Added: since writing and publishing this my perspective has shifted somewhat. Stay tuned for further thoughts 🙂
Rush is a band that has never done much for me. I recognise the quality of the musicianship but the music itself has never grabbed me. I have several of their CDs, the ones the hardcore fans talk about, that I bought cheap some years ago and every so often I put one on to see if I like Rush yet and the answer is always no.
I mention this because Rush are making waves with a reunion tour with Anika Nilles taking the drum seat left by the death of Neil Peart in 2020. Despite my general feelings towards Rush, I enjoyed the first appearance of the ‘new’ Rush (which includes Loren Gold on additional keyboards) at the Canadian Juno Awards (embedded below) and have been dipping into fan footage of the first shows of the tour.
The musicianship is evident as is the fun and joy on stage. Anika is a force of nature and made the vacant chair her own on the first night of the tour proper; judging by the big cheesy grins on the faces of Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee they know it too. A lot of the footage has been of them playing Tom Sawyer which, although this is a cliché, is one of the few of their songs I like – musically at least, I have no idea what is going on in the lyric. I’ve also embedded the performance of the song from night 3 of the tour and it is evident at the very end just how much fun they’re having; Lifeson’s face (around 5’16”) in particular is a picture of happiness.
Anyway, two things have come out of this. The first is that I checked out the prices of their Glasgow dates next March thinking it might be nice to tick them off the list of bands I’ve seen. I looked at the numbers then put my credit card away again. The second is that I had another listen to one of their popular albums: I was part way through track two when I turned it off. Still no.
Added: since writing and publishing this my perspective has shifted somewhat. Stay tuned for further thoughts 🙂
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