Nope, not the video game.
Were you aware that there are asteroids named after Geddy, Neil, and Alex?
OK, not one of the recent ones that you could buy at Guitar Center a couple of years ago. His original Slingerland kit, used from Fly By Night to 2112, is now up for auction on Ebay. Shells, only, no stands or snare. Auction ends August 9, 2009.
Decent article on the renewed popularity of Rush over at the Chicago Tribune's site today.
Indeed, Alex Lifeson, Rush's guitarist, said he has noticed that fans who grew up with Rush seem "a little more detail-oriented in their professional lives." He said, in middle age, they seem disproportionately made up of engineers, chemists, economists and businessmen."Just yesterday I got an e-mail from an astronaut," Lifeson said. "A guy up in the space station. He brought a copy of our last album with him into space. I mean, this is amazing. You know how many Rush fans there are within NASA? A lot. I'll leave it at that. And I'm not just talking about the guys out in the field. Our fans are inside, close to the big programs. They run everything."
There's a brief interview with Geddy on USAToday.com today. There's Grammy talk, a bit about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the fan base.
There's a newer interview with Alex over at Modern Guitars. Lots of talk about the Snakes & Arrows Live DVD, some Retrospective II info, Vapor Trails remixing, and so forth. Interesting tidbit:
Alex: You know, it's funny that you mention that. I was up at my studio...I'm upgrading and changing my control room around a little bit. Rich and I have sort of "moved in together" in there. And I was cleaning up the back room...I've gotten rid of a bunch of stuff over the years...and I just found a case that was way up on the top shelf, and at the bottom of this box were a bunch of reel-to-reel, unlisted, unmarked, recordings...and I can only imagine that they're pre-'74. So, they would probably be from between '70 and '73...recordings from that period. So, they would probably have songs like "Run Willie Run," and "Slaughterhouse," and "Garden Road," and all of those early songs that we wrote and played during our bar days.Skip: Oh, wow. I've got to tell you that I think the fans would eat that up, even if it was just something put out via the web site, in digital form, as an "official bootleg series" or something.
Alex: Yeah, I'll see what sort of shape they're in. I know a couple of the reels were...you know those small reels, and I've got to think that even spooling them might be a problem, never mind me playing them. Anyway, I just discovered them, so who knows? There may be something in the near future.
The whole interview is nice and long and worth reading.
Posting will resume shortly. Sorry for the hiatus! Nedd to sit down and watch the new Snake & Arrows Live! DVD still.
There's a decent recent interview with Alex Lifeson over at Crawdaddy! today.
Not much new sadly. Here are some highlights.
On picking new songs to play:
We wanted to play the whole record live, but we had to settle for nine songs, otherwise we'd be playing for four hours and that's a little too much for us and, I think, for our audience. We had to make a decision about some of the songs we wanted to do. We all really wanted to do "Faithless", and we talked about actually doing it on the last half of the tour. We prepped it and we ran through it a couple of times, but in the end we just decided to kind of stick with what we had and just change up some of the older stuff.
On Rush being an influential group:
I think that younger bands look at us as perhaps a model that, you know what, you can do it your way. You can play the music that you want to play. You can find your audience, you can grow and not get stuck in all the things that, you know, people used to get stuck in. Now, granted, things have changed so much in the last five to 10 years in the industry, and things don't happen the way they used to happen...
Someone's uploaded a bit of VH! Classic's Rush Hashana from the other day and included the Fary Cry video from the upcoming DVD:
Looking good. Release date is November 25.
