I knew I had a list of shows somewhere online.  I had to go back to the Rush Forum site for the first time since 2015 to find it.  It still listed the last show as a future show, but it had ’em all.

1987-12-03 – Worcester Centrum – Worcester, MA
1990-05-10 – Worcester Centrum – Worcester, MA
1991-12-10 – Worcester Centrum – Worcester, MA
1994-03-11 – Worcester Centrum – Worcester, MA
1996-11-09 – Fleet Center – Boston, MA
1997-06-23 – Great Woods – Mansfield, MA
2002-07-12 – Tweeter Center – Mansfield, MA
2002-10-28 – Fleet Center – Boston, MA
2004-08-12 – Tweeter Center – Mansfield, MA
2007-06-27 – Tweeter Center – Mansfield, MA
2007-07-09 – Mohegan Sun Arena – Uncasville, CT
2007-09-06 – Marcus Amphitheater – Milwaukee, WI
2007-09-17 – Madison Square Garden – New York, NY
2008-06-15 – Comcast Center – Mansfield, MA
2008-07-05 – Saratoga Springs Performing Arts Center – Saratoga Springs, NY
2008-07-07 – Mohegan Sun Arena – Uncasville, CT
2008-07-11 – Verizon Arena – Manchester, NH
2010-09-14 – TD Garden – Boston, MA
2011-04-08 – Giant Center – Hershey, PA
2011-04-10 – Madison Square Garden – New York, NY
2012-09-07 – Verizon Wireless Arena – Manchester, NH
2013-05-09 – Mohegan Sun Arena – Uncasville, CT
2013-05-11 – Etess Arena – Atlantic City, NJ
2015-06-23 – TD Garden – Boston, MA
2015-06-29 – Madison Square Garden – New York, NY

Just a bunch of random pics of Neil Peart that I took over the years.  The quality will be just as awful as you’d expect.

R40 at Madison Square Garden in New York, 6/29/15

Snakes and Arrows in Saratoga Springs, NY on 7/5/08.

Snakes and Arrows at the Verizon Arena (it’s not called that anymore) in Manchester, NH on 7/11/08.

Opening night of the Clockwork Angels tour in Manchester on 9/7/12.

Clockwork Angels at the Mohegan Sun Arena in CT on 5/9/13.

Waiting for the drum stick to come back on the Clockwork Angels tour at the Taj in Atlantic City, NJ on 5/11/13.  Best seats I’ve ever had for a Rush show.

R40 at the TD Garden in Boston on 6/23/15.  Second best seats I’ve ever had at a Rush show.  At least the second best seats I had at a show when I had a camera with me.  I had killer seats at a Snakes and Arrows show at Mohegan sun in ’07, and at a Presto show in ’90 at the Worcester Centrum, but no camera at either of those.

Time Machine Tour at the TD Garden in Boston on 9/14/10.

Neil was never one to show a lot of emotion on stage.  At least he wasn’t by the time I started seeing them. He would sometimes get a little goofy and make stupid faces at the other guys, things like that.  It was rare for him to let us see what he was thinking though.  You can’t blame him, he’s playing the most difficult drum parts any rock drummer has ever attempted.  It took a ton of concentration.

There was one moment that I clearly recall that I wish I had a camera for though.  A camera and a tape recorder.  It was in 2007 on the Snakes and Arrows tour at the Mohegan Sun arena.  I was sitting (standing) on the floor, reasonably close to the stage and I could see it clearly.  They were playing Mission and he had an equipment issue.  I think his MIDI Marimba thing failed or something like that.  As the song was ending he let a bit of frustration show on his face and he took it out on his drums.  He laid into a fill to close the song that literally (well, maybe not literally) shook the entire stage.  It was ferocious… and it was awesome.  When you are the best that’s ever lived you can do stuff like that.  He was the best whose ever lived.  Moon was great.  Bonham was great.  So many of them were great.  Neil was better.  You can’t argue it.  Neil was just better.

I saw Rush play live something like 20 times between December 1987 and June 2015.  I’ve lost track of exactly how many.  I think 22, maybe?  Whatever.  Each one was a gift.  Each one was a thrill.

If you were just on rt 495 in Haverhill and heard Vapor Trails blasting out of some asshole’s car at obscene volume, that was me. I’m that asshole. It’s 64 degrees out in mid January and I was sure as shit opening all the windows. Zero fucks given.

