Rush finished off the first third of the US portion of their Time Machine Tour this past weekend in New York, playing the SPAC and Jones Beach. They'll pick things back up out west in Salt Lake City next Thursday, August 5th. Tickets are now available for the 2 Brazilian dates that were recently added to the tour. You can purchase tickets at this link. For anyone planning a trip to Brazil to see one of the shows, Brazilian Rush fan site Test For Echo has set up an informational forum specifically for English-speaking Rush fans regarding the Brazilian tour dates. We are also still awaiting official word on more South American dates. I'm still hearing that the October 17th date in Santiago, Chile is a go. They're presumably just finalizing some things before making the official announcement.

Rush's official tour photographer and pyrotechnician John Arrowsmith has been regularly posting his fantastic tour photos for each show to the Rush.com Multimedia: Rush on the Road section. We found out earlier this week that high quality prints of these photos are now available for purchase at this link. You can buy the photos in a variety of sizes and finishes starting at $40. Rush.com has also added a Road Flicks section to the website which features a couple of Quicktime videos from the tour. The first video is titled Bootleggers! and features guys selling bootleg t-shirts at opening night in Albuquerque. In the second video John Arrowsmith talks pyro and explains the inner workings of Alex's Time Machine amps. You can watch both videos at this link (obvious SPOILERS).

Yesterday Geddy Lee celebrated his 57th birthday and it was also the 36th anniversary of the new guy Neil Peart joining the band. On the day following Neil Peart's addition to the band - 36 years ago today - Rush bought equipment for their first tour at Long and McQuade Music in Toronto, including Geddy's black Rickenbacker, Alex's Gibson Les Paul Deluxe and Neil's Slingerland kit.

As I'd mentioned last week, the CD version of the Caravan/BU2B single is no longer available at the Rush Backstage Club. The release was a limited run and the Backstage Club does not currently plan on releasing any more copies for sale. However, you can still purchase digital copies of both Caravan and BU2B at this link. As many readers have pointed out to me, several copies of the CD (all of them maybe) have BU2B as track 1 despite Caravan being listed first on the sleeve. I emailed the Rush Backstage Club about this and they stated that as far as they knew, the track order should have Caravan first. My own personal copy has BU2B first as does every single person I've spoken to who also has a copy. If the copy you received is the alleged correct version which has Caravan as track 1 please let us know in the comments. I'm still not clear as to whether this was an error with the entire pressing or not. The Caravan single has been getting increasingly more airplay on rock radio stations of late and has been hovering around the top 5 on the Mediabase Rock Chart. At the time of this posting it's #5.

We learned earlier this week that Universal will be releasing yet another Rush compilation as part of their new ICON series. It will retail for just $7.99 and contain 12 songs including Working Man, The Twilight Zone and Limelight. The compilation will be released on August 31st and can be pre-ordered at this link.

Rush and the documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage are the subject of a 4-page feature in the August, 2010 issue of the UK's Classic Rock Magazine. You can check out scans of the article by clicking on the thumbnails above.

Neil Peart's personal website at NeilPeart.net underwent a Time Machine-themed redesign late last week courtesy the crew at Tandem Digital. It's really just a re-skinning; same content, different look and feel based on the Time Machine Tour theme. I was also told to expect a new story from the road from Neil Peart to be posted within the next week or so.

Power Windows reported earlier this week that the Rush road crew documentary Backstage Secrets will be airing on Canada's Treasure HD channel this evening with additional airings on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. For a complete list of air dates/times visit TreasureHD.ca.

RushCon 10 wrapped up a couple of weekends ago in Toronto. The convention was a huge success and the organizers promise to post an official recap in the near future. Until then, don't forget that there will be a mini RushCon in Las Vegas the weekend of Rush's gig there on August 14th. For all the details and to register for the Vegas event go here.

Speaking of RushCon, fresh off her appearance there a couple of weekends ago, Rush discoverer Donna Halper appeared on internet radio talk show
Used Bin Radio on Tuesday, July 20th. In case you missed it, the podcast is now up at this link. Donna's bit starts at about the 47-minute mark and runs about 50 minutes.

Reader Chris in Austin recently purchased some wine with a Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon label made by a company called Wines That Rock. While on their website he noticed that they are conducting a poll to determine the next classic album that folks would like to see inspire the next Wines That Rock. Rush's Moving Pictures is in the running. Go vote for Rush!

On Tuesday the SyFy Channel's Blastr website posted their list of 57 great sci-fi and fantasy-themed album covers in no particular order. Rush's Grace Under Pressure made the cut.

Reader PhillyMike noticed this reference in Dan Gross's column in the Philadelphia Daily News this past Monday. It's regarding Rush's recent show at the Susquehanna Bank Center and is subtitled Distante delivers a Rush job:

Upscale men's clothier Distante (1510 Sansom) did a Rush job the other day. The store altered some shirts that the Canadian rock band wore onstage at the Susquehanna Bank Center and also made some custom leather ankle straps for Rush drummer Neal Peart, which Distante's Baba Taiye Renfrow hand-delivered to the Ritz-Carlton.

Given Alex Lifeson's history with the Ritz-Carlton I'm surprised they were staying there! Maybe Alex gets free hotel stays as part of his settlement. :)

A couple of months ago we learned that the Rush 2112/Moving Pictures Classic Albums special would be released to DVD and Blu-ray on September 28th. The special had also been slated to run before the television premiere of the Rush documentary on VH1 Classic but was pulled at the last minute. It's still expected that it will air on VH1 and VH1 Classic sometime before the DVD release later this summer but there's no specific date yet. This past weekend we discovered that Amazon.com had posted a short minute-and-a-half preview video up on their Rush page. The video shows Neil Peart, David Fricke, Alex Lifeson and Terry Brown talking about Limelight. You can check out the video below or at this link.

That's it for this week! Have a great weekend!

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