Rush: Clockwork Angels Tour (Nov/2012)

Rush – November 28th – American Airlines Arena – Dallas, TX

Ok so we will end this blog entry the way we began – Discussing old friends and their dedication to Classic Rock. If you recall I earlier I mentioned about the guy who sat behind me my first year of college who introduced me to all of his High School buddies who I went on to form lasting friendships with them collectively as well as individually. Well none maybe more so than my friend Patrick –
When I met Patrick he was wearing a Rush t-shirt, he’s an obsessive from the start and the first time he came to my house he made me an offer for my Permanent Waves poster that, with his combined enthusiasm, I just couldn’t refuse.
Just like the others, Patrick and I are still great friends, and we are still rawking, and proudly so is Rush. I was looking forward to seeing Patrick and the band tonight – as well as it being a special night as they were filming it for an upcoming live DVD –

I get to the arena hoping to find Patrick and like as if we had planned it, I passed by his seat and joined me at my mine which was graciously in the third freaking row. My seat was one from the aisle and the rest of the row was empty so I assumed that I must be in the comp section – and since that was a singular seat next to me, I told Patrick I was confident that no one would be sitting there and to stay put and that’s exactly what happend. I was able to largely upgrade him and we were able to see the show together.

Ok Rush is epic. This isn’t a revelation, of course. The legendary progressive rock band carved its niche long ago by finding the ideal balance between high concept themes paired with grand musical flourishes and the straightforward, visceral energy of good old rock ‘n’ roll. Today, nearly four decades after its 1974 debut album, Rush remains an all-encompassing force, and this show was sold out.
Not long after we are seated the lights go down and the intro film for this tour which we have not seen yet begins as the band takes the stage we hear the opening synthesizer riff to Subdivisions

Song selection is certainly important during a Rush concert given that the group has 20 studio albums to pull from. So it’s always fascinating to note where they will focus their attention.

As the ’70s gave way to the ’80s, they introduced synthesizers and moved away from the multi-chapter suites that defined the earlier records. This being the 30th anniversary of that era the setlist focused heavily on that period.

But what continues to be paramount is this group’s inspired longevity. Their new LP Clockwork Angels is one of the most inspired Rush albums period.
And they are very proud of it – As proof of this, the show (a whopping three hours, sliced in half by a 20-minute intermission) the second half of the show they played the entire record and were joined by a string ensemble, marking the first time they have had anyone join them on stage.

As I mentioned a film crew was taping the performance for an upcoming concert DVD. The Phoenix gig three days ago also got filmed for posterity.
Patrick and I were so close we have to be in it and it was neat as the camera operator walked past us, it was our old buddy Dick Saunders giving us the thumbs up. Of course attending any concert is never completely douchebag free – Patrick and I had been enjoying having the whole row to ourselves but during the second half of the show an employee suddenly escorted a group of guys to fill in the slots. One of them, looking like a cast member of Duck Dynasty and so drunk he can barely stand, of course is now seated next to me.
For some Rush will always represent a more 70’s stoner vibe instead of the nerdy fans of today – he was one of the stoner guys, probably in his late 50s.
He was so smashed that he started leaning on me and then began to periodically fall on me.
I told the younger guy he was with to switch seats with me or I’d have him thrown out – This guy thought himself a comedian until I told him I’d smash his nose in and then have them both thrown out.
Then, though we are on the third row, this fat guy in front of us decided to stand on his chair blocking our view and the sun. I grabbed him and yanked him down to a smatter of grateful cheers behind me.It did nothing to take away from what a special night this was, for me, for Patrick, our friendship, for all the Rush fans, that these guys are still rocking and rocking this hard.
Simply put, Rush is epic.Setlist –Set One:Subdivisions
The Big Money
Force Ten
Grand Designs
The Body Electric
Territories
The Analog Kid
Bravado
Where’s My Thing?
Far Cry

Set II w/  Clockwork Angels String Ensemble

Caravan
Clockwork Angels
The Anarchist
Carnies
The Wreckers
Headlong Flight
Halo Effect
Seven Cities of Gold
Wish Them Well
The Garden

Dreamline
Red Sector A
YYZ
The Spirit of Radio

Encore:

Tom Sawyer
2112 Part I: Overture
2112 Part II: The Temples of Syrinx
2112 Part VII: Grand Finale

After the show we were still high from it and taking it all in and went outside to smoke before heading to our seperate cars. While out there, I ran into an ex-girlfriend I hadn’t seen in a long time who is also obviously a Rush fan. We discovered we were parked near each other and had a nice talk catching up and talking about the show.

