoint having a fantastic female drummer go nuts is a savvy way to go on without neil

still think they should have changed their name to RUS(H) tho

geddy can't really sing that stuff anymore, but \m/ anyway

I think the 10 year break from touring saved his voice and gave them some fresh energy. Overall, they sound great and Anika kills it

yea Anika was great, can't wait to hear what she sounds like on the proggier stuff

Geddy sounds alright, nowhere near as bad as I feared, though he does kinda sound like that video of He-Man doing "Whats Up" by the 4 Non-Blondes

I saw the last Peart tour and he definitely sounds better on the high notes then he did on that tour.

but yeah I mean that early stuff, most 20 years olds would struggle let alone a guy of his age.

I wonder if it was a conscious decision to debut with a song Peart doesn't play on?

I think it was a full-circle thing. Starting over again, so why not album one, track one?

Anika really puts some force into those fills, wow. It's gonna be fun hearing her play this summer.

yeah you're right, also the last tour did a reverse chronological order so they ended with stuff from the first album so there's a symmetry there

https://i.redd.it/itiqgp9f4hrg1.jpeg

game recognize game

Tony looking for some hot bass tips

it would be super cool if they brought along a female singer to help Geddy out. there's gotta be a ton of women out there who can belt the shit outta Rush tunes and Geddy is prob known better as a bass god anyway, I think people would understand, also I think it would genuinely sound incredible

Yeah, his voice was rough enough the last few times I saw them, that I'm not really eager to revisit, as much as I love them. I think it's cool they found a new drummer that can pull off those crazy parts, but I'm also not over Neil's death to the extent where I can really experience Rush in any sustained format for now.

I suspect tickets are going to be so expensive it won't really be a choice

No need to suspect, your hunch is established fact.

ha yeah I believe it, I just had to come to terms in the last few days that I'm never going to see Springsteen :/