Here I was thinking that since Rush was on break from the tour it would be a quiet week for Rush news. Not so - just the opposite in fact; there's a lot to report. The big news was that Rush will be getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next year. We also got another News Update from Neil Peart last night where Neil mentions a couple of his future projects. Earlier this week Chris Stankee of Sabian cymbals chronicled his adventures as Neil Peart's riding partner and temporary drum tech. We also learned that the entire Moving Pictures album will be made available for download for the Rock Band video game. Donna Halper wrote a great article for OpEdNews.com earlier in the week titled With a Little Help From My Friends. It focused on the topic of friendship and how it relates to politics, using her long-running friendship with Rush to illustrate her point. And let's not forget the Great Spider Cook Off!

On the tour front, the band is on hiatus until the rescheduled Red Rocks show on June 25th. They'll then hit the Midwest and points East for the last 16 dates of the tour. On Wednesday the official Billboard Boxscore attendance and sales figures for 5 more dates were released. The Moline, St. Paul, George, Ridgefield and Boise shows reported numbers which you can check out in this post.

Speaking of tours, in my last poll I asked everyone how many times they have seen Rush live. It seems that the vast majority (about 60%) of us have seen Rush between 6 and 30 times. Around 28% of us have seen them 5 times or less; 7% have seen them between 31 and 50 times; a little over 4% have seen them between 51-100 times; and one lucky individual reports having seen them over 100 times! You can check out the complete results here. For my next poll I thought I'd ask you all what you think about Rush getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. So take the poll and let us know.

I received a ton of emails about this next news item. Yahoo! Music's List of the Day Blog from Rob O'Connor featured a list of The 25 Best Heavy Metal Bands yesterday. In at #14 was Rush. Here's what they said:

Rush took a severe beating at the hands of critics for being a tad humorless about their high concepts. But they never whimpered and headed home. Nope. They had too many kids waiting for them in the stadiums who liked their high seriousness and looked forward to living in a future they would never actually live to see. 2112 is still a long ways away...They did it with guitars and they did it with synthesizers and they did it with a drummer who owned way too many drums. But to be fair, he uses all those drums. They're not just for show, like with some people.

Many thanks to the 500 or so readers who sent me this link. ;)

Reader Rushman204 alerted me to a recent blog post from Rush's current sound engineer Richard Chycki where Rich checks in regarding some current Rush-related projects:

Back in the land we call Rush, the double CD of Snakes & Arrows Live has been completed and released with the DVD audio of the same currently in production. As well, I've also completed a live mix of Limelight for a cameo appearance Rush is making in an upcoming film production.

It's good to hear progress is being made on the DVD. Neil Peart also mentioned that he recently watched a finished edit of the video for the DVD in his recent News Update. I believe the movie Rich is talking about is I Love You Man which I'd mentioned a couple weeks ago.

Speaking of movies and Rush, RUSHHEAD666 over at The Rush Forum reports a Rush reference in the recently-released poker movie The Grand. Apparently in one scene Woody Harrelson's character goes into a deep philosophical speech about his intellectual approach to playing poker and the guy next to him (played by David Cross) simply says, Is that Rush?.

Reader, drummer and doctor Asif Khan wanted me to let everyone know that he's an occasional contributing writer for Modern Drummer magazine. As of late he's been writing a column for the magazine titled The Doc Is In where readers send in drum-related health questions and Asif answers them. You can see some examples of the column at this link. So if you are a drummer and have any interesting drumming-related health issues to report, feel free to shoot Asif an email at asif70@gmail.com. To learn more about Asif you can check out his website and his MySpace Page.

I've mentioned several times in the past about Alex Lifeson's friendship with professional golfer Rocco Mediate. Rocco was all over the news last week because of his dramatic playoff with Tiger Woods at the US Open last week. He ended up losing but it was still a great accomplishment.

I'd forgotten to mention a couple weeks ago that Rolling Stone magazine actually published an obituary for the late John Rutsey who died last month in issue #1054. Here it is:

John Rutsey, 1953-2008
Rush's original drummer, John Rutsey, 55, who played on their first hit, 'Working Man,' before being replaced by Neil Peart died on May 11th in Toronto from complications related to diabetes. Rutsey played with the prog trio from 1968-1974, leaving because of his struggles with diabetes and his dislike of touring. 'Our memories of Rush when John was in the band are very fond to us,' Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson said in a statement. 'Those years spent in our teens, dreaming of one day doing what we continue to do decades later, are special.'

Thanks to Kelly D for the reminder.

The Lux Blog - companion to Pittsburgh's Lux Magazine - has been running a series of posts focusing on Rush over the past couple of months, leading up to the band's July 2nd show in Pittsburgh. They're an interesting read and you can check them all out at this link.

And before I go, I think every drummer (or wannabe drummer) will want one of these for their car (thanks John at Cygnus-X1.net).

Have a great weekend everybody!

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