I dropped off the kids, drove down the street to the gas station/convenience store, picked up a coke and a pack of mini donuts, got back in the car, plugged my iPhone into the car stereo and started listening to Clockwork Angels.  The mini donuts and the coke were ignored.  The music was not.  When I pulled into a parking spot at work I still had 1:56 left of the last song.  I let it finish before walking inside to my desk and typing this.

I cannot write an objective review of anything Rush does.  Somehow or other my brain has been hard wired to practically worship anything those three guys do together musically.  Honestly, I am sometimes a little weirded out by how they always, and I mean always give me exactly the music that I need at any given moment.  It’s almost as if I were hypnotized at some point and a post hypnotic suggestion was placed into my unconscious mind that commands me to absolutely love each new piece of music Rush releases.  It’s like some weird voodoo or something.  It sometimes feels like they read my mind and find out what I want their music to sound like, and then give me exactly what I want.  When I stop and think of it, it’s a little creepy.

What that means is that any review I might try to write should be ignored by everyone.  More than any other musical artist, my feelings about a Rush release really only apply to me.  I can share my thoughts, and I can try to influence other people’s opinion, but it’s a waste of time.  No one seems to be able to react the same way I do.

Having said all of that, this new album comes on a wave of hype that is unlike anything Rush has ever experienced.  At least to my knowledge.  Maybe Signals in 1982 might have had something similar as it followed 1981’s Moving Pictures album which until now probably stands as their high water mark.  Still, I have never seen anything like this.  Mainstream media, new media, fanboy sites, everything, everywhere, people have been anticipating this album with the expectation that is would blow everything else out of the water.

After one listen, it easily lives up to the hype.  I started listening to Rush in late 1981.  When Signals came out in 1982 I didn’t notice.  By the time of the release of Grace Under Pressure in 1984 I owned everything Rush had published.  Grace Under Pressure was the first album I had to wait for.  My expectation for Clockwork Angels was that it would be the best first-listen experience of any Rush record that I had to wait for.  It was.  Easily.  By Far.  The riffage is Black Sabbathian in it’s intensity.  The hooks are magnificent.  The performances of the three individual members is so far over and above awesome that I really can’t figure out how to describe it.

But what does that mean?  Let me give you an example…  Carnies (track 5) opens with a slow, gloom-and-doomy guitar riff.  After repeating for a measure or two the drums and bass come in and the volume goes up to about a gajillion decibels.  It’s the musical equivalent of getting hit by a train.  At the moment the bass and drums came in I first let out a yell of triumph and then immediately realized I had chills from head to toe.  That’s what I’m talking about.  I have been listening to these three clowns for 30 years, hanging on every note the whole time, and they still produce an honest to goodness physical response from me.  It’s like their music hooks directly into my nervous system and just takes over.  After all this time, when the band members are at an age when they should be thinking more about retirement than setting off musical dynamite in some fat red head from Boston’s little pea brain, they still completely kick my ass.

And that is why I need to write stupid posts like this, and it is also why you should completely ignore my posts like this and go out and listen to the record for yourself.  It’s available for streaming on Grooveshark.  There are a few torrents out there if you prefer that.  The release date is June 12th if you want to wait for the official release (and if you can’t wait for the official release please make sure you buy a copy on the 12th.  Don’t be a dick, please).  As soon as you can get it, get it, and reassure me that I am not the only one who is this completely blown away.

I caved. I found a leaked copy of the new Rush record, Clockwork Angels, last night and I downloaded it. I haven’t given it a listen yet but it’s all queued up on my iPhone and ready to dazzle me as I drive to work today.

You see, they made the title song available on Soundcloud yesterday and I played it in the car, using the neat little Soundcloud app, while I was out running an errand last night and… well… All resistance drained out of me. Resistance is useless, as the Vogons say. Resistance is futile, as the Borg say. You know how it is, right?

For the second time ever I am reposting something from my old myspace blog.  All this looking at old pictures stuff has me digging around the old blog looking for more and I just stumbled on this post… sort of sounds a little like the last post I made here.

 From May 1, 2007:

New Rush!

Rob is in kid-in-a-candy-store mode again.

Snakes & Arrows, the new Rush record hit the stores today and I’m well on my way to wearing out my copy.

Consider me impressed.  It’s darker, without being heavier than the more recent releases.  Lots of acoustic guitars, but it’s still heavy.  (I know I sort of contradicted myself there, but it is Rush after all.  Count to seven for a while, you’ll understand)

Musically there are a couple of new twists.  Some of the songs are almost sort of bluesy.  That’s not something I think we’ve ever been able to say before.  Furthermore there is a sense of the psychedelic.  Again, Rush has never encroached on the world of Acid Rock before (the Feedback ep is kind of an exception).

Personal favorites in the early going include, “Far Cry” (but we’ve had our mitts on that one for over a month now), “Armor and Sword” (although if you’re of the religious nut persuasion you are absolutely going to disagree), “The Larger Bowl” is another one.  It’s heavy on the acoustics, and may in some weird way pass for Prog-Folk.  It’s a strong song though with one of the better hooks.  “Good News First,” and “We Hold On” are also high points for me.

It’s been five years since Vapor Trails, and as of today I’m thinking it was well worth the wait.

Robert is a happy Rush fan.

