Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Dutchforum / Milan / Italy
Concert date: 10/23/2007
Attendance: 6000
Ticket price: €60.00
The great Rush are finally coming! What a wait that was, at least as far as I’m concerned! Yeah, I missed them three years ago. But since even a donkey doesn’t step on the ice twice, this time a meeting with the legendary champions of Canadian progressive rock, or more precisely art rock, was unavoidable. Rush! The tour supporting “Snakes And Arrows” (2007) – RockLine review HERE, which has been running since this June and kicked off in North America, finally brought Rush back to Europe this October. The dates were mostly aimed at Great Britain and its Viking-skull surroundings (Scandinavia), but they also included a few stops further south, and the one closest to Slovenia was, once again, good old Milan.
Thanks to the rock-solid faith of Koncert Freak (www.koncerti.net), a man with a big rocker’s heart, one more seat in a 20-person minibus was left for RockLine. You read that right. Three years ago Freak filled an entire “big-ass” bus with people, and this time barely 20 of us showed up. In Milan the sun greeted us at 4 p.m. and warmed our bones. Since there were still three and a half hours until ticket pickup, we promptly sailed off to a shopping mall, where even a blind man could tell that CD prices at Saturn are outrageous. Well, the Italian version of the Arabic kebab, grilled chicken wings and a beer left a pretty satisfying mark too. So we were ready for a full-blown Rush erection!
It’s 8 p.m. and I’m wedged into the pit, barely 10 meters from the stage of the Dutchforum hall. The band’s excellent music selection keeps me entertained, with songs from Yes, ELP, Genesis, King Crimson, Porcupine Tree, The Mars Volta, Jeff Buckley, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin… And if that wasn’t enough for you, you could occupy yourself by watching the Italian crowd. These people talk constantly, or rather twitter and coo like pigeons, seeking eye contact, which can come across as pushy but is also endearingly childlike. It’s unbelievable how many words fly in from every side and direction… They could barely hold back from smoking, which is banned in Italian halls, so quite a few broke the rules and reached into colorful packs of tobacco cigars, and you couldn’t stay indifferent to the overly strong whiffs of herbal opiates either.
9 p.m.! Lights out, the hall erupts, a short, humorous film intro, Limelight, and Rush are on stage. Lifeson front left, Lee front right, and in the middle between the two, pushed only slightly back, the first Rush mind, Peart, behind his well-known drum fortress. In the back, three huge screens alternately showed the action on stage or ran animated short video clips, whose cleverly chosen themes matched the point of each song magnificently. Behind Lifeson stood a real wall of amplifiers stacked like towers. On top of them stood figurines of various kinds of dinosaurs, lined up one next to another. By the monitors, under the microphone and under Lifeson’s feet stood Barbie figures, crammed together side by side, while the man rode high on various models of Gibson guitars the whole time. His colleague Geddy could boast of something that drew even more attention. Behind him stood an improvised chicken oven. Three chickens skewered on each spit, seven spits in a row one under another in each column, in three columns. Total chickens counted in the chicken crematorium labeled “Henhouse”: 63. To add even more laughs, a cook appeared on stage twice during the show, the second time even dressed in a chicken costume, checking whether the chickens’ skin had crisped up properly while the band was stretching itself to the limit on stage.
Geddy of course behind the keyboards, armed with a Fender bass, with that characteristic vocal, a vocal that a friend of mine recently described perfectly as the best female vocal in rock, was confident and potently aggressive throughout. Neil Peart’s drums got a special red makeover for the Snakes And Arrows tour, with the snake-and-arrow symbol. To match, the man also updated his gear with the same embroidered symbol, specifically his “fez” (without the tassel), which he wears on his head during shows.
