Rush is a Band

A blog devoted to RUSH:
Neil Peart, Geddy Lee & Alex Lifeson

Thu, Mar 28, 2024

Updates and other random Rush stuff

Fri, Jul 25, 2008@2:44PM | comments removed/disabled

UPDATE - 7/28@1:56PM: Both Borders (thanks Mark S) and chapters.indigo.ca (thanks Rayzer2112) now have December release dates listed for Neil Peart's The Roadshow Illustrated Companion. We'll see I guess.

The party is over ... for now at least. Rush ended their Snakes & Arrows tour last night in Indianapolis. From all the reports the boys were in rare form and very relaxed. During Tom Sawyer they had a bunch of the crew come out and air-drum along with Neil. There are some pics of this in the gallery and Sean also sent me this link to some images from WireImages. The good news is that Rush still has a lot of cool stuff on tap for us in 2008 including the Snakes & Arrows Live DVD DVD, more Rock Band stuff, and the Buddy Rich Memorial Concert.

On the DVD front, if you read my post from earlier today you'll know that the working release date is now November 4th. The band filmed the show in Atlanta on Tuesday in order to capture footage of the 4 new songs played on this leg.

On the Rock Band front, Rush was featured in an amusing video posted at the Colbert Nation site earlier this week. The video contains behind-the-scenes footage from Rush's Colbert Show appearance last week where Geddy, Alex and Neil attempt to play their own song - Tom Sawyer - on the Rock Band video game ... hilarity ensues. You can watch the video here if you haven't seen it yet. The Rush plus Rock Band contest from Atlantic Records that I was sponsoring on RIAB ended this past Monday. The winner was Tommy J - Congrats! The similar contest run through ClearChannel.com is still going on through the weekend and can be entered at this link. This past Tuesday Rush released the alternate-master track vault edition of Working Man on iTunes. If you haven't purchased it yet you can do so at this link. You can also preview the track on YouTube at this link. The track had been released for download for the Rock Band video game a few weeks ago.

On a Rock Band-related note, Rush's The Spirit of Radio is rumored to be one of the featured tracks on the upcoming Guitar Hero World Tour game. This 3rd sequel to the popular Guitar Hero game will be similar to its Rock Band cousin in that it will include the drum and microphone controllers. The game is also slated to have a studio mode where users can create their own tracks. Thanks to showdonttell25 for the heads up.

For my last poll I asked everyone what their favorite question from Rush's Colbert Show interview was. The winner by a substantial margin was the epic song question which took in close to half the vote. In a respectable second was the hall of fame question with 28%, and the kicking ass question made a showing at 14% of the vote. You can view the full results here.

Now that both legs of the tour are over I thought that it would be a good time to compare and contrast the setlists. So did you prefer the 2007 leg setlist (let's assume the one with Distant Early Warning instead of Summertime Blues) or the 2008 setlist? Take the poll and let us know.

Rush announced some details regarding their charitable contribution to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort earlier this week. They'll be participating in Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation and sponsoring the construction of a house in The Lower Ninth Ward dubbed The House that Rush Built. Please help them out if you can. You can submit your donation at this link.

This coming Tuesday, July 29th is a big day in Rush history. Not only will it be Geddy Lee's 55th birthday, it's also the day that Neil Peart joined Rush back in 1974.

Earlier today I let you know that MusicRadar.com posted a nice little interview with Alex Lifeson yesterday. You can read it here.

Neil Peart has had a book in the works for some time now which is basically a photographic companion to his Roadshow book. The publisher release date according to Amazon.com is today - July 25th - but it's still listed as pre-order only. And there's no reference to it at all on the publisher's website (Rounder Books). So it seems to be in some state of limbo currently. Neil has also updated the introductory video on his website at NeilPeart.net. Instead of him playing the drums throughout different eras of the band, it is now a video of him riding his motorcycle. Thanks to timbale and Nettie for the heads up.

The 2009 Rush Wall Calendar is now available to order via the NMR Distribution site at this link. I assume it will also soon be available at the Rush Backstage Club too. Thanks to plunge for the heads up.

Reader djchachi let me know that on the VH1 Rock Honors page they are taking votes to determine the 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs. Rush's Tom Sawyer is on the list although they unfortunately have the band's name listed as Tom Sawyer and the song as Rush. :) So go vote for Rush!

Here's a humorous posting at the Classic Rock magazine site which talks about the current whereabouts of Rush's old kimono stage costumes from the 2112 era. They apparently are claiming (jokingly I assume) that they now belong to this interesting Japanese Band called Onmyo-Za. :) Thanks to GRgreg for the link.

And I leave you this week with this amazing video of an 11-year-old performing YYZ ... all by herself. Thanks to main monkey butler for the heads up.

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