Late Monday night Rush.com sent out a newsletter announcing the remaining North American dates for Rush's 2011 Time Machine Tour. This summer leg of the tour will include 13 dates in 12 cities across North America with just one lone Canadian date taking place in Vancouver on June 30th at the Rogers Arena. Music Today fan pre-sales, Rush VIP pre-sales and CITI Cardmember pre-sales for the shows in New Orleans, Austin, El Paso, Phoenix and Los Angeles kicked off on Wednesday. The fan pre-sales will run through Noon today with the Rush VIP and CITI pre-sales ending at 5PM (local venue time), with the exception of the Austin fan pre-sale which closed early. Various radio, Live Nation and venue pre-sales kick off this morning at 10AM and will run until 5PM (local venue time) for the shows in New Orleans, El Paso, Phoenix and Los Angeles. If you know any of the passwords please let us know. The Live Nation password is ROCKSTAR (thanks Barry G). For any radio pre-sales, just check your local rock radio station website. Reader Barry informed me that KDKB in Phoenix is sponsoring a pre-sale with password KDKB. Regular ticket sales for these 6 dates will begin this coming Monday, January 24th at 10AM. Although not officially announced yet, Music Today fan pre-sales for most of the remaining dates should kick off sometime next week - probably on Tuesday. The Rush.com newsletter should be sending out some kind of announcement regarding this in the next few days. Rush VIP and CITI Cardmember pre-sales are also listed at Ticketmaster for most of these dates beginning next Tuesday. Rush VIP pre-sales will be available for all remaining dates, and CITI pre-sales will be available for all the US dates except Greenville. For those of you not familiar with the pre-sale circus, I've put together a guide to ticket pre-sales which you can check out at this link. It'll tell you the differences between the various pre-sales, how they work, and what you will need to do to prepare for them. I will keep the tour page updated with any new information as we learn it.

In Neil Peart's November news update at NeilPeart.net, he appealed to fans to donate a small amount to the Chilean Red Cross before reading his post titled The Power of Magical Thinking. The fans came through big time, racking up $5000 in donations which was then matched by Bubba himself bringing the grand total up to $10,0000. Earlier this week the team at NeilPeart.net posted an update thanking the fans along with a great picture of Brutus presenting the check. You can read the entire message at this link.

The 2011 Winter NAMM show took place last weekend at the Anaheim Convention Center and Gibson Guitars unveiled the new Alex Lifeson Les Paul Axcess pictured here and in this Guitar International photo gallery. Alex spoke a little about this guitar in an interview from late last summer:

... I've been working with Gibson on putting together a Les Paul Axcess model, which would be an Alex Lifeson signature guitar. It'll have the Floyd Rose, the piezo pickup in the bridge and single-coil taps in the volume pots. Basically, we've taken everything you could want in a guitar and we're putting it into a really true utility instrument in a fantastic platform. ...

Neil Peart's Time Machine Tour kit was also on display at the NAMM show. Reader hermy sent me some awesome pics which you can check out by clicking on the thumbnails, and here are some great closeup pics that were posted over at the Mike Portnoy forum. There's also this video and this video.

A couple of weeks ago we learned that Alex Lifeson has a role in the new indie film Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy. Alex will be playing the role of Dr. Michael Fig; a character made specifically for the film who does not appear in the book. Dr. Fig works in a mental hospital where Billy Boyd's character Woodsy is committed for a breakdown after consuming too much Ecstasy. A video clip of Alex as Dr. Fig was posted to the film's Facebook page last week. The video runs about 1 minute and features respected psychiatrist Dr. Michael Fig discussing his radical new treatment. You can watch it at this link. The film is slated to debut at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

Speaking of indie films, we learned a couple of weeks ago that the 2008 indie film Adventures of Power will be released to DVD this coming Tuesday, January 25th and is now available for pre-order. The movie chronicles the adventures of air-drummer extraordinaire Power (played by filmmaker Ari Gold) and contains a cameo from Neil Peart along with a slew of Rush references including a Tom Sawyer air drum-off. It first hit the film festival circuit back in early 2008 and made its theatrical debut last fall. Back in 2009 Neil Peart and Ari Gold paid a visit to the Drum Channel studios to film an air drum-off video which you can check out here. To celebrate the DVD release, Ari Gold will be running a fundraiser/auction to support music education via VH1 Save the Music. For more info visit adventuresofpower.com. Here's the film's official trailer.

A new book on the history of progressive heavy metal which I had first told you about way back in 2008 was finally released last month. It's titled Mean Deviation: Four Decades of Progressive Heavy Metal and was written by former Metal Maniacs editor Jeff Wagner with a foreword by Steven Wilson. Rush is prominently featured in the book as one of the early pioneers of the genre. You can read some reviews of the book here and here. From the publisher's website:

Revered former Metal Maniacs editor Jeff Wagner analyzes the heady side of metal in this exhaustive history of a relentlessly ambitious musical subculture. Beginning with 1970s progressive rock acts Rush and King Crimson, Mean Deviation: Four Decades of Progressive Heavy Metal unfurls a colorful tapestry of sounds and styles, from the 'Big Three' of 1980s prog metal-Queensrÿche, Fates Warning, and Dream Theater-to extreme pioneers Voivod, Watchtower, and Celtic Frost. The flirtation between heavy metal and progressive rock grows with bold creative leaps, spawning countless valiant launches toward infinity. Today, the spark of inspiration thrives in obscure outposts such as Scandinavia, Florida, and Japan, bursting into full flame with the successes of prog metal overlords Opeth, Meshuggah, Tool, Between the Buried and Me, and their progressive peers ...

