UPDATE - 7/2@7:44PM: One thing I'd forgotten to mention was that the 10th annual RushCon Rush fan convention will take place in 2 weeks this July 16-18th in Toronto, ON along with a one-day mini-con to occur on August 14th in Las Vegas. Registration is still open and the complete schedule is now available at this link. The Vegas convention is really starting to shape up into a very cool event. From the website:
June 28th 2010
RushCon Toronto schedule now posted. Have fun at the first couple Time Machine shows! See you in less than 2 weeks at RushCon!!!
Wow! Not that our Toronto convention won't be amazing, but Vegas is shaping up to be a doozy as well! Much to our happiness, we have learned that both Rush Fan Favorites Porcupine Tree (with Coheed and Cambria) and Primus will be playing shows that bookend RushCon.
Getting in to Vegas early? Join us for a little "pre-convention mixer" on 8/13 at 6:00pm at the Rush Lounge (located at the Golden Nugget) and kick off your weekend. Then catch Porcupine Tree with Coheed and Cambria that night, at The Joint. (Tickets on sale now.) Spend Saturday August 14th at RushCon Vegas at Hooters Hotel, then catch Rush at the MGM Grand at 8:00pm, followed by a special midnight show with Primus at the Hard Rock. (all separate events, with separate admissions of course. Attendees are responsible for all their own concert tickets.) It's a scientific fact, RushCon in Vegas will rock your face off. FACT.
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.
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Rush's long-anticipated Time Machine Tour kicked off this past Tuesday at the Hard Rock Pavilion in Albuquerque, NM. The show went off without any major hiccups and received an enthusiastic thumbs up from all the fans who reported in. You can check out all the details and coverage of opening night in this post including photos, videos and more. Rush.com posted the complete setlist for the show right before intermission - presumably as a reaction to all the play-by-play setlist updates on RIAB and other fan sites. There are already a ton of bootleg videos up on YouTube and several official photos have been posted over at Rush.com. Neil Peart drum tech Lorne Wheaton launched his new website LorneWheaton.com on Tuesday to coincide with the tour start. It includes a whole section on Neil's Time Machine Tour kit with plenty of great photos. The Pro-mark drumsticks site also posted several pro-shot photos of Neil Peart playing the new kit from Tuesday's show. You can check them out at this link. There are now several photos uploaded to the opening night photo gallery. Thanks to everyone who's uploaded photos, and if you have any of your own that you'd like to share you can upload them here. After opening night on Tuesday, the Time Machine traveled east to the Starlight Theatre in Kansas City last night for another successful show to celebrate Canada Day. For all the coverage of that show check out this post. Tomorrow night Rush will be playing at Summerfest in Milwaukee.
With the start of a new Rush tour comes yet another line of merchandise from the Rush Backstage Club. On Monday the store launched its Time Machine Tour line of t-shirts and other miscellaneous items. You can check out all the new swag at this link. One item of note regarding the new t-shirts is that the back of the new Moving Pictures t-shirt reads Time Machine Tour 2010: USA/Canada/S.A.. This seems to be indirect confirmation that Rush will indeed include a South American leg of the tour as I'd reported earlier this month. From other reports that I'm hearing the South American leg is already a done deal but some of the logistics are being finalized before an official announcement is made. This is definitely great news for all the South American fans out there.
Now that the setlist has been revealed to those who have chosen to peek at it, I thought that for my next poll I'd ask the question What do you think of the Time Machine Tour setlist? Take the Poll and let us know. In my last poll I asked everyone which of the 2 new Rush songs they liked better; Caravan or BU2B. It was a close race but Caravan came out on top with 42% of the vote to BU2B's 36%. Less than 3% of voters said they didn't like either tune. The Caravan single has been getting increasingly more airplay on rock radio stations and has broken into the top 10 on the Mediabase Rock Chart. At the time of this posting it's #9.
Last Friday Rush was awarded the 2,412th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6752 Hollywood Boulevard in front of the Musician's Institute. Hundreds of fans showed up for the ceremony and the band was introduced by Billy Corgan and Donna Halper. You can watch Billy Corgan's speech at this link, Donna Halper's speech here (you can also read it at this link), and Rush's acceptance speech can be viewed here. For all the coverage including more videos, photographs and articles, check out this post.
The Rush documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage had its television premiere this past Saturday evening on VH1, VH1 Classic and Palladia. On Tuesday the film was released to DVD/Blu-ray complete with over an hour of bonus materials. Best Buy is running a deal where they'll give you a free Moving Pictures t-shirt with purchase of the DVD/Blu-ray, although fans have are having mixed results with this (some stores are out of the shirts or only have one size). It's also available at Wal-mart for a low, low price of $11.88. The DVD/Blu-ray seems to be selling very well as it is currently the #4 best-seller in Movies/TV at Amazon.com. A few more reviews of the film popped up over the last week or so. There's this one at BlogCritics.org, these 9 reviews from the staff at Hellhound.ca and this one from the Washington Post. Hellbound.ca also posted this great interview with the filmmakers. Just after the premiere of the film at Tribeca this April RIAB's own Todd Garbarini (aka RushSignals1982) penned one of the first reviews of the film which I featured on the site at this link. Todd also conducted a great interview with filmmakers Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen which you can check out at this link.
