Music Monday: RUSH!

Welcome to Music Monday! Today’s blog is all about RUSH! We saw RUSH perform at the Gibson Ampitheatre in Universal City, CA last Monday June 22nd. It was an AMAZING concert!

I first heard of Rush in the 7th grade when MOVING PICTURES came out. I fell in love with that album. See, I started my love affair with prog rock at a tender young age! LOL! 🙂 I quickly devoured their other albums, including the totally awesome 2112!

(Keep reading after the jump to find out more about our time at the RUSH Time Machine Tour show!)

I was living in Avon, CT in the early ’80s when RUSH toured for their SIGNALS album. I was in the 8th grade at that point. My friend bought us tickets but couldn’t go at the last minute. So my DAD had to take me. Yikes! Fortunately, we had a BLAST. The RUSH Signals show that I saw was on April 1, 1983 at the Hartford Civic Center.

I found a great website that lists all the tour dates and set lists and even ticket photos of RUSH concerts here: http://www.2112.net/

So thanks to this website for providing a photo of a ticket from the show I went to way back in 1983!

The set list from the 1983 show was: Intro (Three Stooges theme first used)
; The Spirit of Radio; 
Tom Sawyer
; Free Will
; Digital Man; 
Subdivisions
; Vital Signs
; The Camera Eye (abbreviated; dropped from Germany dates)
; Closer To The Heart; 
Chemistry (dropped beginning 5/6/83); 
The Analog Kid; Broon’s Bane; 
The Trees; 
Red Barchetta; 
The Weapon (Count Floyd intro); 
New World Man
; Limelight
; Countdown; 
Encore: 2112 (Overture/Temples of Syrinx)
; Xanadu
 La Villa Strangiato; 
In The Mood; 
YYZ
; Drum Solo; 
YYZ

Believe it or not, I never saw RUSH again. It doesn’t make sense – I’m a huge music fan and have gone to see bands multiple times. But for some reason, every time RUSH performed live, I had some awful schedule conflict and could not go.

And then I recently caught the RUSH VH-1 documentary, BEYOND THE LIGHTED STAGE on the airplane during a long flight from Boston to LA over the holidays. (Website is here: http://www.vh1.com/shows/vh1_rock_docs/episode.jhtml?episodeID=169003) I was RIVETED. What an amazing documentary! It got me all fired up about RUSH again!

And then… out of the blue… a friend had extra tickets to RUSH’s show at the Gibson last week. I emailed her immediately to get the tickets. WOW!

Their TIME MACHINE TOUR features three movie vignettes that are hilarious. Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart do a great job acting, too! It even featured the actors Paul Rudd and Jason Segel from the movie I LOVE YOU, MAN.

Here are some pictures from the show…

Here is what the Gibson looked like right before the show started…

The movie began to play… to see the movie, go to this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLY6IZyociU

Then RUSH came out on stage and started with the Spirit of Radio! Check out this video of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPQJoCEC5GQ

To see some of this concert, check out this video on youtube of “Red Barchetta”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iezYW-R3JvQ

As always, Neil Peart did a 96-minute drum solo. Kidding. It was really about 10 minutes long. And it was BRILLIANT. Here’s a great shot of the beautiful drum kit that was designed along with the rest of the steampunk sci fi look of the Time Machine stage set:

To catch some of Neil’s drum solo, go here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnOy1LwPX5k

They ended the show with a final video featuring the actors from I LOVE YOU, MAN:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdr-rk1wIUU

For all things official on RUSH, go here: http://www.rush.com/

Anyway, it was awesome to see RUSH again, even if it was 28 years later! Better late than never, huh? 🙂

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Thanks for checking out today’s Music Monday blog on RUSH! Stay tune for tomorrow’s TV Tuesday. Until then, Happy Writing! WRITE LIKE YOU MEAN IT! 🙂