Thanks to RushFanForever for the heads up.

Speaking of progressive heavy metal, reader Hank N let me know that heavy metal band Benedictum will be releasing their new album Dominion next month. One of the bonus tracks for the international release is a cover of Rush's 2112: Overture/The Temples of Syrinx. You can listen to a short preview of the track at this link.

Longtime Rush roadie Tony Geranios (aka Jack Secret) celebrated his 60th birthday this past January 16th. Tony has been a roadie with Rush since way back in 1977 and was a guest speaker at last year's RushCon. On behalf of myself and all RIAB readers, Happy 60th Birthday Tony! Thanks to cincyrushgirl for the heads up.

Reader RushFanForever located an old Toronto Sun article from September 10, 1976 that was transcribed at Triumph fan site RockAndRollMachine.net. It reviews a 1976 show at the Gasworks in Toronto by then new Canadian power trio Triumph. Geddy Lee apparently was at the show with members of Blue Oyster Cult:

... Other performers were part of the audience. Singer Geddy Lee from Rush, checking out the competition while he awaits the release of his own band's live-at-Massey Hall album, brought a couple of members of Blue Oyster Cult with him. ...

This recent post at Milwaukee Brewers fan blog Milwaukee Brewin' makes the argument that pitcher John Axford should use Rush's Tom Sawyer as his new entrance music (thanks anim8nate).

Reader Julie pointed me to this touching blog post from a friend of the late John Rutsey - former drummer of Rush who passed away in 2008.

Reader Fritz R's wife Jennifer is a writer who created a literary blog called Always, Capra together with her friend and children's book illustrator Jana C. The blog is written from the point of view of a teenage girl writing letters to her favorite celebrities (living or dead) and in the process revealing some kind of truth about life, love, growing up, etc. This week Capra has written a very sweet, funny letter to Rush. It reflects Jennifer's own journey from merely tolerating her husband's Rush obsession to finally getting it, which is a very common theme among many of us fans (me included) whose significant others watched Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage with us last year. You can check it out at this link.

Reader snowdog2113 has an extensive collection of old Rush TV interviews and appearances on VHS video that he recently started converting to a digital format and posting online to YouTube. He has over a dozen vids uploaded so far, many of which are some rare gems that I'd never seen before. I highly suggest you check them out at this link.

The Toronto-focused blog Torontoist runs a regular feature on Toronto in the movies called Reel Toronto. This week's installment highlighted famous music videos that were shot in Toronto including Rush's Subdivisions video. Here's what they had to say:

Ah, "Subdivisions." It opens with a helicopter shot of the intersection at King and Bay Streets, and only gets better from there. You can see the Scarborough RT, the DVP-401 interchange, and what looks like the PATH system (or at least the generic bowels of some downtown offices). The Warden-Finch neighbourhood has the honour of playing the seventh circle of cookie cutter suburban hell.

What Toronto high school gets to play the role of the soul-crushing monster that is education in suburbs? If Wikipedia is to be trusted (and if you can't trust them, who can you trust?) it's Scarborough's L'Amoreaux Collegiate. You can see the bland, grey exterior just short of the two-minute mark. Just look at those cool dudes with all their chicks, probably on the way to have a rockin' good time at Bridlewood Mall!

At about 2:45 we take a Goin' Down the Road-style trip down Yonge Street at night. And towards the end we see our oppressed hero playing video games at the now-defunct Video Invasion. The Bathurst-Wilson landmark has since changed hands a few time, most recently serving as a What a Bagel.

(Other Wikipedia trivia? That bad-ass synth is an Oberheim OB-X.)

Thanks to Ajax5 for the heads up.

Rock producer and promoter Don Kirshner passed away this past week at the age of 76 (thanks John at Cygnus-X1.net). From the LA Times:

... Don Kirshner, rock impresario, music publishing powerhouse, television host and behind-the-scenes music supervisor (before there was such a job title) and song-picker for the Archies and the Monkees, died Monday in Boca Raton, Fla., at age 76. Over the course of half a century in the music business, he served as a bridge connecting songwriters with opportunity, and provided a televised stage in the 1970s and early '80s on which some of the rock era's most important bands performed.... With his syndicated late night show 'Don Kirshner's Rock Concert,' which ran from 1973-1981, he delivered to America some of the world's biggest bands, which performed for way below their usual fees because of the publicity the broadcast generated. His taste in booking crossed boundaries, and was influential in the 1970s for highlighting budding hard rock bands such as Black Sabbath, Rush, Montrose and Kansas. For rock fans away from major metropolitan areas, the show served as a lifeline to musicians they might not have otherwise seen...

Rush appeared on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert back in 1974 playing Best I Can, In the Mood and Finding My Way, helping to greatly heighten the band's exposure. Here's the video from that performance:

That's it for this week. Have a great weekend!

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