Saturday, April 26, 2008

Concert Review: Rush

Snakes & Arrows show charms

By Ron Dempesmeier

DALLAS — First, you have to understand several things about the long-lived Canadian band Rush: they write brainy, knotty songs full of time-signature changes and “deep” lyrics; they have instrumental chops that impress lesser mortals and inspire many other musicians; they stage extravagant stage shows of lasers, lights, explosive pots and triple projection screens; and they have a very dada-like sense of humor. In short, they are one of the Americas most popular cult bands and are beloved by engineering, professional and blue-collar nerds everywhere. They also refuse to believe that after 30 years together that they have nothing new musically to offer – hence the predominance of songs from their latest album Snakes & Arrows.

Rush also has a huge back catalog of gold and platinum albums that most fans want to hear a fair sampling from. What helped make this concert so great was that it offered nothing but 2 ½ hours of prime Rush with no opening band. The amazingly cool weather at the Superpages.com amphitheater was also an added bonus to the fans at the show.

Kicking off with “Limelight” from their Moving Pictures album proved to be a smart decision as the crowd immediately jumped to their feet and pretty much stayed that way for the duration of the night. They then went into the Police-like “Digital Man” from their early 80s career. One of the earlier highlights of the night was an excellent rendition of the 1987 song “Mission.” Permanent Waves yielded “Freewill” and got the crowd around me to do a sing-along with it’s life affirming lyrics. Snakes & Arrows was also represented by an instrumental called “The Main Monkey Business.” This was the first of five instrumentals – if you count the amazing drum solo by percussionist extraordinaire Neil Peart and Alex Lifeson’s 12-string acoustic guitar solo performance piece called “Hope”.

The crowd pleasing, sci-fi car song “Red Barchetta” was followed by one of the more bizarre (but still great) songs in Rush’s oeuvre called “The Trees” from 1978’s Hemispheres album. A story about a dispute in the forest between the smaller maples and the larger oaks that oppress them by stealing all the sunlight – it sounds crazy, but it’s a parable about relationships between different cultural groups. The performed two more songs and went to intermission.

Before coming back on stage, the projection screens had a brief comedic film (the second of the evening) which featured bassist Geddy Lee as a Scottish truck driver who keeps saying “What’s that smell?” while on a quest to find delicious fried chicken. He picks up a trio of Barbie dolls and is stopped at a police barricade where a buck toothed policeman keeps asking, “Where are you going?” Meanwhile the Barbie dolls see a miniature Neil Peart doll on a drum kit and immediately leave the Scotsman for this handsome man. The Scotsman finally finds a place where a Swiss man tempts him a delicious fried chicken leg and yodels to his daughter “Heidi” to bring the traveler a bucket. The girl lifts a cleaver and brings it down and then turns around to reveal her identity as Jerry Stiller (George Castanza’s father) and yells back “Quit calling me Heidi!” This coupled with the three large rotisserie chicken ovens behind the bassist instead of the normal wall of amplifiers seems to indicate that either Geddy Lee loves the “universal tasting food” or that they are just plain surreal! They also had the cartoon boys from South Park introduce “Tom Sawyer” as Lil’ Rush and Bob & Doug McKenzie from The Great White North introduce “A Bigger Bowl.”

The second set kicked off with five straight songs from Snakes & Arrows. The video projected behind the band during “Workin’ Them Angels” had primarily black-and-white photos of heroic, hard working people that had angel wings on their shoulders. One of the larger bits of applause of the evening was when the screens showed 2 soldiers in the sunset with their angel wings. After that quintet of new songs, “Subdivisions” from 1982’s Signals album got an enormous response from the crowd. Musically, the next trio of songs may have been the best of the evening: “Natural Science,” “Witch Hunt” and the instrumental “Malignant Narcissism.” Peart’s drum solo used 2 sets of rotating drums (acoustic and electronic) with all manner of cowbells, wood blocks and electronic percussion pads and ended with a tribute to Swing drumming greats like Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich.

“The Spirit of the Radio” and the first two movements of the 2112 Suite upped the crowd’s energy level even more – which I did not think was possible given all that preceded it. The official set was completed with the still classic “Tom Sawyer.” After a very brief break, Rush came back out to perform their encore. When they played “A Passage to Bangkok” Lee had switched back to his old Rickenbacker bass (all the 70s progressive rock bassists used them) instead of his Fender Jazz Bass and Lifeson used his Gibson ES-355 hollow body instead of the slew of Les Paul guitars he had been playing all evening. They completed the evening with their best-known instrumental “YYZ” from the Moving Pictures album. The fans left the venue feeling very satisfied with the level of showmanship and musicality of the performance. A band that can continue to perform at this level and produce quality new music after more than 30 years is to be commended and worth watching!

This story was submitted by a member of the Pegasus News community.

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• Arts > Popular Music > Rock

Comments

Justin Smith Staff

The nerd in me was dying to see them again. The punk in me said I wasn't even going to consider it given the price.

5 months, 2 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )