Last night I took my 9 year old, Giddy LIam (new nickname) to a theater in Fairfax,Va to see the big screen premeire of Rush's Timemachine; Live from Cleavland in all it's big screen and big sound glory.
It was AWESOME!
No wading through bodies to get a good spot to stand, no worries about him getting lost in a crowd, no worries about contact highs when everyone tooks up durring Passage to Bangkock and Tom Sawyer.
When a 9 year old sits attentivly, with no piss breaks for a 2 hour 40 minute concert film you know it's got something going.
They do some real cool skits, the opening, the intermission and ending skits were funny as hell and really cool if your a Rush addict and get all the little bones and names thrown in. A Polka version of Spirit of Radio and a Country version of Closer to the Heart LOL!
As for the meat, the performance.
For years Rush has prided itself on playing it's songs as close to the album as possable. This is a strength but can also be a weakness. Well they were much looser than I have seen them in years (I have seen them 3 times live and have or had every live album and video they have) They would play the songs as known but durring a few they would swithc the tempo or even the time signature as well as accentuaating certian notes from a riff. They did an awesome version of La Vella Strangiato this way and Working man starts out as bad ass Reggae and then blast into it as we know it before speeding up durring Alex's solo where Alex showed he can play as fast or faster than these young kids like Jeff Loomis or Synister Gates.
They played 2 songs from a forthcoming album that were great, one was heavy as anything from 2112.
Now I usually hate drum solos but Peart did one that was more compassision and it really had the boy enthralled.
(He has a Bass but he shows alot of promise when he get's on his little bro's drums as well.)
Durring Clockwork Angels , one of the images was of an American soldier manning a 50 cal on a Humvee and he had Angel wings. Great statement of support when so many in rock are bleeding heart libs. My boy raised his fist in salute when he saw that. Made Dad proud.
The whole thing was great, they stilll have the chops and the energy and ever since they came back from Pearts sabatical following the death of his daughter and wife, they have had a new energy, almost a rock and roll mandate to kick ass.
Oh and Alex Lifeson is fucking God!
