fett on 1/7/2010 at 14:16

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I have noticed. It makes Gen Gaming almost intolerable because half the threads are either him trolling, or people responding to his trolling, so even ignoring him guts the majority of the conversations. Fucking asshat.

fett on 1/7/2010 at 17:26

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Yeah, I loved My Favorite Headache and Shephard is a fucking monster. Heh, I actually bought a Steinburger a few years back because it was cheap, but it sounded like shit, even after putting better pickups in. It's almost like Geddy wore those in the videos to proclaim, "I don't really give a shit about playing bass right now. But look at these cool keyboards!! Hey Alex, where ya going? Come back!!!"

Renault on 1/7/2010 at 21:46

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Don't blame him, blame the folks who could ban his sorry ass for life and yet for some incredibly unbelievable reason don't. Oh wait...

Btw, La Villa Strangiato and The Camera Eye changed my life. :cool:

Gingerbread Man on 2/7/2010 at 00:01

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Lemme chime in with something more substantial, since I'm not posting from my phone for once.

I spent a big chunk of my life in Scarborough, in the late 70s and early 80s. Rush was the "home team" in a way - Willowdale was very similar to Scarborough in enough ways that I had friends from there at a time when "neighborhoods" mattered. Point being that we, in Scarborough, considered Rush to be a band comprised of our metaphorical big brother and his friends.

The other thing that favorably disposed me towards Rush at the immediate moment was that they had songs like BY-TOR AND THE SNOW DOG on that album and it was EPIC OH YES and there was also a gay song about elves and shit straight out of Tolkien which is where Zeppelin and I part company but that girl from the grade above me likes that shit, she reads it all the time on the bus, so let's see if this is an avenue of conversation...

(hint: Not since Mr Peel returned unexpectedly in the middle of lunch period and discovered us playing Queen's The Game -- to be precise, it was in the middle of that AWESOME GUITAR SOLO in Dragon Attack -- have I been that shocked by another person's sudden and nearly-violent aversion to a sort of music I was trying to play for them. Sarah Whateveryournamewas, you nearly broke my Walkman, and they were EFFING EXPENSIVE BACK THEN! You could have just made that face and left it at that, you know.)

Um.

And I loved Fly By Night. loved the shit out of it. Damn near wore the LP out (also because I had a fucked-uppedy record player with janky stylus, yo) listening to it. And one day at lunch (year after the Mr Peel v Brian May* fiasco, actually) someone, might have been Kevin but it was probably Eddie, revealed that they had brought a record from home. And I looked, and I was kinda :o because SATAN! OH WE'LL GET IN SERIOUS TROUBLE IF WE LISTEN TO SATAN MUSIC IN HERE EDDIE! Besides, I don't like that kind of music yet -- I find it a bit too scary and loud and whatever. But o wate a minute.

This is Rush, too.

Okay, but hide the sleeve in case Mr J the lunchroom guy comes by and doesn't understand that it's not devil music.

And I heard 2112's Overture. And then The Temples of Syrinx. And my mind was BLOWN.

Holy shit, the rhythms and the precision and the groove! And the NOISE coming out of these three guys! I wanted to shriek along with Geddy, I was air-drumming and air-shredding right from the JUMP, boy! It was something else. I still get that with those two tracks.

But then something marvelous happened. And do understand that I'm glossing and deleting and editing and all kind, so plenty else DID happen vis-à-vis my experience of Rush it's just that I'm babbling.

But then something marvelous still happened. Exit Stage Left.

Oh my.

And it's LIVE, you say?

Oh my, my.

Holy shit Tom Sawyer, Passage to Bangkok, Spirit of Radio, Closer to the Heart, Red Barchetta... I had never heard these songs before! And they were so awesome! I can't even begin to say how awesome these songs felt in my head. Huge, anthemic, crystalline... the sound equivalent of the really advanced and gleaming high-end computer stuff that gave us lawnmover man lol *ahem* okay but not THAT way.

But I associate Rush, and Exit Stage Left in particular, with how my life was, how the world was around me, who I knew and what we did and what we thought about and where we hoped we fit into the world (as well as where we were trying to convince everyone else we fit in the world) -- all dat. Allllll dat.

And then a while passed.
Signals? Meh. I seem to remember I liked three, maybe four tracks. Not enough to remember their names, but obviously enough that I bought the cassette at some point.

Grace Under Pressure? Saw a video, didn't like the song it was for, listened to a couple more tracks at the insistence of a large Hungarian named Atilla but never really followed up.

Same goes for Power Windows (although we did get more of that awesome high-tech CGI in the video I saw) and Roll the Bones, but I had given Presto a miss entirely.

So I guess I really haven't listened to much they've done in the last, what? 30 years? That's so awesome. It's like the Stones. No one wants to hear shit off Steel Wheels, grandpa! Play 2000 Light Years From Fucking Home alright then!

I do love Rush. I love the intelligence, the precision, and the fact that it's not noodling over weird modes and masturbating to wrist-crippling time signature changes like Yes but it's not noodling over drunken lead singers who have recently read The Hobbit and eaten "mushrooms" and masturbating to feedback like Led Zeppelin.

And I think this is good.

So, in summary, Hooray for Rush! I am glad I heard them, I love a bunch of their songs, I wish them many more years of success, and I hope Neil really is a robot and that he challenges Lance Armstrong to a bicycle eating contest one day to prove who is master of the Stern Face.






*Brian May is an English astrophysicist and author most widely known as the lead guitarist of the rock band Queen. It was him making that awful noise what Mr Peel hated so much!

PigLick on 2/7/2010 at 04:13

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can we talk about Brian May instead cos that guy has more awesome in his pinky finger than all of Rush put together.