UPDATE - 5/15@7:21AM: Rush were featured in a CNN news story a couple days ago where Andrea Mineo interviews Alex and Geddy. You can watch the 3-minute piece at this link (thanks RushFanForever).
It was another quiet week for Rush news as the band hunkers down for tour rehearsals, presumably at some undisclosed location in Toronto. If you remember from last week's update, Rush roadie/technician Jack Secret (aka Tony Geranios) sent out a MySpace bulletin last Friday stating that rehearsals for the tour started this week. Opening night is only a month and a half away!
Several details regarding the theatrical release of the Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage documentary came out this week including advance ticket purchase information and European release information. A list of US cities/theaters can be seen here, a list of Canadian cities/theaters are at this location, and European release information can be found here. The film premiered last month at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York to rave reviews and was the recipient of the Festival's Heineken Audience Award. You can check out all the coverage of the premiere including photos, videos, reviews, interviews and news articles in this post; for Canadian premiere coverage at Hot Docs see this post. To listen to Geddy and Alex discuss the documentary on the radio interview circuit, check out this post. You can view the official trailer for the film at this link along with these 2 preview clips. The documentary will get its television premiere on VH1 and VH1 Classic on June 26th. The DVD and Blu-ray will contain about an hour of bonus footage. They are slated for release on June 29th and both are now available for pre-order (DVD, Blu-ray).
The 10th annual RushCon Rush fan convention will take place this July 16-18 in Toronto, ON along with a one-day mini-con to occur on August 14th in Las Vegas. The RushCon website just opened up registration for the convention yesterday along with details regarding the schedule of events. The theme of this year's convention is RushCon/Force/Ten in celebration of RushCon's 10th anniversary, and the Las Vegas mini-con has cleverly been dubbed the Sister out in Vegas. The venue for the convention will be the Courtyard Marriott Toronto Downtown. On Friday night there will be a harbor boat cruise with guest speaker Jack Secret and a special performance by Jacob Moon. On Saturday Donna Halper will be the guest speaker, Neil Peart's Chromey drum kit will be on display and Rush will perform live at the Air Canada Center. On Sunday will be the RushCon charity auction, a tour of Anthem and a special screening of Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage. There will also be plenty of games and prizes throughout the convention. For all the details check out the RushCon website and go to this link to view registration options. You can follow RushCon on both Twitter and Facebook.
We've known for a while now that Rush has been working on new material and has about 6 new songs written. We also know that they recently finished recording 2 of these songs in Nashville with producer Nick Raskulinecz, and Geddy revealed in a recent Rolling Stone interview that one is titled Caravan. These 2 songs will be released as a special limited-edition CD single included with the Rush VIP pre-sale ticket packages being sold for their upcoming Time Machine Tour. And from recent radio interviews we learned that the band plans to release one of the songs to radio later this month. The latest rumor I've heard is that they actually had finished recording three songs and that on May 1st the single (presumably Caravan) was played for some industry folk including representatives from Live Nation and Harmonix (makers of Rock Band). This may imply that the single will also be released for the Rock Band video game.
Reader hermy noticed that Neil Peart drum tech Lorne Wheaton updated his MySpace status recently. When last we heard from Lorne back in late April he was in California building Neil's new kit. Well, it seems that he's all finished and heading back to Toronto:
Done in CA, back to YYZ Friday. Mood: accomplished
Posted 23 hours ago
This jibes with another rumor I'd heard that Neil was at the DW factory yesterday giving final approval to the tour kit shells.
PopEater.com recently ran an article where readers talk about naming their sons/daughters after pop-culture icons. One couple relayed the following story:
When Rush played in 2008, I thought I'd swing by the box office the day of the show to see if any killer seats opened up. My seats just weren't good enough. Fast forward a few hours later, when I offed my original pair of seats on a co-worker and escorted my very pregnant wife (a very casual Rush fan at best) down to the fourteenth row, right in front of vocalist and master bassist Geddy Lee. My wife and I had been playing with rock and roll names to begin with (Jagger? Too pouty. Cash? Too morbid. Lennon? Too pretentious) but had not yet settled on anything we loved. Plus, we didn't know the baby's gender.
From first few bars of 'Limelight,' our little one started to flat-out rock in mommy's tummy. During 'The Spirit of Radio'? Forget it -- the kid was on fire. Things didn't stop until the last thunderous chords of 'YYZ.' Then, and only then, did baby take a breather. "Boy or girl, it's got to be Geddy," my wife said to me. "It's strong. It just... rocks." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. And I wasn't asking twice. So weeks after that gig -- Geddy Davis, our second beautiful boy -- was born. So far, every time I break out my bass to practice, he takes it from me and won't let go. So my chops are suffering, but his aren't.