Meeting Neil Peart at Adventures of Power DVD Release Party to Benefit Vh1’s Save The Music Foundation (Jan/2011)

With the unthinkable passing of legendary Rush drummer & one of the greatest literary minds Neil Peart, I wanted to bring back this classic tale.
We will be doing a full tribute to Neil & Rush on our TrickyKid Radio Podcast in the coming weeks.
This originally appeared on this site in January of 2011.

I did it – I somehow actually did it – I MET NEIL PEART & I don’t mean like I passed him at the mall or leaned on a table he was sitting behind, like me and that dude spoke. At length, at a bar. It was awesome!

VH1 Save the Music Foundation Auction Benefit/Adventures of Power DVD Release Party (w/ The Honey Bros featuring Adrian Grenier, Ari Gold & Claude Coleman Jr.) – January 27th – Bar Lubitsch – Hollywood, CA

A friend of ours, filmmaker Ari Gold, who is also in a band called the Honey Brothers with some other friends of ours (including actor Adrian Grenier of Entourage…and yes they named Jeremy Piven’s character after him) made a movie called Adventures of Power about a Rush-obsessed air drummer who goes on to win an air-drumming competition against his nemesis (played by Grenier) and thus saving the world. A fun movie with a positive message, the idea was also to bring awareness to people who have dreams of playing music but without the resources to obtain the instruments. So Ari being the bad ass that he is, partnered with VH1 and their Save the Music Foundation to have a benefit for them to coincide with the DVD release of the film.
Since the theme is drums, the partnership was able to secure amazing memorabilia donations from some of the biggest names in the world of drumming including Rush’s Neil Peart (who also makes a cameo in the film) who is arguably the most recognizable name in the history of drumming. Other big names like Lars Ulrich, Terry Bozzio and even Ringo Starr all made donations, which now was bringing national attention, thus now making the DVD release party/VH1 Benefit Auction a major high-profile event.
Regardless of Ween‘s cult status, Claude Coleman Jr. is recognized globally as one of the top drummer’s in the world. He would be a natural choice for participation even without our previous friendship with Ari, but with that, and that Ween was touring the West Coast and the event was on a night off made it a no-brainer. To really put the event over the top, the Honey Brothers were going to perform and Claude was going to join them.

Our history with their camp goes back aways – their bass player Dan Green is an old friend who used to be in Claude’s solo outfit Amandla, as well as the band Kilsy who are old Trickykid alumni. I have met all the other guys several times in the past, including Ari’s twin brother Ethan, who was also going to be sitting in tonight. It had been awhile so I was looking to forward to a really fun night.

I meet with the event’s coordinator, Susan, who is awesome (we had been emailing non-stop to get everything organized so it was nice to finally meet) while the band is soundchecking. They even rehearsed one of Claude’s songs (but it sounded like shit haha) so this was going to be a special evening for sure.
This was becoming a huge deal with national coverage and she had setup a press conference before the place opened to the public and we went over Claude’s involvement in that as well.
Their was a bit of downtime between the soundcheck and the press conference so we all just sat around and bullshitted and drank awesome Lithuanian lager that this place had stocked, while Ari was getting into character.

While sitting there watching a few of the people come in and out I see a familiar face, and almost stood straight up when I spotted who had to be Neil Hamburger. As a committed Faith No More fan (he MC’d their reunion tour last year as well as put out a record on Mike Patton’s label) I recognized him instantly and was wondering what he was doing here when Adrian tells me that he’s MC’n the nights festivities! Can this night get any cooler? Absolutely, stay tuned.
I see someone else I think I recognize, this stunning blonde woman, with impeccable style, who just screamed movie star, kept walking by but I couldn’t place her.
Soon after I take Claude to the press event and I’m seeing the donations for the first time which are really freaking cool. I’m a total Rush nerd too so seeing Peart’s snare drum from the Snakes & Arrows tour next to Bozzio’s cymbals was a real treat.

Here is a good shot of Adrian and Ari with Shoshannah Stern (who plays Ari/Power’s love interest in the film) and Terry Bozzio.

We wrap that up and everyone from the press event is starting to socialize at the bar, which is in the same room where the performance will be. Someone tells me that Neil Peart is stuck in traffic but will be here soon, that I of course laugh off as a joke, as in its one thing that he donated and was in the freaking movie but for someone notoriously unsocial as Peart, and to come all the way from Canada no less, you would have taken it as a joke too.
No sooner than I had time to make a joke of my own I turn around there he is – Neil freaking Peart – the one dude that everybody wants to meet and most have not. I kept on laughing, I had to, this was absurd, his inaccessibility is legendary and people’s reaction to coming into contact with him are punchlines that transcend the band’s music and now I was having that moment haha.
But there he was, just sitting at the bar having a glass of wine and eating hor De oeuvres with his wife (some fan I am, I had completely forgotten that he had re-married and moved to California years ago..but that’s probably a good thing :). And soon we were joined by Terry Bozzio, shit was getting hectic.

