Iconic Canadian band The Barenaked Ladies along with their former bandmate Steven Page will be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame by Rush's Geddy Lee at the 2018 Juno Awards ceremony this coming Sunday night in Vancouver. Barenaked Ladies founder Ed Robertson was interviewed for Billboard earlier this week and had this to say about getting Geddy to induct the band:
Oh man, for me that's like an actual dream come true. I reached out to Geddy and said, 'Hey, listen, this is an actual, literal teenage dream, but I am an adult now so I understand if you can't make this work.' And he's just been awesome. So he's going to do the induction, which is beyond a thrill to me. There's so much to look forward to -- we're gonna play, Geddy's doing the induction. It's a total dream weekend.
This year's ceremony will be hosted by multi-Juno Award-winner Michael Bublé and will be broadcast live from the Rogers Arena in Vancouver this Sunday, March 25 at 8PM EST, on CBC, CBC Radio One and CBC Music, and streamed globally at cbcmusic.ca/junos. Rush has won numerous Juno Awards over the years, including being inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame themselves back in 1994. As a matter of fact, in the video introduction from when Rush was inducted, the Barenaked Ladies are one of the many artists who offered up their congratulations as seen here. For more information on the Juno Awards, visit the official website at this location.
Canadian singer-songwriter and founding member of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Randy Bachman, is the focus of an upcoming documentary for the CBC's Documentary Channel in Canada titled Bachman. The documentary showcases his life as an iconic Canadian musician from his early days, to his time with The Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive up to the present day. The film features archival footage and new interviews with friends, family and fans including Rush's Alex Lifeson, along with Neil Young, Chris Jericho, Peter Frampton, Buffy Saint-Marie, Tal Bachman, Fred Turner, Paul Shaffer and others. It will screen at the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto from May 2-4. For more information visit the Farpoint Films website here, and the film's Facebook page here.
Speaking of Alex, he will be performing alongside the Rheostatics at the West End Phoenix fundraiser Phoenix Rising this coming Thursday, March 29th at The Great Hall on Queen Street in Toronto. The event will be hosted by Tom Wilson (Lee Harvey Osmond) and also perorming will be Whitehorse and Nasim Asgari. Admission is by donation, and although the RSVP list is full, you can still get placed on the waiting list by visiting this link. Dave Bidini's West End Phoenix monthly community newspaper for Toronto's West End launched last October and Lifeson contributes a "storytelling comic" titled The Meaning of Lifeson to the publication, which is illustrated by artist Casey McGlynn. To learn more about the event, and the West End Phoenix, visit the website at westendphoenix.com. They are also selling limited edition copies of the December, 2017 edition of the newspaper signed by Alex Lifeson via the Rush Backstage Club to help raise money for the publication.
Over the last several years there has been a huge resurgence in the sale of music on vinyl, and Rush took advantage of this by reissuing their entire catalog on vinyl a few years back. Now it looks like it's the cassette tape's turn to make a comeback, and so the Rush Backstage Club is now offering the Rush catalog up through Test for Echo on cassette tape, including a 20-cassette bundle for $69.99 that includes a signed copy of Alex Lifeson's solo album Victor (for a limited time). You can purchase individual copies of all the cassettes for $8.99, but the Victor cassette only comes with the bundle. For all the details and to purchase a copy go to the Rush Backstage Club.
The folks at FANTOONS are debuting some new official Rush merchandise at WonderCon in Anaheim this weekend including a new official Rush t-shirt and a limited edition art print. The new shirt features the classic RUSH logo portrayed as a maze, and the print is a cubist rendering of the All the World's a Stage album cover. You can check out the new t-shirt, the print and a bunch of other merchandise FANTOONS has to offer at Booth 2210 at WonderCon, and if you mention the codeword HEMISPHERES you'll also get a free gift (while supplies last). For those who won't be able to attend, you can still get the new t-shirt, the print and all the other FANTOONS Rush merch via the FANTOONS Etsy store.
There was a small Rush reference in the latest episode of the FOX sitcom LA to Vegas (Season 1, Episode 9 - Overbooked) which aired earlier this week. Towards the end of the episode Artem (Peter Stormare) gets on the flight and finds himself sitting next to a chubby Canadian guy who won't stop talking. The Canadian guy talks continuously much to Artem's annoyance and at one point mentions that he has trouble hearing because he, "blew an eardrum out at a Rush show a few years back". You can watch the episode online at this location (or on Hulu) with the Rush reference coming in right towards the end of the episode at around the 29-minute mark.
Earlier this week, John at Cygnus-X1.net posted the fourteenth installment of his Rush: A Brief History of Time series where he compiles scans and transcriptions of old Rush articles, reviews, interviews, and advertisements. From Cygnus-X1.net:
... The fourteenth installment includes 235 "new" articles and advertisements; 49 from the 1970's, 10 from the 1980's, 112 from the 1990's, 32 from the 2000's and 32 from the current 2010 decade. Not surprisingly, given the distribution by decade, a large percentage of the articles focus on the Roll the Bones and Counterparts eras, including numerous album reviews and interviews with the band. The articles from the 1970s contain an eclectic collection of early mentions of the band to reviews of 2112, A Farewell to Kings and more. ...
You can see this latest batch on John's website at this link. Also be sure to check out his chronological listing of all the collected articles from the series at the bottom of the page. Thanks John!
The Toronto Star posted their list of Toronto's top 100 songs last week and Rush's The Spirit of Radio ended up in the #3 spot (thanks C Sanders and Paul D):
#3 Rush - "The Spirit of Radio" From the album: Permanent Waves, 1980
Toronto connnections: Our gift to the world of prog-rock.
The Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame inductees recently quietly called it quits after 41 years. With so many career phases - and Toronto-centric contenders like "YYZ" and "Subdivisions" - Rush made it tough to choose just one, but we'll go with this hit that took its inspiration from the tagline for CFNY.
Ultimate-guitar.com posted an article on the history of the Gibson EDS-1275 Double Neck this past week which mentions Alex Lifeson:
... Alex Lifeson first bought a cherry 1976 EDS-1275 in Nashville, at the end of the 2112 tour. It was modified with an aftermarket tune-o-matic bridge on the six-string, and a specially designed bridge on the twelve-string for intonation. In 1978, during the Hemispheres tour, the guitar was damaged when a speaker horn fell on it. Gibson later repaired it and repainted in Alpine White. Lifeson continued to use the guitar until the Signals Tour (1982-1983) when it was retired. It saw use again on the 'Counterparts' Tour in 1994, where it was used to play 'Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres (Prelude)'. In 1996, Lifeson gave the guitar to Gordie Johnson of Big Sugar. Johnson is seen playing this guitar in the music video of the single "Diggin' a Hole." ...
Opening day for the 2018 MLB season is less than a week away and reader Ken K (aka The Clansman 2112) wanted me to let you all know that he has one spot open for his annual rushisaband Fantasy Baseball League that's going into its eighth year. It's a 20 Team Roto League full of Rush fans that have a ton of fun talking baseball and Rush. So if you love baseball and Rush, go to this link to join up - the live draft is on Sunday. If you have trouble with the link or have any questions just shoot an email to elwood2000@hotmail.com.
Here's the video from Rush's 1994 induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame:
Many thanks to Brad Birzer over at the Progarchy.com site for the kind words he had to say about the rushisaband.com website (and Eric's Power Windows site too) in his Rush on the Web article from this past week. That's all folks. Have a great weekend!