Tandem Digital is the company that produces many of the custom concert videos that are seen playing in the background at Rush concerts. Yesterday they posted a couple of the videos from the Time Machine Tour to their YouTube Channel.
Last weekend, FMQB Productions and the Legends of Classic Rock presented an hour-long radio special titled In Conversation with Rush where Q107's Jeff Woods interviewed Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson. The special was made available online last week and a number of subjects were covered including the Time Machine tour, the Moving Pictures album, the Rush documentary, and the band's upcoming 2011 album Clockwork Angels. Earlier this week an extended 1-hour video version of the interview without any music was posted to the official Explore Music YouTube channel in 6 parts and can be viewed at this link.
Rush gets mentioned a few times in the latest Rolling Stone magazine, and in a positive light no less! On page 10 there's a full page ad for the Time Machine Tour. On page 36 in the In The News section there's a paragraph titled Rush Hits the Big Screen which talks about the documentary and the tour along with a picture of Geddy:
Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, a documentary about the 40-year career of the prog-rock legends, has become an unexpected critical hit and won the Audience Award at the Tribeca Film Festival (the DVD is out June 29th.) "You don't think a film about a rock band is going to be taken that seriously," says frontman Geddy Lee. "It's a nice surprise." The group will launch a tour in late June, playing 1981's Moving Pictures (which includes the classics "Tom Sawyer" and "YYZ") in its entirety. "The renewed interest has fired us up," says Lee. "We want to take advantage of this moment."
Then on page 111 in the music reviews section there's a 4 star review of the documentary DVD:
A documentary about Rush shouldn't be this compelling - there are no Hammer of the Gods-style stories here. But filmmakers Sam Dunn and Scot McFayden uncovered a tale of endurance and friendship in the prog-rock trio, tracking the band's survival even after drummer Neil Peart tragically loses his wife and daughter. South Park's Matt Stone puts it best: "If you didn't give it up for them before, you gotta give it up for them now, or you're just being a dickhead."
Thanks to mcsontos for the info and ReGorLaTroy for the scan.
Speaking of Rolling Stone and Rush, the first time the band was featured in the magazine was way back in 1981 when David Fricke interviewed them. It wasn't until 2008 that the band was next featured in the magazine. You can check out scans of the 1981 article by clicking on the thumbnails (thanks RushFanForever).
Reader Jon let me know that GamerLimit.com recently reported a rumor that Rush's 2112 - the entire song - will be featured on the upcoming Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock.
Recently-retired major league baseball pitcher Randy Johnson was featured in this article at NoiseCreep.com which talks about Johnson's aspirations of being a rock photographer. Johnson is friends with the guys in Rush and the article mentions this:
... Johnson also went on the road with his friend Geddy Lee from Rush, who is a baseball fan. "I met him 20 years ago and I went out with them on tour and traveled with them for three or four shows a few years back," Johnson said. When asked how it was on their bus, Johnson laughed, "It was on their plane. We were hanging out. It was back when I was playing baseball without a lot of free time to take pictures. They are my friends. I am a fan but a friend, too, and I hang out as a friend." ... He contends that "it is easier when they know who you are and are not part of a radio station giveaway." He also said he liked to talk shop with Thayil and Lee. "They are all down to earth," he said. "I've had an appreciation and a mutual respect. It's a great tie, that my profession let me meet people I listen to in my car!" ... Johnson points out the parallels are a result of mutual respect."I play drums a little so I can appreciate how good [Rush's] Neil Peart and [Dream Theater's] Mike Portnoy are. They are elite drummers," he said. ...
A new Rush tribute album from Magna Carta Records titled New World Man: A Tribute to Rush released back in May. It includes tracks taken from 1996's Working Man and 2005's Subdivisions, the Alex Skolnick Trio's jazz interpretation of Tom Sawyer previously released on Last Day In Paradise, and 4 new tracks. 3 of the 4 new tracks - New World Man, Fly By Night and Force Ten - were recorded by members of Coheed And Cambria, The Dillinger Escape Plan (Chris Pennie), KORN (Shane Gibson) and The Mars Volta (Juan Alderete). The 4th new track is a cover of Tom Sawyer by I Omega. You can purchase the CD at this link. Guitar International recently posted this positive review of the album (thanks RushFanForever).
Tripp Lanier - host of The New Man podcast - recently interviewed [Porcupine Tree]'s John Wesley. Towards the end of the interview (starting at about the 29:45 mark) Wesley talks about motorcycling with Neil Peart and hanging out with his hero Alex Lifeson. You can listen to the podcast at this link.
Before there was Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage there was The Boys in Brazil - an hour-long documentary from Andrew McNaughtan that chronicled the band's experience playing in Brazil on the Vapor Trails tour. The concert was later released as the Rush in Rio live DVD and the documentary included as a bonus disc. The documentary has found its way to YouTube (thanks Sirius) and can be seen in six parts at this link.
[The Boys in Brazil - part 2 >>]
[The Boys in Brazil - part 3 >>]
[The Boys in Brazil - part 4 >>]
[The Boys in Brazil - part 5 >>]
[The Boys in Brazil - part 6 >>]
A happy belated Canada Day to all my Canadian readers, and happy 4th of July for all of you fellow Americans. Have a safe and happy weekend!
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