I relaxed a bit when I saw Claude, who is always cooler than cool (the unflappable Mr. Coleman) fanboy out a bit too haha.
Glen (Ween keyboardist) is a huge Rush fan, and Claude was trying to get something signed for him. I’m standing beside Peart when Claude introduces himself and he was cool at first and he was even familiar with Ween, which I thought was exceptionally cool, but when he saw that Claude wanted to get something signed, he wasn’t rude, but he was letting people interrupt without bothering to get back to him. During one of these interruptions Claude leaned over and sings “I’m a fucking fanboooooy” and I almost start pissing my pants laughing.
I was giving Claude shit, making the obvious jokes, but incredulously, somehow, the mythology of Peart’s recursiveness had miraculously missed Claude, and he wasn’t expecting it to go down like that at all. I kept on him like “How could you not know this??!!” and we had a few laughs.
That’s how large this guy is, here we are at an event of the elite and all of the other drummers were wanting this dude’s attention, and think about it, if you are a drummer, you totally grew up with this dude as your idol, I don’t care what kind of music you play.

During the press and photo ops, we were joined by some other awesome contributors to the benefit, the girls from Garfunkel and OatesKate Micucci and Riki Lindhome.

I’m a fan of theirs and have had a major crush on Kate forever (you have probably seen her on Scrubs and Bored to Death) so it was funny that I was probably more nervous meeting them than Neil Peart haha. They were the coolest.

After the press stuff and before the show started, I was sitting at a different area next to Neil and his wife, and actually got to have a brief, but nice conversation. Not as fan to idol, but just two dudes sitting at a bar. Not a word about music (we actually talked about cooking).
When the show started, I made my way to our table that had been reserved for us, that Terry Bozzio joined us at. I don’t know how much longer Neil stayed because I didn’t see him again after that, but I had to laugh that I was finishing a conversation with Neil Peart to go have another one with Terry Bozzio. Good times.

The show starts and Neil Hamburger gets up and does his act which is great – it was perfect for this crowd because if you are in on the joke its not as effective, and admittedly their were quite a few starfuckers in the house that had no idea who he was and were not ready for him and he went right after them. Awesome.

The Honey Brothers run through a few songs before calling Claude up to join them. He jammed on a bunch of their tunes before taking the mic and leading the band through his Amandla tune Little Jimmy.

It was much better than at soundcheck, I think mainly because of the audience and the breakdown sing-a-long in the middle of the song.
The place was uncomfortably packed but thankfully we had a private table up front that I would normally feel silly about but couldn’t help but be grateful for as I could look out and see people smashed together.
One of the people I spotted was the blonde woman from before that I just knew I had seen in something. I wave to her, and she looked miserable in the middle of the crush of people so I motioned to security to let her thru so she could join us.
And I was right, I didn’t ask her, but we started talking and she said she was working on a movie and had to be up early. After more discussion I learn that her name is Lorielle New and I had most likely seen her in Grindhouse.

She was cool and I enjoyed hanging out with her. Some people next to us weren’t really paying any attention to the show and were those people that just take pictures of themselves all night. I obliged them a few times and then they wanted me in the photo and asked that I hand the camera to the gentlemen to my left to take our pic. It was Neil Hamburger! – No fucking way, this was the last dude I was gonna say “Hey, I know theirs a show going on, but do you mind taking our picture so we can make the duckface with the peace sign?”.
Lorielle wanted a picture of us so I asked him for her, and when he handed the camera back to me, I told him how much I liked his act. He seemed surprised that at this very Hollywood event that someone would be in on the joke with him. I mentioned all the Faith No More shows I caught last year that I had seen him perform at, and he seemed literally taken aback. We had a great talk and he was speaking out of the Neil Hamburger character and telling me all about his history with Faith No More. Could this night get any cooler?

After the show I wanted to catch up with Dan as I hadn’t seem him in awhile and we are sitting around screaming laughing, Dan loves my stories and I had a few of them to tell. Sitting at the table with us was the ultimate nerd dream-team of Candace Bailey (Attack of the Show) and Aviva Farber (Superbad). I didn’t even recognize them and just thought they were friends of Dan. Apparently Candace and Shoshannah are best friends. They were really fun and we had a great laugh.

