Is There A Rush In The House???
Sunday, August 15, 2004 10.45 PM ET
“Living in the limelight, the universal dream
For those who wish to seem.
Those who wish to be must put aside the alienation,
Get on with the fascination, the real relation, the underlying theme
All the world’s indeed a stage and we are merely players:
Performers and portrayers,
Each another’s audience outside the gilded cage”
And that’s how they closed the best concert I’ve been to – period. Limelight, that wonderfully famous track from their 1981 album, “Moving Pictures”.
Errrr…, my mind has enough trouble moving forward, let alone in reverse… I thought I’d write in the style of QT’s Pulp Fiction screenplay but didn’t realize it needs a drunken muse on your shoulder and oodles of imagination and given that I can’t seem to find the first right here and now and I lack the latter in spades , let me begin at the beginning as they say…
We’d decided to belt up at this concert ages ago, tickets booked as early as March of this year, courtesy Dave Haka (thanks dude, we owe you one) and excitement in the air as we began the countdown. Saturday evening saw Satish, Manu and me watching the Chronicles and Rush in Rio concerts. Brief interlude where Anu and Satish heralded my 34th year of existence on this pebble a.k.a earth with a song, a cake and a candle that I blew on. And back to the concerts, where we were prepping ourselves on the lyrics, liner notes, riffs, yada yada yada. Come Sunday evening, we was all gut tight in anticipation, the drive to Darien Lake PAC seemed to go on forever (though the point of a journey was not to arrive??). The fair grounds were packed with cars and people, all headed ostensibly to the concert and believe you me, nobody was disappointed (a crowd of over 40,000 people I was told.)
As Geddy Lee remarked at the start, “Thank you for celebrating our 30th birthday with us tonight.” Oh well, happy birthday to me too!!! And folks, he can still hit the high notes without missing a beat leastways…
Rush opened their anniversary act with Finding My Way (“I’ve been gone so long, I’ve lost count of the years; Well, I sang some sad songs, oh yes, and cried some bad tears; I’m runnin’, finding my way back home”) and a medley/collage that traced their 30 year history, before moving onto tracks from their midlife albums including Time Stand Still, Subdivisions, Animate, Red Barchetta, YYZ and Roll The Bones interspersed with tracks from their more recent albums – Earthshine and Pay the Price. The first set was closed out with the Trees and a song written and performed originally by The Who, called The Seeker.
Almost forgot to mention, Rush have released a new compilation called Feedback, featuring their cover versions of songs written by bands that inspired them. We had seats 50 feet from stage and were directly dead center, so couldn’t ask for more. Also made some friends there who could not believe “You folks from India have heard Rush? Aaaaaaawesum!!”
Come intermission, I went and picked myself a pair of commemorative 30th anniversary tees – tie dye rules – as well as a poster. What the heck, my “touristy-villager-in-the-big-city” instincts surfaced again.
The second set started off with a video featurette of the Rio Dragon theme set to One Little Victory and they then went onto play favorites, Tom Sawyer, Dreamline, Mystic Rhythms and Red Sector A, before branching off into a virtuoso solo by Neil Peart – what can I say, that dude is GOD!!! – his kit was just incredible and the way he sent it that evening was a tribute to skins everywhere. He just kept playing and rolling and playing and rolling like there’s no tomorrow. This was followed by an “almost acoustic” performance by Geddy and Alex, after which they played the Yardbirds classic, Heart Full Of Soul, that just made me burst with happiness, what a rendition folks, it was simply AWESOME!!! Watching these three have such a blast together made my experience so much more enjoyable and I would like to believe the entire crowd just picked up on that raw feed.
Not content with closing so soon, they went onto play Temples of Syrinx interspersed with what I thought was a floydian segue inspired by Zappa (?) before closing with The Finale. I think the high point of this entire tour would have to be the showcase of tracks from their first through recent albums, capturing Rush’s brilliant progression through the years, aided and abetted by the good songwriting and excellent compositions.
I passed out a couple of times owing to excesses of (editor’s note: censored for content) – the crowd went wild listening to each track including Summertime Blues (originally written and performed by The Who) and Crossroads (Eric Clapton), before they finally closed out with Limelight.
This was truly a birthday to remember. THANK YOU NEIL, GEDDY AND ALEX!!! You guys really rock!!!
Peace
S