The big event of the last week was the Buddy Rich Memorial Concert which took place at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City Saturday night and was streamed live on the Drum Channel. You can read a recap of the event and see some pictures in this post from yesterday. We also got to see some pictures from last week's taping of VH1 Classic's new That Metal Show which featured an Eddie Trunk interview with Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee. And there was a new interview with Alex Lifeson in the latest edition of the Crawdaddy! webzine. The interview was well-done and entertaining but didn't have any new information.
This upcoming week marks an important anniversary for Rush. Wednesday, October 29th will be the 30th anniversary of the release of Rush's progressive rock masterpiece Hemispheres. In celebration of this momentous event, for my next poll I'm asking everyone whether their first copy of Hemispheres was on vinyl, 8-track, cassette tape or CD. Take the poll and let us know.
For last week's poll I asked what your favorite song off of Counterparts was. The winner with 17% of the vote was Animate and coming in a close second was Leave That Thing Alone! with 16%. Rounding out the top 5 were Cut To The Chase (13%), Nobody's Hero (11%) and Cold Fire (10.5%). You can check out the complete results here.
The Rush Backstage Club is now offering the Snakes & Arrows DVD for pre-order on both DVD and Blu-ray (thanks mrdriven). They also are selling all of the 2008 tour shirts at $10 off the regular price (thanks lateralus).
Rush friend and photographer Andrew MacNaughtan has 3 new autographed Geddy Lee prints available for purchase. You can check them out at Andrew's website here. Thanks to robertkincaid96 for the heads up.
As a reminder, next week's episode of NBC's Emmy Award Winning action/comedy Chuck will contain a big Rush reference. Episode 5 of Season 2 will air on NBC this coming Monday, October 27th at 8PM EST and is titled Chuck vs. Tom Sawyer. For all the details see this post.
Reader Jamie H alerted me to a couple of articles at gawker.com that give us some more details about Neel Kashkari - the poor soul tapped by the Treasury Department to lead the US's financial bailout whom I mentioned back in this post as being a huge Rush fan. This article contains a scan of Neel's 1991 highschool yearbook page which depicts Neel in full preppy regalia superimposed over a picture of a Ferrari. Several quotes are featured including 2 from Rush songs. The guys sounds like he was sort of a jerk in highschool.
Canadian rockers Sloan are currently touring and played the Halifax Metro Centre last Sunday. Band members gave a nod to Rush during the show:
... "Patrick and I saw Rush here, but I bet I was more excited," grinned singer/bassist Chris Murphy. "Me and my friend both smuggled a beer in and we were both going to chug it as soon as Geddy Lee said something," guitarist Patrick Pentland recalled. "He didn’t talk to the audience for an hour-and-a-half. ...
Sean Scallon penned an article for the American Chronicle recently which uses Rush's 2112 to illustrate a point. You can check it out here.
Reader Lynn-2112 sent me a scan of a new Hughes and Kettner amp ad from a Woowind & Brasswind catalog which features Alex Lifeson. You can check it out here.
We have a couple of very cool Rush-related events coming up on Saturday, November 8th - just 2 weeks from tomorrow. Detroit-based prog-rockers Tiles will be playing in my neck of the woods at the Phantasy Concert Club in Lakewood, OH on November 8th. Tiles' most recent album Fly Paper has a number of Rush connections. Alex Lifeson plays on the track Sacred and Mundane, the album was produced by Terry Brown, and Hugh Syme did the album art in addition to playing keyboards on 2 tracks. I interviewed guitarist Chris Herin and Terry Brown regarding the album back in February. I will be at the show and if you are in the Cleveland area I hope you can make it too. If you can come please let me know and I should be able to hook you up with some free swag at the show! Cleveland State radio station WCSB 89.3 is promoting the show and will be playing songs from Tiles and the supporting bands on DJ Keith Miller's radio show which airs Wednesdays from 1-3PM. They'll also be doing some ticket giveaways too.
Also coming up this November 8th photographer and Rush fan John Kane will be exhibiting a collection of his Rush concert photographs at the Front Street Coffee House in Salem, MA. For all the details check out this post. John recently sent me a poster advertisement for the event which includes a very cool image of the band which I mentioned last Friday. John has gotten such a postive response from the poster he is making it available for purchase at CafePress as a 16x20 poster or t-shirt. You can check out his CafePress store here.
Reader Mark I let me know that the band Weezer has a video blog, and in this recent entry from August they play a little snippet of YYZ as they explain their tour itinerary. You can check it out here.
Reader Ross let me know that he is part of a late night radio show at the University of Central Florida. His specific role is Rush Correspondent. Rush and rushisaband.com get a mention in this recent broadcast at about the 50-minute mark. You can listen at this link.
There were a couple of other notable anniversaries which took place this past week. On October 23rd, 2005 I put up my official first post from rushisaband.com. Yes... it's hard to believe I've been at this for 3 years now. I just wanted to take a moment to thank everybody who visits and supports this site. You guys are great - I couldn't do it without you. I also should note that we have well over 5000 registered users now!
The other notable anniversary was the 15th anniversary of Neil Peart's MuchMusic interview with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien on October 22, 1993. You can watch it below or at this link.
Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
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