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Neil Peart, Geddy Lee & Alex Lifeson

Fri, Mar 29, 2024

Roadshow: first impressions - a semi-review

Thu, Sep 28, 2006@4:37PM | comments removed/disabled

I went on motorcycle ride across Texas with Neil Peart last night. At least that's what it felt like. I'm a few chapters into Neil's new book Roadshow: Landscape With Drums and am thoroughly enjoying it. I can't really call this a review yet since I'm only one third into it, but I'll give my opinion so far; a semi-review if you will.

The quality of the writing is right in line with his other three books but one observation I've made so far is that it's funny - I mean laugh-out-loud funny at times. If I had to describe Neil's 4 books in one word I'd maybe use descriptive for The Masked Rider, inspirational for Ghost Rider, nostalgic for Traveling Music and, for Roadshow, funny or whimsical might work; at least from what I've read so far.

There are also several really cool portions where Neil explains some bits of Rush trivia that I've always wondered about. For instance, if you ask most diehard Rush fans who Dirk, Lerxst and Pratt are- they'll probably be able to tell you that these are nicknames for Geddy, Alex and Neil respectively. These nicknames were canonized by the band on the R30 tour when they were proudly displayed during the intermission Rush-bobblehead puppet movie, That Darn Dragon. But although having heard these nicknames, I've never heard a solid explanation as to their origins. Neil clears things up on page 90 of Roadshow:

Over the years, I have been called Bubba, the Professor (after the "Gilligan's Island" character), the Submariner (after my hairline, which allegedly resembled the superhero's vee-shaped cowl), and Pratt, which was a play on the various buthcherings of my simple Anglo-Saxon surname, "Peert," which the other guys were amused to hear everybody, from hotel staff to fans, insist on pronouncing "Pert," "Part," "Pairt," and even "Pee-art." (I prefer to think my friends' choice of nickname for me has no relation to the English slang work "prat," meaning "ass.") ... Pratt was the name that endured, morphing into Nels Pratt, then just Nels, which Alex and Liam usually called me, or Mr. P., as Geddy preferred. To the rest of us, Alex was usually "Lerxst," which came from a long-ago, exaggerated pronunciation of his name as "A-lerxst." Geddy was commonly "Dirk," which derived from an invented name for an archetypical rock bass player, or secret agent - Dirk Lee. - p. 90

Ever since I started this site, I often get questions from fans about all things Rush. They figure that since I have this website, I must know a lot. That might be true, but I have yet to receive my Phd in Rushology - I'm working on it though. Anyways, one question I've been asked several times is "what are those funny hats Neil wears, why does he wear them and where can I get one?". I had some idea of what they were: some version of a kufi; an African prayer cap, but that's about it. Neil gives us the lowdown on page 91.:

... One side of the case held a row of hanging black pants and T-shirts - my stage clothes - beside a stack of drawers containing several pairs of dancing shoes, a wide variety of African-style hats (made for me by a Toronto milliner named Sheila, they were based on prayer caps I had collected in Africa, and an Israeli version Geddy had bought for me on his travels - they were great for keeping sweat out of my eyes) ...

I thought this next excerpt was just a very interesting bit of trivia about a lyric contained in the song "Analog Kid":

... The other Ohio town I liked to pass through was Beach City, just to the east, near Canton. The summer before I turned fifteen, my family camped outside Montreal to visit the World's Fair, Expo '67, and at the campgroun, I mete a girl from Ohio. Her father was extremely watchful (warning her that Canadian boys had "Roman hands and Russian fingers"), and we never even kissed, but I fell hopelessly in fourteen-year-old love, and wrote to her all that summer, to Beach City, Ohio.

I remember sitting on the front steps of our house waiting for the mailman, and when her letters trickled off, I was devastated. Maybe her father made her stop writing to me. In any case, I always remembered her ("the fawn-eyed girl with sun-browned legs" in the song "The Analog Kid"), and the name of that town in Ohio. ...

Beach City is not far from where I live - and I've known a couple fawn-eyed girls from the Canton area myself back from my college days at the University of Akron. It's really neat to hear Neil talk about travelling through my stomping grounds of Northeast Ohio and describing the show that I went to at Blossom Music Center in the Cuyahoga Valley from his standpoint. He talked about the rain - which I clearly remember - and mentioned that it was a "good show"; I remember it as a great show. :)

This book is really good. Neil continues to top himself with each subsequent book, attacking the role of author with the same vigor and dedication that he does his role of drummer. If you're a Rush fan, read it. If you're not a Rush fan, read it. :)

Related Posts:
[Neil Peart's new book Roadshow released]
[Selected excerpts from upcoming Neil Peart book, Roadshow]

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