Rush is a Band

A blog devoted to RUSH:
Neil Peart, Geddy Lee & Alex Lifeson

Tue, Mar 19, 2024

Updates and other random Rush stuff

Fri, Sep 10, 2010@11:51AM | comments removed/disabled

UPDATE - 9/11@9:20AM: I've listened to the Death Valley song and can't hear any kind of whistle on it although it's possible the whistle refers to the whistle register (thanks RushFanForever). This is all complete speculation, but Geddy could be helping with some higher-register backing vocals, or perhaps they are using some old recordings of backing vocals from the My Favorite Headache sessions? The mystery continues...

UPDATE - 9/10@4:21PM: Regarding the new Heart album mentioned below that gives a credit to Geddy Lee Whistle. Reader RushFanForever purchased the CD and reports that the actual full credit on the CD is written as Geddy Lee - Whistle on 'Death Valley,' Mazel. So it looks like Geddy actually does perform on the album. The Mazel part means good luck or congratulations in Yiddish. Other musicians on the album also have their names listed with the instrument they performed on along with a phrase that represents who they are by heritage, character, and/or personality.

Time stands still for Rush's Time Machine Tour this week. The band kicked off an 11-day hiatus after last Friday's show at the PNC Bank Center in Holmdel, NJ. They'll crank the machine back up this coming Tuesday, September 14th where they'll play the TD Garden in Boston, MA. The timing of the break worked out very well for Neil Peart, who has his 58th birthday to celebrate this coming Sunday, September 12th, not to mention celebrating 10 years of marriage to his wife Carrie Nuttall yesterday. It'll also give him time to deal with his inner ear issues so he won't be needing to wear the bulky headphones when the tour starts up again. Hopefully he'll find some time to write up another news update to his website, as has been his custom during breaks over the last few tours.

VH1 Classic helped us all feed our Rush fix while the band was on break this past week. On Wednesday they celebrated the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah by airing a special they dubbed Rush Hashanah where they played nothing but Rush programming for 24 hours straight including the Rush documentary and the premiere of the 2112/Moving Pictures Classic Albums special. The special covered the making of these 2 classic rock albums and included commentary from all three members of Rush along with producer Terry Brown, Taylor Hawkins of The Foo Fighters, Rolling Stone journalist David Fricke and many others. The Classic Albums special will also be released to DVD/Blu-ray later this month on September 28th. The DVD version will have a running time of 112 minutes including 50 minutes of bonus footage not included in the VH1 Classic broadcast. You can pre-order your copy on both DVD and Blu-ray, along with a special DVD/Blu-ray combo package that also includes both the 2112 and Moving Pictures CDs (4 discs total).

VH1 Classic has also regularly been airing the Rush documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage over the summer including a few airings during their Rush Hashanah special this past week as I'd mentioned above. The documentary was released to DVD back in late June and we just learned yesterday that it was already certified Double Platinum by the RIAA on September 1st. Two other Rush releases received updates to their certification status as well. Rush in Rio was certified 7X Multi Platinum and R30 was certified 5X Multi Platinum. Canadian Industry Minister Tony Clement recently watched the documentary and absolutely loved it according to this recent Twitter post (thanks Sean):

Amidst briefing books I managed to watch the Rush documentary on the plane to yvr. It is absolutely a must-see. Proud of those guys.
4:36 AM Sep 9th

As if Rush Hashanah and the documentary wasn't enough, VH1 Classic also aired a Back to School Top 20 Video Countdown special last Saturday and Rush's video for Subdivisions came in at #17. On a couple of related notes, yesterday was the 28th anniversary of the release of Rush's Signals album. And reader Martin W let me know about this blog post at The Awl which makes a tongue-in-cheek comparison of Arcade Fire's The Suburbs with Signals.

We learned earlier this week that Alex Lifeson will once again be participating in The Kidney Foundation of Canada's A Brush of Hope project. Alex has contributed paintings for the charity event the past 4 years running, and has promised to do so again this year.

Neil Peart is one of the many drummers featured in the 25th anniversary issue of UK drum magazine Rhythm. And over the Labor Day weekend JAM! Music featured an article where they asked famous musicians what they would do if they weren't in the music business. One of the artists interviewed was Rush's Neil Peart. Here's what Neil had to say:

"One of the first things I wanted to be was a forest ranger, so I definitely would be interested in being a park ranger. I love the work they do. And one of my other earliest ambitions was to be a teacher -- either English or history. That would certainly work for me. Or advertising -- I love what gets done in advertising copy.

