UPDATE - 4/2@11:07AM: Doh! I knew I forgot something. The 2007 Juno Awards took place last night in Saskatoon and, as I reported in early February, R30 was up for Music DVD of the Year. Well, it lost to Sarah Harmer's Escarpment Blues. Thanks to Cygnus X-1 for reminding me of this.
I hope everyone had a nice April Fool's Day and enjoyed my little joke yesterday. There are several tidbits of Rush news to report so I thought I'd take care of them all in one fell swoop.
First off, tickets for the July 27th show at the Cricket Pavillion in Phoenix, AZ go on sale today at 10AM (Arizona time) - which is in a few hours. For tickets, go here.
Reader Mark S informs me that Neil Peart will be in the next issue of Modern Drummer. The latest issue had a promo ad for the next month announcing The Return of Neil Peart.
Power Windows has a neat new Snakes & Arrows theme up on his site (use Rush fonts for maximum effect) and Doug Clements, aka tst4eko, has created a few Snakes & Arrows userbars to add to the already huge collection of Rush userbars hosted by Power Windows at this location. Thanks guys!
Machine Head drummer Dave McClain said the following in a recent interview when asked about the band's influences:
There are a lot of influences that end up in our songs. One influence that we've had lately is the band Rush - one of my favorite bands of all time and a great musical influence. And they always had a great attitude about being commercially accepted. They always said if they were gonna be played on the radio, it would be because radio came to them. I think that's awesome!
Machine Head recently released their sixth studio album The Blackening. Frontman David Flynn had said in an MTV interview late last year that the band was on a Rush kick while recording this album.
Continuing on the theme of drummer Rush fans, reader Doug J spotted a Rush t-shirt on the drummer for Brooklyn-based alt-rock band The Hold Steady in their recent video for the song Stuck Between Stations. You can watch the video on YouTube.
Angst-filled British photographer Ross Halfin mentioned Rush in his diary entry from March 22nd in his typical bitter way:
... Simon "Semen" Kenton, my agent, is flying with me, being annoying. 'Let's go to the Tommy Hilfiger party tonight, GNR are playing.' He's boringly excited. It must be pointed out he loves bands like the Blue Oyster Cult and Hilfiger's brother anal Andy plays in a side band with Buck Dharma, the midget guitar player from BOC. Simon and I are only just on talking terms again after what I wrote about his favourite totalitarian drummer, Neal Peart (don't ask him for an autograph, he'll get you removed by his Gestapo bodyguard and deported to Lithuania). People have been shot for asking to get all three signatures on an album. Semen loves Rush, 'How dare fans try to speak to Neal, he's an artist, intellectual rock royalty.' He might have read a couple of long-winded books but that doesn't stop him being an intellectual plonker. You'll find all Neal's books under Semen's bedroom pillows. Semen then asks if I want to go to the Titan Missile Museum in Nevada as they have an intercontinental ballistic missile. Semen, who's now drunk three bottles of red wine, thinks it will inspire him in tougher deal-making. I could draw up a nice list of targets he could launch the missiles at ...
Believe it or not, Ross is a self-proclaimed Rush fan. He's referring to a diary entry from earlier this year where he dissed Neil's book Roadshow. Thanks to reader Gary C for sending this my way.
And check out this video of UltimoGuitarist jamming out Far Cry on the guitar. Very impressive.
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