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Wed, Dec 25, 2024

Punk rocker Ted Leo reminisces about growing up with Rush

Tue, Jun 5, 2012@9:49AM | comments removed/disabled

Spin Magazine posted an article to their website today titled Ted Leo's Life With Rush: Closer to the Heart. Ted Leo is an American punk rock/indie rock musician who has played in the bands Citizens Arrest, Chisel, The Sin-Eaters, The Spinanes, and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. In the article Ted highlights five scenes from his life growing up which involve Rush, including this one from the Summer of 1981:

... The van was maroon and silver, with four gray-and-black captain's chairs and a gray bench in back. I was older than my siblings, and so commandeered the bench to spread out, in my tweenish need for space, with my books and my tapes and my Walkman. Very soon, that Walkman would start playing Run-DMC, the Crash Crew, Divine Sounds, etc. Then mostly the Misfits, Flipper, Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys, etc. But for now (and for some time before and after), I would sit there, amid the maroon and gray, and stare out at the six hours of alternating city and country, and that Walkman would play one thing and one thing only: Rush's Moving Pictures, and specifically, "Red Barchetta."

As we rolled through the greener parts of New England, I'd shoot out from the highway down half-hidden, mostly imagined country lanes, chased by the gleaming alloy air cars trying to enforce the Motor Laws until we got to the tumble-down motel near Goose Rocks Beach we'd always return to; and in the twilight, looking up at the big red barn by the tetherball court, knowing that the brilliant red Barchetta was once again safely hidden within, I'd keep my own company for a while, shutting out the noise of family and other tourists, and wish that I, too, had been born in a better, vanished time. ...

It's a great article that any Rush fan that grew up in the '80s should easily identify with. You can read the entire thing at this link. Thanks to John at Cygnus-X1.net for the heads up.

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