Pariah Dogs and Wandering Madmen

I saw Rush at the ACC on September 19th and 22nd. I went with S, another man's wife. It's okay. He knows. Neither of our spouses are Rush fans, so we have a standing date for dinner and a show every time the tour comes to Toronto.

My wife, V, is obsessive about accumulating Jack points. It paid off. The morning of the Wednesday show, I learned that she won tickets to the Saturday show. She was very happy for me and very proud of her radio contest prowess and that her obsessive compulsiveness had a positive outcome. The seats were in section 108, about centre ice and fifteen rows up. My seats on Wednesday were in section 101 at the back of the arena, nine rows up with a direct stage view. On Wednesday I watched the video screens a lot. On Saturday I was close enough to watch the band. S joined me for the second show. She wore her Presto tour shirt. My Farewell To Kings shirt hasn't fit since the Presto tour, so I was out of luck, vintage-shirt-wise. We had a blast.

On stage behind Geddy Lee were three ovens the size of large vending machines. They had glass paneled fronts and were filled with rotisserie chickens. I love their humour and inner-weirdness. They are three guys who would surely be misfits in any other situation.

Sometime in the '90s I stopped paying attention to lyrics. If a song had tragic or idiotic lyrics and a beat, I would bop to it. I just got tired of bothering with lyrics because most of them were fluff. In the last year I started paying attention again, at least enough to notice which were worth it. I think Alanis making fun of Fergie might have been the trigger.

I looked through Rush lyrics to find a title for this post. My god, most of them are depressing. They're very well crafted, but most deal with struggle, conflict, and oppression. Neil has issues. I don't remember that from when I was an obsessive fan in the '70's and '80's. I remember finding the lyrics intelligent and insightful. But I was at an age then when struggling, conflict, and being oppressed were standard issue and were badges of honour. Even a song like The Spirit of Radio that is upbeat and energetic, lyrics included for the most part, concludes with:

One likes to believe in the freedom of music
But glittering prizes and endless compromises
Shatter the illusion of integrity

And yet I still feel good, get a rush (sorry) and bop to it whenever I hear it. How do they do that?

I noticed an interesting thing while reading dozens of Rush lyrics: the music of their songs gets much of its complexity from the way the lyrics are written. The rhyme, the meter, the length of lines and stanzas. The music has to be written to accommodate all that.

The show was three hours long with a twenty minute break. Not bad for a bunch of old guys, much of the audience included. They had plenty of lights, lasers, pyrotechnics, and videos. It was a great show. They kind of have to have all of that going on because the three of them are so busy creating all that sound with their hands and feet that sometimes they don't have the freedom to be animated on stage.

A Bob & Doug McKenzie video introduced The Larger Bowl. A South Park video introduced Tom Sawyer. Other videos featuring band members were shown to open the concert, return from the intermission, and close the show after the encore.

The people with floor seats stood for the whole show. The people in the stands stood for the first three songs, for favourite songs, and for the three-song encore.

Once during each set, a crew member came on stage in a chef's hat and apron to baste the chickens. When this happened at the show on Saturday, eight guys in row 1, centre floor, put on chef's hats. It cracked Alex and Geddy up!

Big Al's Babes are a bunch of Barbie doll groupies around the gear at the base of Alex's mic stand. A search landed me at 2112.net which explained that roadies set up the babes so they hold Post-It signs that say things like: My Mom Thinks Your Hot!, I'm Only Doing This To Pay For College, Freebird!, and I Thought ZZ Top Had Beards.

Rush has always attracted fans who are musicians. Their music is usually complex, requiring precision and technique. They also attract individualists and independent thinkers. Their lyrics are smart and thought provoking and generally deal with protagonists who go against the grain. They have occasionally had songs make the charts, but they have never set out to write commercial songs. A lot of their appeal comes from the fact that they have completely disregarded music industry axioms. The rebellion and nonconformity are part of the attraction for their huge core following.

The excitement of the shows re-sparked my enthusiasm, so I started poking around the Internet to see what was out there about the band. There are a lot of fan sites and picture galleries. Wikipedia has a lot of information and it was there that I found a link to Durrell Scott Bowman's PhD. dissertation Permanent Change: Rush, Musicians’ Rock, and the Progressive Post-Counterculture. How cool is that? I'm only 25 pages into the 331 page document, but so far, it's a great read. Thanks Durrell!