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Rush is a Band

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

Sat, Apr 20, 2024

New Geddy Lee interview and R40 preview clip of unreleased The Loser track at Radio.com

Thu, Nov 6, 2014@10:56AM | comments

UPDATE - 11/8@9:56AM: NOTE: The R40 box set is now listed at Amazon as releasing on Monday, November 10th rather than Tuesday - one day sooner than before.

This coming Tuesday, November 11th Rush will release their R40 40th Anniversary Collectors Box Set (6 Blu-ray discs or 10 DVDs). The set will include Rush's 5 most recent live videos (Rush in Rio, R30, Snakes & Arrows Live, Time Machine, Clockwork Angels Tour) along with an R40 bonus disc, all contained in a 52 page hardback book measuring 305mm x 225mm (12" x 9"). The bonus disc will include the full Laura Secord Secondary School 1974 footage including the 2 unreleased tracks I've Been Runnin' and The Loser, along with their cover of Bad Boy. Geddy Lee recently sat down with Radio.com to discuss the box set and also preview a clip of The Loser, which you can watch below or on YouTube. Here's what Geddy had to say about the track:

... I honestly don't remember that song, and I didn't remember it until I actually saw the footage of us playing it. And I didn't remember it was called 'The Loser." So much for my memory! We wrote so many songs in the early days, and half of them fell by the wayside. A while back, Alex uncovered a demo tape that he and I had done for copyright purposes. Since we couldn't write music, the only way you could submit a song for copyright in those days was, you'd record it. Alex would play guitar and I would sing onto a tape. We found one of these very basic tapes. I just could not remember half of the songs that were there. It was just teenage ramblings. ...

You can read the entire interview at Radio.com here. Last week, Radio.com previewed I've Been Runnin' along with a short Alex Lifeson interview which you can check out here.

As I'd mentioned above, the R40 bonus disc will include the full Laura Secord Secondary School 1974 footage. It will also include the Passaic, NJ Capitol Theatre show from 1976; Lock and Key live from 1988; Rush at the Molson Amphitheatre in 1997; the I Still Love You Man video from 2011; and the Rush portion of the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Induction in 2013. The Rush Backstage Club (and Best Buy it looks like) will also be offering a special edition of the set that includes an extra R40 Completist disc (in addition to the bonus disc), although there's a lot of confusion as to what this disc will contain. It looks like this extra disc will contain different content based on whether it's the Blu-ray or DVD version, with the ultimate goal being to ensure that the same content is included in both the DVD and Blu-ray packages. It looks like the extra Completist DVD bonus disc will contain the eight songs not included on the original R30 DVD release, the Anthem Castle Session video and three songs from the Molson Amphitheatre show which are not included on the standard R40 bonus disc. The Blu-Ray Completest disc looks like it also includes the Anthem Castle Session video and the three extra Molson Amphitheatre tracks, but instead of the eight extra R30 tracks (which already are included on the R30 Blu-Ray), it includes all the bonus features originally included on the R30 Deluxe Edition DVD, which were not included on the original R30 Blu-Ray release but are already included in the R40 DVD set (but not included in the standard R40 box set Blu-Ray). Confusing as hell, right? So, in short, if you already own the R30 Deluxe Edition DVD and the 2009 R30 Blu-ray, then the only extra content that you are getting on the Completist disc are the 3 additional Molson Amphitheatre songs. I don't quite understand why they just couldn't include those 3 songs, and all the additional R30 content on both sets to begin with, but there you have it. You can pre-order the R40 box set on 6 Blu-ray discs or 10 DVDs.