It was the first album I bought. I think it was 1981, but it may have been ’82 by then. I’m pretty sure it was still the most recent record, but Signals may have been out by then.

That’s not the original copy though. I bought this one on eBay a few years ago. The original was on cassette and the tape broke shortly after I bought it. I’m pretty sure I was in school when it happened and I’m also pretty sure I cried a little.

I’ve never been a drummer, but part of me always wanted to be one. I still remember the first time I heard his drum solo on YYZ. Side one, track three. My jaw hit the floor. Not too long after that I heard the studio recording of YYZ when I bought the Moving Pictures album. Also side one, track three. I was really disappointed to hear that the huge drum solo was only two bars long.

Donna Harper tweeted that only a few people knew he was sick. He was a private guy to the end. The other two band members knew. I can’t fault him for his wish for privacy, but I very selfishly wish he had let the public know. We could have eased into it a little. That’s my problem though, not his.

I does feel silly to be heart broken over the passing of someone I never knew, but that’s how it is. What else can you do?

This might be the best thing Rush ever did.

These are the only CDs I still own.

My laptop battery is probably going to die before I finish this one.

The band has agreed that Sunday’s practice is going to include lots of butchering Rush songs.  They are just too tough for weekend warrior types like us, but they are still insane fun to struggle with.

Mike and I have been going back and forth suggesting things to try.  We’re both trying to find things that are on the easier side, of course.  I’ve been putzing around my iTunes library looking for ideas.  Mike threw out New World Man and it sure sounds easy.  Knowing those psychos though the easy sounding stuff will tie our hands in knots and melt our brains.  He also suggested The Garden, which would please my wife to no end, and it might be doable if we dumb it down a bit.  We don’t have strings, and the piano interlude would have to be dealt with.

I accidentally deleted the song Fly By Night from my iTunes library.  Idiot.  I replaced it from Apple Music and then made a bunch of Apple Music playlists.  Studio albums, live albums, and deluxe editions.  I’m going to kinda drown myself in them for a while.  Days.  Weeks.  Yeah, probably.

The groove at the end of Losing It is absolutely savage.  No one ever thinks of that song, but damn what a riff.

I suggested Dreamline because I vaguely remember being able to fake my way through it.  I also thought maybe A Passage to Bangkok, but those vocal parts are really high.  When I pulled albums into the studio playlist a couple of them failed on the first try.  I had to add them a second time.  One of them was Grace Under Pressure.  I think I want to play Distant Early Warning because it is effin’ awesome.

I just read an article that collected a bunch of celebrity messages from twitter.  All of the usual suspects.  Members of bands they toured with in the early days.  People he inspired to start playing who later became friends.  Brian Wilson.  That Brian Wilson.  I don’t know why, but reading Brian Wilson paying tribute to Neil Peart just made me so happy.  Of all people, they brains behind The Beach Boys was a fan.

Neil lost his daughter to a car accident when she was 18 years old.  A year later he lost his first wife to cancer.  He remarried and had a second daughter.  She’s probably in her early teens now, I think.  We lost a hero.  She lost her dad.  This is epic suck for us, but it’s so much worse for her.  All of the collective hearts of the entire fandom need to go out to her.  Mine does, at least.

My father’s hero was Ted Williams.  He saw Ted retire and go out on top with a home run in his last at bat.  He also saw Ted die.  I saw Rush go out on top with one of their best albums and the tour to end all tours.  Now this.  It dawned on me that while my father had to see his hero die, I am going to have to go through this three times.  This is just the first round.  Please let there be a good 30 years before we see this again.

I’m just really sad.  I don’t even know what I’m saying.

I guess my laptop battery had enough juice to get through this after all.

There are going to be more of these.  This is going to take a while to get through,  You’ve been warned.

I stole this image from the interwebs.  I wanted this because when I was in school and needed to buy saxophone reeds I would go to Tewksbury Music Center on the corner of Main and Chandler streets.  When you walked in the door they had this hanging on the wall on your immediate left.  I thought it was pretty much the coolest photo of drums ever.  I still kinda do.

It was fitting that the music store where I bought about a million sax reeds and took my first guitar lessons and bought about a million guitar strings would prominently display a member of my favorite band right by the front door so that it was always the first thing you saw.  That was fitting to me.  That made sense.  It still does.

Rest in peace, Professor.

 

The Professor was in this picture, I swear. I couldn’t see him but I could hear him.