The Rush(ians) are coming!

I don't get cable so I could have missed it. Last week on The Colbert Report one of my favorite bands, Rush, appeared on the show. Not only that, but the whole show got Rush-ified from the opening monologue, to the Word, to the actual interview. It was quite enjoyable to watch. This just proves that there is some worthwhile information in those Adobe blogs. ...

Since the whole show was rushified, here it is. This may not work for IE users so why not get Opera ( or if you must Firefox, Safari, etc. ).

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Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

On Saturday I got to do something very special. Along with my wife and brother in law, I went to see Rush in concert. It's been a while since I've been to a concert, and I believe the last one was Rush as well. But it was a pleasure for more than just a chance to see them play live. The nights playlist was different than what you would expect, and yet it was the same. ...

I love live albums and there are some perennial concert classics that always seem to get played. For instance, Spirit of the Radio, Tom Sawyer and some part of 2112. All great songs, but I've heard them live. In some cases I have 3 different live versions on CD plus the Rush in Rio DVD version. Because of this I went in with some songs that I would love to hear, but I wasn't expecting them to play.

Limelight is one of my favorite songs and it was likely to be played ( in fact it was first in the playlist ). Some others that I like were played as well. The song that has the line from the title of this posting, "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose", Circumstances I didn't think would get played. The songs from Hemispheres that usually get played are The Trees and La Villa Strangiato, neither of which was on the playlist. Instead, they played Circumstances which was awesome. Another song that was unlikely but very cool is Natural Science. They played it! In fact the whole first part of the show was a mix of stuff from their new album Snakes and Arrows and older stuff that you don't usually hear.

During intermission we heard a part of 2112. Not as played by Rush, but the string quartet version of 2112. That was quite amusing and gave way to a conversation about how cool it would be to have a string quartet play Rush songs during intermission, then the band could play the songs they didn't.

The second part of the show started out with more of the same mix. A bunch of great Rush songs that you wouldn't expect mixed in with songs from their new album. As the saying goes though, the more that things change, the more they stay the same. Then the familiar opening to Spirit of the Radio started and we began a set, albeit short, of more expected songs. They did mix things up a little and had a great intro into Tom Sawyer by the boys of South Park acting as Lil Rush.

All in all, a great concert. My wife wrote down the playlist and might be putting it on her blog, but I think their was only 23 songs played that night. Given the number of albums they have and the fact that some albums got more coverage than others, not every album was represented. However, much of their career for the past 30+ years was represented including the theme song from Summerslam 2005, the cover of Summertime Blues.

If you haven't bought their new album yet, make sure to pick it up. While you are at it check to see when they are coming to your area and get yourself some tickets if you can. They once again put on a great show and played some great music.