There's so much creativity there that I laugh out loud sometimes at good movie slogans. Really well-presented advertising is a world that creativity can thrive in. There's lot of interesting stuff to do. And of course, just before joining this band, I was in the farm equipment business. I was pretty good at that. My dad likes to joke that I would have made a good parts manager."

To celebrate the launch of their dedicated bass channel, MusicRadar.com is running a poll to determine the greatest bass player of all time. Geddy Lee is in the running and needs your help. You can vote for Geddy at this link; the poll is down the page a little in the middle column. Rush is currently in the running in several other online polls too. You can vote for Rush's Moving Pictures in the Wines that Rock poll, vote for Countdown in NASA's Space Rock poll and vote for Rush in Rockabye Baby's poll.

Universal released yet another Rush compilation back on August 31st as part of their new ICON series. The package includes 12 Rush songs from the period when the band was on the Mercury record label (through 1987), including some very interesting selections not included on past compilations such as The Twilight Zone and The Necromancer. John at Cygnus-X1.net has scanned the compilation's packaging and liner notes and put them online at this location. You can order your copy of Rush ICON at this link.

Heart recently released a new album called Red Velvet Car which was produced and engineered by Ben Mink and David Leonard respectively, both of whom had the same credits on Geddy Lee's My Favorite Headache. What's interesting is that the track Death Valley gives credit to someone named Geddy Lee Whistle. Could this be an alias for our own Geddy Lee? If anyone has any information on this please let us know. Thanks to squeakywheel for the heads up.

The 2011 Rush wall calendar was released earlier this summer by NMR Distribution and can be purchased at this link. The calendar celebrates the 30th anniversary of Rush's 1981 classic Moving Pictures album and feature several photos from that era. John at Cygnus-X1.net recently scanned all the images from the calendar and posted them online at this link.

Reader A-CELL-OF-AWARENESS came across this little Rush quiz that had been posted in the Chicago Tribune earlier this summer. Somehow we had missed this when it was first published. If you're a regular reader of this site, you should have no problem with it. :)

The 2010 East Coast Rush TabCon will take place this weekend at Blackdog Recording Studios in Rochester, NY. This is the first time in 10 years that TabCon participants have performed and recorded live Rush songs in a full recording studio. The next TabCon after this one will be annual Mid-West TabCon at St. Francis High School in St. Francis, WI October 8-11. For more information be sure to visit the Rush TabCon website and to view videos of past performances, check out the Rush TabCon page on YouTube.

If you aren't already familiar with it, Used Bin Radio is a weekly internet radio talk show geared towards Classic, Modern and Progressive Rock. Hosts Joe and Brad are longtime Rush fans as well as RIAB readers and the subject of Rush often comes up on their show. I've been a guest several times in the past and Donna Halper also recently appeared on the show. Not long ago they completely revamped their website and extended the show from 2 hours to 3 hours. I highly suggest you check out the new site, visit the forums and tune in Tuesday nights at 7PM PST.

Whirlwind is a company that makes custom drum looms among a whole range of other products. They created some custom drum looms for Neil Peart's Time Machine Tour kit and wrote up this little article at their website describing the band's enthusiastic reaction to the quality of the looms:

... our Custom Department, headed up by Sam Bertolone was asked to build a custom Drum Loom that would be built right into Neil Peart's elaborate drum set up to connect all of his drum triggers, while blending seamlessly into the band's "steam punk" theme. Sam Bertolone states "They absolutely loved it! The tour manager was so impressed with how it's working he has commissioned us to get started on the Keyboard looms as well"...

Thanks to Robert for the heads up.

You may be familiar with televangelist Bob Larson's 1982 book Practical Help for Those Who Listen to the Words and Don't like What They Hear where Rush gets a mention. Reader RushFanForever got his hands on a copy of the book and scanned the page with the Rush reference which states:

...Rush, who have pictured inverted pentagrams on nearly every album jacket, feature songs like "Witch Hunt" and "Camera Eye", describing the ability via reincarnation to recall past lives. ...

What an interesting interpretation of those songs... quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand.

Here's the video for Subdivisions:

Have a fantastic weekend everybody!

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