The big Rush news of the past week was the announcement of the first single from Rush's new Snakes & Arrows Live album - Workin' Them Angels. The official press release stated that the single would impact at Rock radio outlets nationwide on March 10th. I believe this date is when it'll officially begin charting although many stations will be playing it before then. Indeed, it's already been confirmed that the single is being played by a couple of Canadian stations; namely 97.7 HTZ FM out of Southern Ontario and CHEZ 106 in Ottawa. And a few of my station program director contacts have let me know that they've received the single. The copy that's being mailed out to radio stations contains 3 versions of the song; the radio-edit album version (4:19), the live version (5:03) and the full album version (4:55). So start bugging your local stations to play the single!

In the same press release we also learned that the title of Neil's drum solo would be De Slagwerker. There's been some question as to whether this follows the same format as Rush in Rio and R30; naming the solo The Drummer in the native tongue of the country in which the track was recorded (O Baterista for Rush in Rio and Der Trommler for R30). The best explanation I got regarding the title is from Dutch reader Frank W. He notes that in Holland the English word drummer is commonly used but that slagwerker, a more old-fashioned term is also acceptable. The word literally means hit-worker; slag means to hit and werker means worker. Indeed, there's a Dutch magazine called Slagwerkkrant which recently featured Neil Peart on the cover of their 25th anniversary issue.

Earlier this week we learned that the folks at RushCon have officially set the dates for this year's RushCon to coincide with the July 9th Toronto show. RushCon 8 (no theme as of yet) will take place in Toronto from Tuesday, July 8th to Thursday July 10th. It will be the first midweek RushCon yet. More details to come.

Detroit progsters Tiles recently released the video for the track Sacred & Mundane from their new album Fly Paper. Alex Lifeson plays on the track although he does not appear in the video... at least not in his 3-dimensional form. If you haven't checked out the video yet, you can watch it here.

In the first of my setlist-related polls, I asked everyone which of Rush's epics - songs over 7 minutes long - they'd most like to hear on the upcoming 2008 leg. The results should not surprise anybody; The Camera Eye won with 28% of the vote. In a not-too-distant second was Hemispheres with 20% and rounding out the top 3 was Jacob's Ladder with 12%. You can see the full results here. My next few polls will focus on songs that Rush has never played live. This week's question is which of Rush's never-played-live 70's-era songs would you most like to hear on the 2008 leg? I've included 2 Caress of Steel tracks and one Fly by Night track that might have been played at a headlining show on the Caress of Steel tour back in early '76 but have never been confirmed; namely Making Memories, I Think I'm Going Bald and The Fountain Of Lamneth. Even if they had played those, it's been so long I thought I'd include them anyways. So Take the poll and let us know what you think.

There were a couple of notable Rush History anniversaries this past week. On February 26th, 1997 Rush were the recipients of the esteemed Order of Canada. You can watch the video here. And last Wednesday was the 5th anniversary of Rush's induction into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame.

Reader Domenic Nardone recently sent me some pictures of his miniature model of Neil Peart's Grace Under Pressure kit. I was completely blown away; it's very impressive as you can see from the images above. I asked Domenic to give me some background and here's what he told me:

I actually started building the model in 1986. Rush had been one of my favorite bands for a few years and I thought it would be cool to build a replica of Neil's drums (being a drummer myself). I just started college at the time and I didn't have much in the way of cash so I started scrounging around my folks' house looking for things I could use that would make good drum shells, cymbals etc. I wound up with a collection of whiskey bottle lids, aerosol can caps and shampoo bottle caps until I found a combination of shell sizes that worked visually to scale.

I then, started cutting out cymbals out of tin can lids and making cymbal stands out of shishkabob skewers and things started to slowly come together. I also used some art board that I was able to get from college to build the drum riser and electronic drums. After about a year, it was finally finished. I was never really quite happy with it but... I settled.

I asked a friend of mine who ran a record store at the time, if he would display it in the store. He was asked tons of questions by his customers - who built it, can he build me one, how much does he want for it? But I was never interested in selling it because I was too attached to it. Plus, I never considered it finished because I always wanted to tweak things that I wasn't happy with.

I had it displayed in my home for a while, but I never really took care of it. It got really dusty, the glue got old, things started to fall apart, so eventually I dismantled it, threw all the pieces in a shoe box, stored it and forgot about it for about 16 years.

One day my 13 year old son finds the shoe box and starts egging me on to rebuild it.....so I did. But this time I was much more creative with it and I took much more care into building it. My son, in turn, became a huge Rush fan!

So now the model sits, locked in my dust-free trophy case, on a revolving stand in my rec room.

He's also created a little video about the kit that you can check out on YouTube at this link, or just watch it below.

Reader The Clansman 2112 let me know about a very interesting episode of the CBC's The Marketplace that aired earlier this week. It's all about online ticket brokers and how they operate. You can watch it online at this link. Here's the synopsis from the website:

If you've tried to buy tickets for a big show recently, you've probably encountered the mystery of the vanishing tickets. Somehow, a concert booked for an arena with thousands of seats will sell out in just minutes.

Then, only moments later, tickets for the same concert will show up for sale on "ticket broker" websites, priced much higher than their face value.

All this begs two questions: How does this happen? And why? Erica Johnson investigates.

It's definitely worth watching.

Finally I want to remind everyone that today is the final day for you to enter the Rush Is A Band t-shirt contest put on by Music Today. Three lucky readers will be randomly picked to receive a Limited-Edition Rush T-Shirt. To enter email the following information to riabbiggestfanzz@aol.com.

* First and Last Name
* T Shirt Size
* Age
* Mailing Address
* Phone Number

Good luck to everyone who has entered. Winners will be picked and notified by Music Today sometime next week. Have a great weekend everybody!

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