Bring on the tour!

The original post had an image, but the link is now broken.  It was not my picture though, I am not sure what it was.  Regardless, there will be another similar post made next Tuesday.

The word on the Rush fanboy street is that the entire Clockwork Angels album, whose official release date is Tuesday June 12, has been leaked onto the internet.  I have thus far resisted the temptation (“I can learn to resist anything but temptation.”  Yes, I just dropped a Rush lyric into a parenthetical aside in the middle of a sentence.  Who’s a fanboy?) to get my grubby mitts on a copy.  My resistance is waning though.  I may not make it through today.

It turns out that the band is streaming the title track on its Facebook page.  I just caved and listened to it.  The simple review is that this particular song is totally worth the two year wait we had to endure to hear it.  That’s the first thought I had on the first (and so far only) listen.  As it meandered through it’s seven plus minute run time a second thought came to mind.  This thought is much harder to convey considering it’s a song by a band that makes Rock music on the heavy side and that my personal taste in their music can sometimes be described as the heavier the better.  The song isn’t terribly heavy, although it has a nice and heavy monster of a riff that comes and goes, but it is… what’s the word… it is… Beautiful.  As hard as it is to reconcile using that word to describe a song by this band… that’s the proper word.  The song is beautiful.  It is a rock song, yes it is, although it is a rock song with a nice and swinging 6/8 groove… and it’s beautiful.  I’ve never used that word to describe anything by Rush before, but there you have it.  I’m guessing 7 billion humans will think I’m a retard, but I call them as I hear them, and the song Clockwork Angels by Rush is beautiful.

I mentioned yesterday that I found some old pictures buried in the depths of my gmail account.  Here are some more.  My first couple of camera equipped cell phones were little LG flip phones.  The only way to get the crappy lo-res pictures off of the phone was to email or text them.  I had a label set up to keep them all grouped together, but not long after the purchase of my first iPhone came the joining of Flickr which begat a series of Flickr uploader apps.  I stopped emailing pics to myself years ago.

I went through the LG pictures this morning.  They range from mid-2007, which is probably when I bought the second of the two phones and they stop in early 2008.  I took a few of the better ones and moved them over to Flickr.

If you know my history then you know that mid-2007 was when I started dating a certain gorgeous, brilliant, wonderful woman who a couple of years later became my wife.  The best pictures in the batch were taken on dates.  I love her, and these bring back some happy memories of when we were first falling in love. 

I think this one was from just before seeing The Police at the Boston Garden.

This one was from a Rush concert.  I think this one may have made it to Facebook too.

Here we are at the Tsongas Arena watching a Lowell Devils game.  How could I not fall in love with that smile?

I can’t quite place this one.  Is it the Applebees in Tewksbury?  I hope not, I hate that place… but I think we went there once.  Might this be from our trip to Wisconsin?  I don’t think so, I think it was older than that.  This is one of the oldest pictures I found. 

This one was absolutely taken during our 2007 trip to visit Mike and Tammy and their baby in Wisconsin.

I want to say we were seeing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, probably at Jordan’s in Natick.  I am almost positive this was a 3D IMAX theater and this is still one of my absolute favorite pictures ever.

This was such a happy little find.  Hopefully I’ll wait another five years or so and then find them all over again and feel this great giddy feeling once more.

I love you, Jenny.

This picture is important for two reasons. Well… not “important” per say, but interesting to me.

First:  After years of using an email service that was designed and built inhouse, the company I work for has just switched all email to a business version of gmail. Thank you!

Because of this we’ve all been sending gmail hints and tips type articles to each other. I’ve been a gmail user since 8/11/04, but it’s always good to learn more. One article today was advanced search keywords. I knew most of the ones discussed, but I did not know about the has: after: and before: searches, so I tested it out in my personal account by looking for emails sent by me that had attachments and were within the first year of my gmail life.

Second:  I found some pictures taken with my first ever digital camera! I thought those suckers were gone forever! Most of the pictures were of the day the tree fell on my parent’s brand new mini-van. There were a few from 12/31/2000 but within the email thread I was told to destroy them, so I won’t be sharing those. There was also an example of my old band getting their name in lights.

That old HP camera had less than three megapixels and no zoom and the memory card I had could only store 20 pictures at the highest resolution (80 at the lowest) and I never used it as obsessively as I would the Kodak that I bought after my first pay raise in 2005, or the Nikon that I love so much now, or the iPhone that I photo bomb the holy hell out of everyone with… but it was my first digital, and now it’s represented here on my ridiculously overused blog.

Happiness!

Yup, back in the old days my old band played some mighty big gigs.

A couple of nights ago I asked question:  Which Star Trek series was better, Deep Space Nine or Voyager.  Well, here are the results so far.

I asked the question on a number of different sites, Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, Quora, and Google+.  The results were interesting.

On Facebook I got six votes.  Three for Voyager, and three for Deep Space Nine. 
On Quora I got one vote for Deep Space Nine.
On Blogger I got one vote that ranked them equally.
On Twitter I was not posting about hockey or the RPM Challenge so I got no responses.
On Google+ I got the expected nothing at all.

So, as it stands now the vote count is four for Deep Space Nine and three for Voyager. 

Deep Space Nine wins!

I knew it would!

WOOHOO!