Rush
Date: June 7, 2008
Venue: Starlight Theater
Better Than: Watching Strange Brew.
By S.T. VOCKRODT
Here was the bad bit of news about Rush’s three-hour concert last Saturday night: Lead crooner Geddy Lee’s voice was way off on several songs, missing pitches and carrying off-key notes at several junctures. One casualty of Lee’s lackluster vocal performance was the band’s otherwise spot on run through “2112,” arguably its most exciting tune.
But the good news was that Lee’s peculiar voice — some call it womanly — has never been the allure of the venerable prog-rock band. It’s what has made the band perhaps rock ‘n’ roll’s worst victim of the love-’em-or-hate-’em dichotomy. Rather, it’s the immense instrumental talent the three Canadian warriors of mean, mean pride possess that has catapulted the band through seemingly countless original records and subsequent live shows.
It was obvious that the nearly sold-out crowd of mostly 40- and 50-somethings at Starlight Theatre understood this as it saved its loudest applause for Neil Peart’s drum rolls, guitarist Alex Lifeson’s whammy bar-laden solos and Lee’s angular bass riffs. As such, the crowd reacted raucously during a seven-minute drum solo by Peart that ranged in style from hard rock drum rolls to militaristic fills to finally a jazz beat that seemed to dazzle all in attendance. The solo was clearly the highlight of an impressive second half of the band’s set, which included several tunes from Rush’s newest and 19th album, Snakes and Arrows, and its top hits from the 1980s.
The second half, which followed a decent but at times pedestrian first half, included a rousing rendition of the synth-rock tale of teenage alienation, “Subdivisions,” a hard-driving version of “Spirit of Radio” and the ultimate set-closer in “Tom Sawyer.”
On the topic of “Tom Sawyer,” the song was introduced on stage’s video screens by South Park characters playing the roles of each band member who couldn’t agree whether the The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were different stories. The video, which killed the spontaneity of “Tom Sawyer’s” intro, was among several whimsical and bizarre videos the band played at various points in the show. One video for a song from Rush’s newest album, The Larger Bowl, showed imagery of the Ku Klux Klan, Asian sweatshops and threats to illegal immigrants to match the song’s lyrics about various social inequities. Oddly enough, the band saw fit to introduce the song with a waggish video starring Strange Brew actors Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis playing their simplistic characters from the 1983 parody of Canadian culture. It seemed disjointed, given the following song’s themes.
For the most part, the band raced through its 26-song set without much commentary between songs. Lee was at his liveliest in the set’s closing songs, skipping around the stage. Peart soared effortlessly through complicated drum beats and fills with facial expressions akin to someone sitting at a desk and stuffing envelopes for a living.
The encore showcased the new, the relatively obscure and the classic with the band playing “One Little Victory,” “Passage to Bangkok” and closing with “YYZ." After about three hours, it appeared that the crowd had gotten about everything out of the apparently exhausted Rushsters on a sweltering night. With the exception of Lee’s apparent vocal troubles, one couldn’t have asked for much more.
Setlist
1. Limelight
2. Digital Man
3. Ghost of a Chance
4. Mission
5. Freewill
6. The Main Monkey Business
7. The Larger Bowl
8. Red Barchetta
9. The Trees
10. Between the Wheels
11. Dreamline
Intermission
12. Far Cry
13. Workin’ Them Angels
14. Armor and Sword
15. Spindrift
16. The Way the Wind Blows
17. Subdivisions
18. Natural Science
19. Witch Hunt
20. Instrumental
21. Spirit of Radio
22. 2112
23. Tom Sawyer
Encore
24. One Little Victory
25. Passage to Bangkok
26. YYZ
Personal Bias: I own most of the band’s 19 albums.
Random Detail: Lee’s bass amp-stack included what appeared to be three dozen chickens on a rotisserie. The inexplicable references to chickens never became clear.
By The Way: Lee is known to be a huge baseball fan, but he showed his local basketball colors by emerging from Peart’s drum solo with a Kansas Jayhawks national basketball championship t-shirt for the remainder of the show.
This website looks messed up.. Might wanna fix that (eg, sidebar overlapping article..)
Posted at: June 10, 2008 5:17 AM