It's been a whirlwind of a week for Rush fans since the band first announced their plans for a five date residency in late May at the Las Vegas Sphere back on November 5th. VIP and Travel packages then went on sale last Friday just a day after the announcement, with Artist pre-sales announced for this past Wednesday. Then just as the Artist pre-sales for the 5 shows were about to get underway, the band expanded the residency, adding an additional 5 shows in June. The pre-sales are now all completed, so if you missed out, general on-sale tickets for all 10 of the shows will kick off TODAY at 10AM PST (1PM EST) in less than an hour from now, with all the details at rush.com/sphere. It's also highly likely that even more shows will be added. Rush's tour management company is Q Prime, the same company as Metallica, so to get an idea of how the residency while play out, fans need look no further than Metallica's Sphere residency. Metallica first announced 8 shows initially, but then ultimately expanded to 24 when all was said and done. I'm guessing things will play out the same with Rush, and there should be at least another 5 shows added here at some point, possibly as soon as early next week for some time in July. From the original announcement last week:
... Geddy Lee shares about the residency: "When I first heard of Sphere, I thought to myself, 'wow, what a shame that RUSH is no longer touring, because this venue sounds tailor made for the kind of visual attitude with which we have always designed our shows.' Normally we spend months designing the visual effects for our shows and this scenario seemed like the cherry on top of the ice cream for our design team. But life is nothing if not surprising and now, here we are, living and touring in the present tense and we are able to make that particular dream come true. We are presently working hard to expand our touring concepts and concoct some new madness to suit this incredible venue and musically perform the kind of show we've been doing in some of our "one off" cities. Meaning playing all of 2112 and all of Moving Pictures along with an array of other songs. We are so effin' excited to make use of this incredible opportunity to please our fans both visually and viscerally- from wherever they might fly in from. Gonna be so much fun!!" ...
As far as Rush's current tour goes, the band finished off their 4-night, 2-city trip to the Sunshine State of Florida this past week, where they played a pair of shows at Miami Hollywood's Hard Rock Live and another at Tampa's Benchmark International Arena. That last show in Tampa put Rush's Fifty Something tour over the 50 show mark, and there are now just 41 shows left in the entire tour, with just a dozen to go in North America. Next up is Rush's 4th one-off show of the tour this coming Sunday at Pittsburgh's PPG Paints Arena. After that Rush will hit Charlotte, Atlanta and Phoenix before finishing off the North American leg out west in Edmonton and Vancouver. They'll then get a month off for the Holidays before kicking off the South American leg of the tour in Buenos Aires on January 15th. It looks like that leg of the tour will be one show shorter, as Rush has quietly canceled the 2nd Santiago, Chile date that had been scheduled for January 19th. This show was not part of the initial tour announcement, but was added as a 2nd show at Santiago's Estadio Bicentenario La Florida back in April to go along with the originally scheduled date on January 17th. There has been no official announcement of the cancellation, but the show is no longer listed on the Rush.com website or the Chile Ticketmaster site and Chilean ticket goers were informed about the cancellation. It will be interesting to see if/how Rush changes up the setlist for the South American and European legs. It's certainly possible that they might decide to add in another new song or two from the initial batch that they rehearsed before the tour started. On that note, Anika was recently interviewed for USA Today and mentioned the following regarding another Rush song that she has learned that she would like the band to play live:
... One Rush song she's learned that she would love to play live? "Kid Gloves" from 1984's "Grace Under Pressure" album. "I told Geddy, if I can ever have a wish list song, can we do that one? And he was like, 'Oh, that's interesting,'" Nilles says. "I play it a little bit in the dressing room just for fun. I love the grooves, the buildup and everything. I love the harmonies and the vibe." ...
The Cygnus-X1.net site has launched a new, interactive text-based adventure game called Cygnus: 2112. From the announcement:
... As a long-time fan, I always loved picturing how the band's epic suites connected - how 'By-Tor and the Snow Dog' bridges into 'The Necromancer,' or how 2112 has dark parallels to Grace Under Pressure. When the band stopped touring back in 2015, I started mapping out a unified narrative across 2112, A Farewell to Kings, and Hemispheres.
What started as notes for a short story eventually turned into a playable, text-based adventure game called Cygnus: 2112.
The story follows the protagonist of 2112, launches into the devouring dark of 'Cygnus X-1 Book I: The Voyage,' and culminates in the cosmic balance of 'Book II: Hemispheres.' I built this web-based game as a tribute to Neil's storytelling and a nod to classic retro interactive fiction / text adventure games.
It's completely free to play on Cygnus-X1.Net. If you check it out, I'd love to hear your thoughts or see if you spot the Easter eggs along the way. ...
Alex Lifeson's friend and Envy of None bandmate Andy Curran was recently interviewed for Distortion Den and opened up a bit about how Lifeson's decision to tour affected Envy of None's own touring plans:
... The stuff that was going on with Envy Of None, when Alex Lifeson decided that he was going back out with Rush, that sort of put a pin in all that activity. Everybody was super supportive; we were very happy that, potentially, Alex's involvement with Envy Of None had got him out of a very negative place after Neil Peart passed - then to a very positive place where he was creating music and playing guitar again. ... I know first-hand it was a very bad chapter for everybody in the Rush camp, with Geddy and Alex at the top of the list. Geddy went on to work on his books and his television programme and everything. I think that was really rewarding for him to step away. And Alex went in head-on with Envy Of None. ... We were very close to committing to live dates. It looked very optimistic that we were going to play maybe four or five shows. And then the Rush reunion tour came out. So we realised, 'Time out.' ... There's talks of doing a third album. Everybody's giving each other space. ...
Three years ago today, on November 13, 2023, Rush's Geddy Lee was featured in a skit at the livestreamed Scotiabank Giller Prize Awards Ceremony. The Prize awards $100K to the author of the year's best work of fiction in Canada. The '23 award ceremony was hosted by Rick Mercer and at one point, Mercer talks about the popularity of community lending libraries, and introduces a satirical video news story that he and Canadian TV journalist Lisa LaFlamme put together where the pair camp out near one of the libraries to see what kind of people use them. At one point in the skit, Geddy Lee walks up and puts a signed copy of My Effin' Life in the library as seen in this clip
That's all for this week. Have a great weekend!!