For the new tour Rush thoroughly shook up the set list played on last year’s, that is, the “Vapour Trails” tour. Right after Limelight, during which heads happily spun around their axes in the hall, the trio had its first surprise, including Digital Man (“Signals”, 1982) and Entre Nous (“Permanent Waves”, 1981). After the latter, Geddy Lee officially greeted the audience for the first time, in Italian, and thanked everyone for coming tonight. He continued in English, saying that Rush wanted to go on with the album “Hold Your Fire” (1987). Fantastic, along with “Signals” one of my favorite Rush albums! The band played a superb Mission, a song with an exceptional message of peace, and the goosebumps were truly easy to feel down your spine! Free Will fired up the crowd, which had been a bit dreamy until that point and which, interestingly, didn’t make any kind of lasting racket during the show, at least in terms of the number and strength of decibels. The atmosphere Rush create with their special stage effects, the lighting essentially, inseparably combined with the unique sound and the band’s drive on stage, simply created a special kind of magic, the so-called Rush magic, which worked on the stimulus receptors so that you could easily find yourself on the edge of rational absence, of mental detachment. Geddy goes on to say that the band has plenty of songs ready in the repertoire tonight and: “We want to continue with Snakes And Arrows album!”. The band then just hits you with The Main Monkey Business, one of the best Rush instrumentals and at the same time one of the highlights of the new record, which offered fresh confirmation of the trio’s harmonious breathing, the incredibly tight synchronization that radiates this uniqueness. This time it was truly best for those present to like the new album, because Rush played almost the whole thing live!
The sound was excellent already in the pit by the stage. The further you moved from the stage, the better it all sounded; at around 25 meters you had practically ideal sonic balance, and it was definitely not much worse in the stands, since the sound didn’t noticeably weaken in the overall punch of delivered power anywhere in the hall! These guys pride themselves on exceptional stage equipment as far as the lighting rig goes. Before the show the crowd was entertained by watching roadies climb up hanging ladders to the so-called “baskets” under which groups of rotating lights were mounted. As many as six people squeezed into six such mounted “baskets” and took care of aiming additional manually operated spotlight cannons, with which they chased Geddy and Alex running around below. On top of that, additional groups of moving lights, which occasionally dropped down over a soloing Lifeson, provided extra dynamics and a highly atmospheric mood. Rush closed the first part of the show with Dreamline (“Roll The Bones”, 1991). Green laser beams, the kind you can catch at a David Gilmour or Roger Waters show, marked the end of the first part, which lasted an hour and five minutes. Rush delighted with the inclusion of real rarities from their live shows, such as the songs Circumstances (“Hemispheres”, 1979) and Between The Wheels, which replaced Red Sector A from the album “Grace Uder Pressure” (1984), played on the “Vapour Trails” tour.
A far too long half-hour break followed. But the guys had to cool off. Fair enough, because what they brought to the second part was the absolute reward for the first. An hour and three quarters of pure fun followed! Perhaps the only thing that bugged a visitor a bit was the obvious mass pushing and presenting of the band’s newest studio release, “Snakes And Arrows” (2007). All of the first five songs of the second part were dedicated to it. Just how well the new album has caught on with the crowd in this time was proven especially by Far Cry, Workin’ Them Angles and above all the epic Armor And Sword, which is already becoming the fans’ first favorite from the new album, since during this song the crowd sang the verses along with the band most intensely. But by the end of The Way The Wind Blows the folks were visibly stuffed with the “Snakes And Arrows” repertoire. And what do Rush do in such a case, to wake the numbed crowd from its slumber? They just fire up Subdivisions (“Signals”, 1982), a song with one of the most beautiful melodies tied to the integration of Oberheim synthesizers into the body of Rush’s eighties music. The audience came back to life in the blink of an eye and made tight contact with the band again. The obligatory top-notch epic Natural Science followed, which always stands as one of the highlights of a Rush show and once again didn’t let anyone down, while the inclusion of Witch Hunt from the album “Moving Pictures” (1981), which replaced Red Barchetta from the previous tour, brought yet another bold twist to the show.
The moment Neil Peart finds himself on stage completely alone is the one a true Rush fan awaits with the greatest fervor during the show. Neil opened his bit “the standard way”. After a few minutes of gymnastics of wizardly improvisations, the drums rotate and Neil moves over on the same seat so he’s facing us again. This time the guy started hammering on a marimba and weaving in a melody he created by whacking a device tuned in octaves, something like a piano, except you hit it with drumsticks, so it “releases” just one note at a time. The jazz man once again charmed with his hand skills and, in the second half, carried his solo spot through woodwind accompaniment toward a close of high energy voltage. A Neil Peart solo is its own kind of experience in the world of music. It’s always a unique experience, always new and different, and every time the guy proves with it that he is one of the greatest jazzers ever written into the rock ‘n’ roll business. Drum solos today are often just an excuse for the other members to catch their breath backstage, but here we’re talking about one of the most polished solos around, with a sensible, logical musical figuration of melody and not merely rhythmic rambling.