So now it was time to load everyone (and everything) up and out, and head to the after-party that was down the street. We had the equipment and the precious memorabilia to think of and way too many people for one car. My rental had a hatchback so we put Claude and Dan’s stuff in there and everyone climbed into two cars and we headed down the road.
We get to Jones’s Bar and I learn later that’s its kind of a paparazzi spot. I’ve never been around that sort of thing so I wouldn’t know.
We had a great evening (and a great meal) and I met alot of really cool people. Ari’s staff was the shit and were a blast to hang with. Alisha and Tiffany (Randol who I had met previously in NYC) held the whole thing together with Susan and it was great to relax and enjoy a fun night after all the work put into it.
Sam had dropped his date off and joined us later when just the core group was left as I met another part of Ari’s crew, this crazy gal Esme. I thought she was the floorshow, she was hilarious and had Sam and I pissing ourselves. A quick reply and fast retort that girl is. She had worked and lived in Dallas for a year working on the show Prison Break and even knew some of the same people Sam and I do, so we had great time.

Rush’s Time Machine Tour (2010)

Rush – Starplex Amphitheater – Dallas, TX – September 26th

Editor’s Note: – Much of this entry first appeared in my article for Jam Magazine here

This tour is unusual to the normal “touring patterns” that this band follows. You will see a methodical pattern emerging throughout this review of the band’s work ethic, which is not lost and completely celebrated by their legion of fanatical followers. Typically the band tours the States briefly after releasing an LP, historically playing five songs off it (always including the obligatory instrumental), while leaning heavy on recent material and then the rest is up for grabs from their vast catalog that now spans five decades.

This was different as earlier this year they announced they were working on the follow -up to 2007’s Snakes and Arrows and even oddly gave you a taste of two songs they had already recorded. The new LP had artwork and even a name Clockwork Angels. So this was their first preview tour, but if they only had two songs finished, what were they gonna play? For all of their combined age, Rush is not an oldies act, and live and die by that reputation.

The answer came with the announcement that in celebration of the 30th anniversary of their most commercially successful LP – 1981’s Moving Pictures that they would perform the album in its entirety. Hey, why not? They normally play half of the record anyway and some of the songs we have never heard live, namely The Camera Eye which frontman Geddy Lee had famously complained of its length and complexity as to having no previous interest in performing it.

The tour was billed as The Time Machine Tour and once you got there you saw how that concept was played out. The show begins as their tours normally do with a comedic film introduction with that tour’s motif and as much silliness as they can play off of. (For all of their intensity, this band is equally known for their humor). This one was rather long and was set out to fictionally explain the real history of Rush, or according to the film, Rash as they were originally called. A TIME MACHINE is produced and over the course of a freak accident the young band in the film is transported to you NOW, and live and playing the Spirit of Radio!

Off to a great start, and with no real new LP to promote it created the excitement that just about anything could come next. This is where the time machine motif comes in: As the giant video screen with rolling dates would slowly come to a stop on a random year and then the next song would start. And here is what came: Though fun and unpredictable, and knowing them as I do, the choices made sense, even though they wouldn’t have been my first choices, I still take exception to the pacing of the songs. Meaning that if you are someone that was totally turned off to their mid/late 80’s heavy keyboard sound, you were in big trouble that first hour.Previous experience revealed a pattern: Most of these songs were singles or concert staples at some point or another: After Spirit of Radio they followed it with four songs in a row from their weakest period Time Stand Still, Presto (easily the rarest song of the evening) Stick it Out and Leave that Thing Alone (two stinkers from 1993’s Counterparts, an otherwise rather strong record).

Then hopefully you were into their last record Snakes and Arrows as here came two in a row from it. Also taking one of the previous mentioned songs from the forthcoming LP for a walk called Brought up to Believe. Than back to 80’s keys with Marathon and Subdivisions. Very strange I thought.

Intermission time: and everyone had to know that the Moving Pictures performance would start the 2nd set but they did something cool anyway, as the rolling numbers were moving slowly during the break, creeping to 1981. When it got there an alarm went off signaling the end of intermission as the next film started. You know what came next: the film ends simultaneously as Tom Sawyer begins and off the races we go.
They finish the piece and then after Neil Peart’s drum solo which is always a tour highlight, to appease the fans of the older material; the clock started rolling to the older years. But again they didn’t exactly dust off any old gems, they played what you think they would, 2112, the Temples of Syrinx, etc.

Though Geddy didn’t sing as well as he had in recent tours and the band looked a bit geezer -ish in their film close -ups, I’m still not complaining as the show was executed perfectly and what a joy that in 2010 they can still fill a place this big and remain relevant as ever. Because Rush is not really a band as it is three individuals. Just seeing Geddy, Alex and Neil in the flesh and doing their thing is such a pleasure to be a part of.