Metallica brought their M72 tour to the Rogers Centre in Toronto last week and guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo paid tribute to Rush during their nightly doodle session during Saturday's show, where they designate a few minutes in each set to cover a popular song by an artist local to whichever city/country the band is in. For their Rush tribute the pair tackled Rush's La Villa Strangiato as seen in this fan-shot video starting at about the 1-minute mark. They did a short little YYZ intro, and then played about 2.5 minutes of the song. Trujillo then addresses the crowd, "Thank you so much! Rush, we love you. Geddy, Alex, Neil - we love you". The pair also covered Rush during last year's stop in Edmonton, where they did a snippet of Rush's Working Man. Kirk and Rob had also gotten together with Alex Lifeson earlier in the week while they were in town as Lerxst described in this Prog Report interview:
.. Last night Metallica were in town, and they came in a little early. So I had dinner with Kirk and Rob and after dinner we went up to Kirk's room and we sort of sat around for a bit. And of course he had a few guitars in the room and we started playing. And I was there for a few hours we were just playing on a semi acoustic guitar - an electric guitar not plugged in - and we were lost in it and it was so fun. So we're gonna have dinner tonight again and he said, "Let's get back together again. Let's do it again." So he's gonna come here and I already re-strung a few guitars. And Rob's going to come and we're just going to jam here tonight after dinner and I'm sure we'll be here till the wee hours just doing the thing that we love to do so much ...
On the same night that Metallica played the Rogers Centre and paid tribute to Rush with a snippet of La Villa Strangiato, Dweezil Zappa brought his Zappa Plays Zappa project to the much smaller Toronto venue of the Danforth Music Hall, and also paid tribute to Rush. The band played an interesting version of Rush's Tom Sawyer at their Saturday evening show using a duck call as seen below or on YouTube.
Alex Lifeson was recently interviewed for Sound & Vision to talk about mixing Envy of None's new Stygian Wavz album, Rush and more. Here he is discussing the Atmos mix of Stygian Wavz:
... Alex Gamble at Union Sound Company did the Atmos and the 5.1 mixes. He was so great to work with because we were kind of precious with our mixes. We didn't want anything kind of fancy and tricky with stuff whipping around, and things like that. So, I went in [the studio] initially with Alex, and we did a test on a couple of songs. He really got a sense of what we were after, from the beginning. He thought the mixes were quite good, but he just wanted to enhance them with some "spatial" stuff-and that's what he did. Once we were confident he was the right guy, he went ahead with the rest of it. We came in and we did a playback of everything, and did some tweaks. And we were really, really happy, because Atmos is really an interesting platform. ...
You can read the entire interview online here.
Moog Music recently released their Moog Music Geddy Lee Minimoog® Model D®, a groundbreaking collaboration that pays homage to one of the instrument's most iconic pioneers. The Moog Music Geddy Lee Minimoog® Model D® is exclusively available at Reverb (US), Andertons (UK) and Thomann (EMEA/GERMANY) for $5,499 USD. You can get all the details and purchase one for yourself in the official Geddy Lee Reverb Shop. There's also this 8-minute video where Geddy Lee reflects on the Minimoog Model D, sharing his thoughts on its craftsmanship, sonic character, and how Moog's legendary sound played a role in shaping iconic Rush tracks like Xanadu, Tom Sawyer, and Subdivisions. The Bob Moog Foundation is also currently hosting a raffle where you could win one of the Model D's. You can enter at this location for $25/ticket through May 19th. The winner will be announced on Thursday, May 22nd, and all proceeds will go to benefit the Bob Moog Foundation.
Jonathan Horsley published an article for MusicRadar.com this past week on the writing/recording of Rush's instrumental masterpiece La Villa Strangiato:
... "I have always been a vivid dreamer, and I used to share my dreams with the guys, what I could remember the next day," says Lifeson. "It was an ongoing jokey kind of thing. When we talked about doing the song, and doing it in sections based on all of these dreams, I think it was Neil who suggested that we break them up and title them after these dreams. It was more of a fun kind of thing than anything else." ...
Keyboardist Geoffrey Downes (Asia, YES) ran into Rush's Geddy Lee earlier this week while in the UK, and Downes posted a photo of himself and Ged to X with a caption teasing a tongue-in-cheek announcement of a Rush-YES project in 2025. If only we could be so lucky ...
OK. Tonight here I am on an overnight holiday break in the UK and randomly bump into one of the most iconic and brilliant progressive musicians of all time. Ladies & Gentlemen, announcing - Geddy Lee & Yours Truly - #RushYes2025 👋🏻 pic.twitter.com/4avCg2IPiW
- Geoffrey Downes (@asiageoff) April 30, 2025
On this past week's episode of Rush Roundtable on the Rushfans YouTube channel (episode #273), the panel continues with their Rush 50 discussion with an NFL Draft theme, where they each draft 50 Rush "deep cuts" to create a playlist.
That's all for this week. Have a great weekend!
