I saw Rush at Madison Square Garden last night. I swear they just keep better and better. This is the first time I\u2019ve seen them in the Garden and it might\u2019ve been the best Rush show yet. And that\u2019s saying a lot. First time I saw them was back in the Moving Pictures era, and they\u2019re the only band I\u2019ve seen more than the Dead (and its isotopes).<\/p>\n
Rush played for over three hours in two sets. The opener was a 10-minute-plus suite of songs from Clockwork Angels. From there it was into some more of their recent songs. The first 45 minutes was all 21st century schizoid heavy metal. After a while it became clear that they were working their way backward thru their discography. By an hour they were up to Roll the Bones. They skipped a good deal of their late 80\u2019s and early 90\u2019s synth era stuff, but that\u2019s okay cuz they covered a lot of it last tour with a string section, to great effect. They did a few songs off Grace Under Pressure and Signals, including Losing It, with a guest violinist (an alumni of the Clockwork Angels String ensemble). Closed the first set with Subdivisions.<\/p>\n
That left the second set to focus on their Moving Pictures and earlier stuff. They played quite a few songs I\u2019d never heard them do live before (in addition to One Little Victory and Losing It in the first set.) The first big surprise was Jacob\u2019s Ladder off Permanent Waves. Then they did a good chunk of the 20-minute epic Hemispheres, segueing into Cygnus X-1 from A Farewell to Kings. (They skipped La Villa Strangiato but I guess that\u2019s okay cuz they did that 2 tours ago.) Then came a complete version Xanadu, with Alex on the doubleneck Gibson 6- and 12-string, and Geddy on the doubleneck Rik combo bass and guitar. This was followed up by condensed version of 2112, beyond just the overture and Temples of Syrinx, but skipping some of the slow bits in the middle. Like the Hemispheres\/Cygnus medley and the opener, it was more than just a highlight and it held together compositionally as a complete extended work.<\/p>\n
Going back even further, the first encore was Lakeside Park, and then into Anthem. From there it was What You\u2019re Doing of course and closing with Working Man. My only disappointment was they skipped By-Tor and the Snow Dog, which is perhaps my all-time fave.<\/p>\n
Needless to say, the playing was first rate. All of them were on. Lots of amazing basswork by Geddy, and Alex just shined on guitar. I think Neil Peart has made up new parts, or at least or new interpretations of a lot of the old stuff. Or maybe he was just improvising and still that tight. Either way, he had a whole different kit for the second set, apparently a replica of his (or the original) kit from back in the day. Meanwhile Geddy has updated and streamlined his synth rig considerably over the years, and Alex is singing backup these days. Both Geddy and Alex changed their axes so often I doubt either of them used the same instrument for more than two songs the whole show. Seeing them trot out the \u2018ol doublenecks, and Neil\u2019s tubular bells, for Xanadu was particularly fun. (I guess Alex\u2019s must be new; the story was his old one was stepped on by a circus elephant baskstage at Maple Leaf Gardens in the 80\u2019s and they haven\u2019t performed that number live since.)<\/p>\n
Anyway, I was blown away by the whole thing, and Neil\u2019s playing in particular. The light, laser, video and pyrotechnic show was amazing too. One number the whole stage was in flames. It was actually scary. My only criticism is the acoustics in the Garden smeared the upper treble so you couldn\u2019t always here the guitar clearly.<\/p>\n
The rumor is that this their last tour. I sure hope that turns out not to be the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I saw Rush at Madison Square Garden last night. I swear they just keep better and better. This is the first time I\u2019ve seen them in the Garden and it might\u2019ve been the best Rush show yet. And that\u2019s saying a lot. First time I saw them was back in the Moving Pictures era, and … Continue reading “RUSH in the Garden”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}