Thanks to RushFanForever for the heads up.
Rounder Records - the company behind Rush's last several concert DVDs and Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage - was recently sold to Concord Music Group but Rounder cofounder Bill Nowlin will continue to run Rounder Books, which was not part of the sale. Rounder books is the publisher of several of Neil Peart's books. Nowlin recently told Publisher's Weekly the following:
"Rounder Books will remain alive," Nowlin told PW. "Though inactive for now, there is the possibility that we might publish, depending on the book. If Neil Peart comes up with another book, we’d be pleased to publish that. In fact, we’d publish anything that we liked if we thought we could make money at it. So far, we only rarely have made money on individual titles—far from enough to cover the losses on the others. It’s harder and harder to approach breakeven."
The RIAB/Quotidiana Vocabulary Contest that I'd first mentioned several weeks ago has now concluded. Congratulations to the winner Ian Mitnick. He wins a copy of Patrick Madden's book, Quotidiana, a rare 45 of New World Man with an unreleased Vital Signs on back, and a RIAB bumper sticker.
RushFanForever let me know that Toronto rocker Danko Jones was recently profiled at Limewire.com and when asked about fellow Canadian rockers Triumph and Rush he said this:
They aren’t direct influences but definitely inspired us. I recently just met [Triumph singer/guitarist] Rik Emmett, and he’s a really nice guy. I met [Rush guitarist] Alex Lifeson when I was in high school, and he was cool, too. The house I grew up in is in the video for “Subdivisions” by Rush.
As I'd mentioned above, Neil Peart's original Slingerland drum kit (which he used from Fly By Night through 2112) will be making an appearance at RushCon in Toronto on July 17th. In addition to that appearance it'll be at the Chicago Drum Show this weekend and the Rush documentary showing in Addison, IL on June 10th (not finalized yet). Thanks to Michael of NeilPeartDrumsticks.com for the heads up.
MusicRadar.com recently posted an A-Z of Prog Rock article and Rush is the featured artist for the letter R. Duh! :) Thanks to RushFanForever for the link.
The Snakes & Arrows Live concert video continues to receive accolades. The Blu-ray version was recently listed among CNET's 25 Best Concert Blu-rays (thanks Power Windows). Back on April 20th the RIAA certified the Snakes & Arrows Live video Gold, Platinum and Double Platinum. The video was also nominated for a Music DVD of the Year Juno earlier this year but ironically ended up losing to Rush documentary filmmakers Sam Dunn and Scott McFadyen for their Iron Maiden: Flight 666 DVD.
Reader and proudly female Rush fan geddycorncx1 wanted me to let all the female Rush fans know about the Geddycorn Facebook group.
Geddy Lee told me they call them `Geddycorns.' Women at Rush concerts are mythical and seldom seen.
- John Hamburg, director of I Love You, Man
Check it out at this link.
Reader Mike S located this article at 11Points.com titled 11 Music Superstars Who are Technically One-Hit Wonders. The premise of the article is the idea that technically a one-hit wonder is an artist or band who only has one song make the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Rush certainly qualifies:
One hit: "New World Man", #21 in 1982
Even with the way they slapped the bass on "Tom Sawyer" it never got higher than #44. Meanwhile, Rush has sold more than 40 million albums worldwide -- that's "Bodyguard" soundtrack and Backstreet Boys "Millennium" territory right there, ya'll."
Reader 81rushfan located this recent Martin Popoff interview with Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson at BW&BK. When talking about his next solo album Wilson discusses the place of the album format in the current state of the music industry and uses Rush's Moving Pictures to exemplify his point:
.... And this idea of the album release as an event is no longer in existence. ... this idea of making albums, the release date of an album, is no longer relevant. So the kind of event of an album release no longer exists. Even if you make an album, inevitably by the time it goes on sale, everybody’s already heard it. ... you’ve got to have new materials to go play live. But certainly the idea of an album as a commercial event has gone. ... for a band like RUSH for example, here’s a band who kind of made their name by using the album in a creative way as a kind of musical continuum, a musical journey. I can’t think of an album like Moving Pictures without thinking about the running order and the track listing and the way side one is structured and the way side two is structured, etc. etc. ...
8 years ago today, Rush released their 17th studio album, Vapor Trails. It marked their comeback after a long hiatus brought on by the dual tragedies of the passing of both Neil Peart's daughter and his wife less than a year after. The album peaked at #6 on Billboard and has yet to reach gold status. In celebration of this momentous event, here's Earthshine from Rush in Rio:
That's it for this week. Have a great weekend everybody!
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