I've spent a lot of time on You Tube recently looking at old videos of Rush. I've never seen most of them before as when Rush were troubling the lower reaches of the pop charts in the late 70s and early 80s, they never got shown, and I didn't know who Rush were then anyway. What irks me though is these amateur musicians who like to play along with their favourite tracks. What with Rush being a bit of a musos band you get quite a lot playing a long to everyone's favourite Canuck prog-metal power trio.
Take this fellow:
He's paying along to Rush's Neil Peart. A man who is often hailed as one of the best drummers still living. Why does he think he can play any better? Nobody's interested in it. Are they? Well 192,000+ were interested enough to watch it. Mind you, they were probably thinking "Why doesn't he go out, get some exercise and get some of that lard off instead of sitting at home behind his expensive drum set up playing along to someone else? Or even better form a band and make some music of his own? And he should stop wanking too, it'll send him blind." I mean, how much would you love yourself to actually film yourself and then put it on the internet? Does he think he can do any better? Clearly not as he just drums along parrot fashion, like an unoriginal turd. Then you get all the other musos chiming in with comments like "Mmm, really tight man, I'd love to see you and Neil in a drum war!" Well the amateur would clearly lose, wouldn't he? Considering he has to drum along to someone else to perfect his 'chops' and can't come up with his own stuff.
Anyway, this girl pisses all over our friend above. And she's THIRTEEN. And she can do all that fancy stick twirling stuff.
I get inundated with literally no letters asking me why I like Rush. Try these three originals for size, they tell you everything you need to know about the mighty Canadians. Ladies: try asking yourself, could you ever love Geddy Lee (the singer)? Plenty of Rush's female fans do. I'll leave that thought with you.
This one's a belter with Aimee Mann playing a camerawoman. The director was obviously going mad with new technology:
3 comments:
I don't really know much Rush - but could be tempted. What you recommend for beginners/novices
Spirit Of Radio introduced me to Rush on a trip to Germany in 1980. I've never looked back. I love things like New World Man. Those guitars!
PM - I must warn you that they are probably the ultimate in acquired taste. After Napalm Death, that is.
I suppose it depends on what you like. For heavy rock I'd recommend Fly by Night. For their prog pomp I'd recommend 2112. Their transitional period was with Permanent Waves or Moving Pictures, they're the ones that contain the 'hits', as well as longer proggy stuff. After that they moved more into an AOR direction. Signals, Grace Under Pressure and Vapor Trails are all worth a look though.
FC - The first Rush track I heard was Spirit of Radio on a heavy rock compilation album in 1988. It was that swirling guitar intro and then the crashing drums that had me hooked. It's not very fashionable for hardcore Rush fans to say this (and it's not very often you see the words 'fashionable' and 'Rush' in the same sentence), but I still love Spirit of Radio.
Post a Comment