On my lunch break, listening to R40 bootlegs, messing with Hipstamatic’s Oggl app, feeling all the Final Tour feels.
I don’t care for this getting old shit.
Category: Music
Houston
I found a link to this video on twitter this morning while sitting in the car in a rest area parking lot because I was so ridiculously early for work that I stopped to get a snack.
Run on sentence, for the win!
Comma splice, also for the win!
Grammar, babie! Dig it!
Anyway, it’s a youtube video featuring the entire Rush show from Houston on May 20th. I’ve only watched the first few seconds and I’m really just saving this for later.
Enjoy.
Sadness of the Inevitable Sort
Im feeling a little blue right now. If this is really the end for Rush as a touring act, then there are only two more shows. They are just about to hit the stage in Irvine, CA, and then the final show is in Los Angeles on Saturday.
Is this really the end? I knew it would come someday, but I guess I never really believed it. They say they aren’t breaking up. They say there will be more music. They say there might be performance alternatives to big cross continental tours. I sincerely hope so.
Still… Is this the end?
Periscope is a Rush Fan’s Best Friend
Rush played Vegas last night. I wasn’t there. Fortunately, a couple of people who were there broadcast their views on the periscope app. I couldn’t really see anything, but I could hear everything… Sort of. Bad bootleg quality, but still good enough for me in the moment. Sweet.
Band Hiatus
The band rehearsed tonight. The first weeknight practice since I joined. It was weird having to deal with traffic to get there. That has never happened. We snuck this one in because one of the guys is going on a business trip for a few weeks. It’s tough getting all of us together this summer. Hopefully things will be easier in the fall.
I took my laptop and a couple of my new microphones with me, but traffic made me a tad late so I didn’t take the time to set them up to make a recording. I settled for my iPhone instead. I haven’t listened to it yet. I’ll edit it tomorrow and share anything that sounds decent. It’s going to sound like swill, but it’s always worth listening back. I’ll get the whole room mic’d up soon, but not until next month at least.
More Rush Pics
Just a few more pics from the Rush show last night. Epic, my friends. Utterly Epic.
They played four songs that I had never seen them do in person, one of which I had never heard them do on recording either. This is from that song, but no spoilers here. I had to take this because, is that a Paul Reed Smith 12-string???
I had read that during the break they took after the last tour Geddy Lee added a collecting obsession to his existing wine and baseball memorabilia collecting obsession. The new one being bass guitars. We saw a lot of new and interesting instruments last night. This of course is not one of them. I’m pretty sure the Green Fender Jazz made an appearance last tour. Oh well.
Ever since the late 80’s, Neil Peart has been playing with two drum kits. One, the great big sucker he always has in front of him, and the other a smaller mostly electric kit that would spin around to his front from time to time. Over the years the two kits sort of blended together into one 360 degree monster kit. This tour? There were two kits… just not at the same time. This is the first of the two, which he used during the first set.
This was the second kit. A replica of his old 1970’s kit, which he called “Chromey.” Note the tubular bells in the back. Ever since seeing the Exit Stage Left video from 1981 I have been wanting to see Neil stand up and play some damn tubular bells. Unfortunately, that was replaced by his MIDI marimba thingie before I managed to see my first show back in 1987. Last night though… dream fulfilled! Tubular Freakin’ Bells!
On the second song of the first set, Alex Lifeson played a Rickenbacker guitar. Later on, Geddy Lee played a Gibson Bass. It was like the 1970’s just flipped itself upside down and turned itself over backward. It was just so weird.
Is that one of those weird new Gibson ES-Les Pauls? A semi-hollow version of the ultimate solid body guitar. Not sure I get the point of that.
Geddy with a Rickenbacker. Back in the 80’s that was all I really wanted in this world. Just to have Geddy Lee stop playing those little Steinberger things, or that weird Wal thing. Just play a Rickenbacker.
Again, this is more like it. Alex with his Gibson ES-355. And all was right with the world.
Next week we see them again in New York. I can’t freakin’ wait!
Rush at the TD Garden in Boston
June 23, 2015. Rush came to Boston to play the TD Garden. I somehow managed to remain mostly spoiler free as the R40 tour has been rolling along for over a month. Suffice to say it was amazing. I won’t spoil anything for anyone else except to say that the theme of the show can be described as moving backward in time.
The other day I bought a new point and shoot camera. A Nikon Coolpix S7000. Tonight was it’s first real test. It did a pretty good job. I’m happy with the 50-60 pics I took. Here are a few examples. There will probably be more later.
Double neck:
Also double neck:
Double bass:
Double everything:
Tonight!
The day is here! Tonight I will be seeing my all time favorite band for the (I think) 24th time! Rush!
I’m actually nervous. Meaning, what if something goes wrong tonight and I can’t get to the Garden? What if my car breaks down on the way, or I get mugged and my ticket is stolen, or what if my ticket gets struck by lightning? Something like that?
Damn, that would suck!
Boy Does Robbie Need a Hobby
Two band practices ago I recorded the whole thing. I used the iTalk app on my iPhone and just pointed the mic in our general vicinity. It worked well but it sounded like sludge.
Last band practice I recorded the whole thing again. This time I brought my MacBook, my USB interface, and one microphone. It worked well. It sounded pretty bad, but 100 times better than the phone.
Now how do I one up myself? Let’s see. We have three vocal mics, a guitar amp, a bass amp, and a drum kit. Also the USB interface only has two outputs. I won’t be able to record each source onto it’s own track. The best I can do is record a stereo mix. So how do I get that stereo mix? Three mics for voices, two more for the two amps, and let’s say two overhead mics on the drums. Seven microphones. What to do, what to do……
I haven’t used this puppy in four years or so. It is a dusty mess. If things come together I’ll need a lot of compressed air to get the channels clean. I just performed an experiment. I plugged Larry’s piano directly into channel one. I plugged a guitar directly into channel two. I plugged a mic into channel three. The piano panned left, the guitar panned right, and the mic straight up the middle. Now unfortunately the PA we’re using does not have channel outputs. Mr Mackie here does. So we’d have to plug the vocal mics into this, then direct out them into the PA. So to test that out I direct out’d the piano track into the little toyish Marshall amp. Next I plugged the board’s stereo outputs into the USB interface and plugged the interface into the MacBook and brought up GarageBand. I hit record and strummed with one hand, banged on the piano with the other, and gabbed into the mic.
Success.
A stereo recording in GarageBand with the guitar on one side, the piano on the other, and the mic in the middle, and the piano coming out of the little amp. Now the only thing left to do is try and clean out the channels because there was a lot of scratchy dust induced interference that needs to be eliminated. Then it’s just a matter of setting everything up and tweaking the mix to tape as we go, although that would be more of a week to week thing because I don’t plan on listening to play backs until after practice. It’ll do though. Even better, when the day comes when we buy a real power amp to use for PA, the board will already be in place and everything will be ready to go.
This is all upside, right?
I’m not alarmingly obsessed, right?
Right?
Oh did I mention though… I don’t have enough microphones to actually pull this off. To the music store we go!
B. B. King
Rest in peace B. B. King. He was better than all who came before him, and he is better than all who come after him. He is the definition of a genre. The best vocalist blues will ever know. The best guitarist blues will ever know. A peerless, passionate performer who will never be equalled. The world has lost a treasure.
