I hope that everyone in the US had a happy Thanksgiving yesterday and is surviving Black Friday. One week ago Rush officially announced the 2nd leg of their highly successful Time Machine Tour. Since then they've confirmed eleven European dates in May of 2011 including their first ever show in Ireland, 6 UK dates, 1 show in Finland, 2 in Sweden and 1 in Germany. They promise more announcements to come including some North American dates starting in March. With the tour announcement comes the inevitable pre-sale frenzy which began earlier this week. Pre-sales for the UK and Dublin dates ended earlier this morning and general on-sales will commence tomorrow morning. Pre-sales for Helsinki and the 2 Swedish dates kicked off earlier this morning and will run until Tuesday when the general on-sales begin. For all of the details and to check out the tour map, visit the tour section. You can also see up-to-the-minute tour information via the ticker at the top of the site.
As I'd mentioned above, Rush will be playing some North American dates starting in late March and going through April. Then it's on to Europe and back to North America for some dates in June/July. According to last week's announcement, the band will focus on places that the tour missed in 2010. Some North American cities/venues that have been rumored as possible tour stops thus far are Madison Square Garden in New York City; Cleveland, OH (likely Quicken Loans Arena); Hershey, PA (likely the Giant Center); Baltimore, MD; Biloxi, MS and Hamilton, ON. Hopefully we'll get some official dates in the next few weeks. Neil Peart's drum tech Lorne Wheaton recently posted to his MySpace page that Bubba/Gump (Neil Peart and himself) will be starting rehearsals in March.
With the 2011 tour now set in stone, I thought I'd run some tour-related polls in the run-up to the tour kick-off next March. For the first one I'm asking everyone what non-Moving Pictures song(s) that they think the band should drop from their 2011 setlist. Take the poll and let us know. In my last poll I asked everybody what their favorite song off of Power Windows was in celebration of the album's 25th anniversary. Marathon was the clear winner with over 25% of the vote. You can view the complete results here.
You may have noticed a few changes to the site over the past week. I've reconfigured things a tiny bit, making the site a tad wider and the letter sizing slightly bigger (for us aging Rush fans with bad eyes). I've also re-launched the Time Stand Still Rush calendar after a long hiatus, and added icons in the upper right for following the site on RSS, Twitter and Facebook. I'll continue to make updates and improvements to the site in the coming months as I have time. I'd like to take a moment to thank everyone who has generously donated to the site over the past several weeks - I greatly appreciate it. If anyone wants to make a donation you can do so at this link and you'll get a free RUSH IS A BAND bumper sticker as a thank you gift.
We learned yesterday that Alex Lifeson will be among the performers at the 6th annual Andy Kim Christmas Concert next month. The concert will take place at The Mod Club in Toronto on Wednesday, December 15th and all proceeds will benefit the Regent Park School of Music. Tickets are on sale now for $25 through Ticketmaster, Rotate This, Soundscapes or call 416-870-8000 to charge by phone. Alex Lifeson also performed at Kim's 4th annual concert 2 years ago. You can check out videos and photos from that event in this post.
Reader ou812112 pointed me to a recent Canoe.ca article which talks about how the CBC lost the rights to the iconic Hockey Night in Canada theme song 2 years ago and mentions an interesting Alex Lifeson connection that I had been previously unaware of:
... After losing the rights to the song CBC held a competition to find a replacement paying $100,000 to the winner, but a CBC insider tells QMI Agency the total cost was much higher.
"That contest would have cost millions of dollars for CBC to run," said the current employee, who wished to remain anonymous.
The claim that the contest cost millions cannot be verified because the CBC has consistently refused all requests to release the costs of the contest through access to information inquiries.
In addition to the $100,000 winner's fee, the state broadcaster also contracted music legend Bob Rock to produce the song, consulted 400 judges, and employed Canadian music icons Kim Mitchell and Alex Lifeson of Rush to play the song alongside a full orchestra. ...
Last year Neil Peart was contracted by TSN to record a new version of The Hockey Theme which debuted back in January during a Philadelphia Flyers at Toronto Maple Leafs game.
Geddy Lee began endorsing Orange bass amplifiers earlier this year and used them on the Time Machine Tour. He's featured in a recent ad for the amps which you can check out at this link. Thanks to DigitalMan745 for the scan and rushfan211276 for the link.
TheRightToRock.com recently conducted an interview with bassist/keyboardist Mike Levine of legendary Canadian rock trio Triumph. At one point they get on the subject of the Rush documentary and the interviewer asks Levine about the possibility of Triumph and Rush touring together. Levine is very open to the idea and remarks not that it hasn't been thought of before by the way. You can listen to the podcast at this link. The Rush bit occurs at about the 1:21:00 mark. Thanks to Mark for the heads up.
Reader RushFanForever located a couple of great live versions of YYZ on YouTube; one from The Galactic Cowboy Orchestra and another from the Piedmont Symphony Orchestra.
The December, 2010 issue of Motorcyclist magazine contains a review of Bubba's Bar and Grill at NeilPeart.net. It's written by editor-in-chief and Neil Peart's friend/riding partner Brian Catterson. You can check it out at this link (thanks RushFanForever).
Canadian gypsy jazz band The Lost Fingers recently released their new album Gypsy Kameloneon which contains a jazzed up cover of Rush's Tom Sawyer. Thanks to Power Windows for the news.
Omar Alvarado of drumming blog TheParadiddler.com recently posted a lengthy article on Rush including his review of the band's September 29th show in Atlanta which you can check out at this link.
A Dare to Remember is a campaign of the Stephen Lewis Foundation which engages Canadians to raise funds for AIDS in Africa. Geddy Lee recently did a radio spot for the campaign which you can listen to at this link. Thanks to ghost__rider for the heads up.
Now that the holiday season is in full swing and winter is just around the corner, I felt that it was about time for some celebrity winter advice from Geddy Lee.
That's it for this week. Have a great weekend!
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