The band wrapped up the regular part of the show in grand style. With classics of the iron-clad repertoire, Distant Early Warning, with a video on the screen of a boy riding a rocket across the horizons of the sky, they blasted the audience into the heavens once again! During The Spirit Of Radio Geddy specifically demanded a response from the crowd and more energy. With a single gesture he got the people in the hall to throw their hands up in the air in unison. A truly special treat awaited us at the very end, and we were led into its overture by a sketch tied to a video that referenced the animated series for adults South Park. First the South Park boys, in the role of band members, play the intro to the Rush tune Tom Sawyer. It doesn’t work out and they nearly fall out as they look for someone to blame. Then comes the order to take it from the top! Of course in the next moment the real Rush hit and carry us with this fantastic song to the energy boiling point in the hall right at the finish. On the previous tour Rush opened their shows with Tom Sawyer.
The encore was interesting, since it was opened by One Little Victory (“Vapour Trails”, 2002), a punchy and aggressive song marked by a real heat wave that swept over the hall after a whole salvo of flames from special pyrotechnic effects erupted on stage and a cloud full of confetti “rained from the sky” over us. Because of the heavily emphasized share of songs from “Snakes And Arrows” on this new tour, the band somewhat overlooked its seventies output. So there was no famous 2112 overture, for example, in the set list, nor The Trees, nor Closer To The Heart, and they even cut the obligatory Working Man from the debut from the song list. Well, A Passage To Bangkok, a shorter riff-fueled firecracker, landed like a Band-Aid on a wound and at least partially consoled all the fans who bet on Rush’s seventies first. The band confirmed its untamed streak once more at the close, when they played the instrumental YYZ, whose melody the hall sang together, thus contributing the vocals to the song. Magical! Lifeson was in a special element of personal disconnect, and instead of a pick during YYZ he took one of the Barbie figures in his hand and slid it along the strings.
Three hours and fifteen minutes flew by as if they hadn’t even existed. Rush radiate exceptional stage energy. A trio of three highly charismatic gentlemen, whose chemistry is built on the bonds of rich experience, long concert mileage and a long acquaintance, still works like a well-oiled machine after more than 30 years, and relentlessly so, carrying the Rush story into the new millennium too, as the story of three eternal youngsters who are admittedly tilting inexorably toward their sixties, though the energy they radiate says nothing of the sort. They are unique magicians, wizards, or musical gurus, who managed to unite an extraordinary sermon through the prism of unique musical interpretation.
So after this it’s downright silly to even weigh what a person got for the €60.00 the tickets cost, which isn’t little of course, but still. Two hours and three quarters of pure fun, a heap of songs Rush hadn’t played on stage in quite a while, unique sound and above all the singular magic, whose creations only the essence of this trio is capable of. It’s incredible how much sonic space just three musicians cover. The jazz-exploring drums, Geddy’s rattling bass, with its own color and approach, and the venomously wound, echoing distorted guitar sound of Alex Lifeson. Geddy is incredible. He holds down the lines on the keyboards, makes sure the bass lines don’t die out, and on top of that handles the vocals at the same time. Lifeson is rowdy on stage, like a youngster eager to prove himself who has only just put the band together. Right at the start of the show, during Digital Man, Lifeson hurt the index finger of his left hand while soloing, and it bled for quite a while through the first part of the show. The touch of spontaneity Lifeson brings with his stage play can’t go unnoticed either! A trio that sucks you into the creation of the Rush world, a special fairy tale for almost three hours from which you absolutely don’t want to wake up, until the last note of YYZ rings out and Geddy says: “Thank you, we hope to see you again soon!” Just three people. The same sentence could be written about a Motorhead show, but the story that gets you to such a conclusion is completely different! Brrrr… I’m afraid we’ll be waiting a very long time again for Rush to release an album and come to Europe. Attendance was also much poorer than three years ago, with a good 6000 people in Milan this time, if anything fewer. I suspect Rush will let us starve for some 5 to 10 years until the next tour.
Setlist
FIRST PART:
1. Limelight
2. Digital Man
3. Entre Nous
4. Mission
5. Free Will
6. The Main Monkey Business
7. The Larger Bowl
8. Secret Touch
9. Circumstances
10. Between The Wheels
11. Dreamline
—30-minute break—
SECOND PART:
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. Malignant Narcissism
21. Drum Solo
22. Hope
23. Distant Early Warning
24. The Spirit of Radio
25. Tom Sawyer
—encore—
26. One Little Victory
27. A Passage To Bangkok
28. YYZ
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