The Rush concert we were supposed to go to tonight was scheduled to start about nine minutes ago. If they went on on-time then they are mid-way through Xanadu right now. Geddy and Alex are both playing their double neck guitars.
Rush at Madison Square Garden back in June
Obviously I am sad to not be there, but its okay. We saw two shows this tour. They were both great. That’s all kinds of win. I hope everyone there has a great time tonight. I hope the band slays, as they always do, and I hope Anika’s gag at the end of the show is epic.
In other, more personal, less interesting, musical news, I am supposed to start another internet based songwriting/recording project this month. I haven’t done any writing or recording yet today but I did put new strings on two guitars. I also cleaned and conditioned the holy hell out of both necks. I’ve never done that before. Let’s see if I made things worse or not.
The goal for this project is to use my acoustic guitar a lot and play a shit load of saxophone, if I can.
Dig how shiny those bronze strings are
Still on the fence about going into Boston to play photographer tomorrow. I haven’t checked the weather yet and if I do go I need to wait until after the morning rush. We’ll see.
For now, I am just hanging out with my beloved bride, my wife, the love of my life. She made dinner and it was fantastic. Now we’re just hoping the phone doesn’t ring with work to do. Fingers crossed.
That’s all for now. In closing, another Xanadu pic. This time from Cleveland.
Less than two hours from now the work week will come to a merciful end and the weekend will finally begin. Oh, happy day.
There is a huge, gargantuan, bummer this weekend. We had Rush tickets for the Mohegan Sun arena show on Sunday. Note I used past tense. We sold the tickets. We didn’t want to, but something came up for work and we couldn’t be at risk of being on the road, two hours from home, and work saying they desperately needed something done right now now now. This is the downside of having a job that occasionally requires you to be on call. It happens to all of us now and then. It used to happen to me all the time, but not so much anymore. Now when it comes up it’s always due to something major and that’s the case this weekend.
I am very sad to miss Rush but I’ve seen them twice on this tour and those two shows followed 11 whole years where I was convinced I would never see them live again. I’m good. I am Rush-Musically satisfied with the state of the world right now. The two shows we saw were amazing and I am so happy that we were a part of them. A small part, of course. In the Cleveland case we were a small part way off in the distance, but a part nonetheless. I am sad about Sunday night, but in the wider scope I am overjoyed with what 2026 has given us.
What else is going on? Tomorrow is Halloween. I have a great big pumpkin sitting on the sideboard in the dining room just waiting to be carved into a jack-o-lantern. We also have a great big bag of candy that is patiently waiting for trick or treaters to come by and claim it all. I’m not one of those grown ups who likes getting dressed up and partying on Halloween, but I do like working the door for the trick or treaters and I do miss when our kids were little enough to take part. I always enjoyed hitting the streets with them trying to maximize their candy haul. Those were good days with little people. Now that our kids are adults it is my job to help a new batch of kids get the most candy they can get. I take that responsibility very seriously and do my job with a smile.
After spending the months of July, August, and September writing as many shitty songs as I possibly could (60 songs in 90 days) I took October off. Fortunately, October ends this weekend and I can start working on the next forgotten internet based song writing/recording challenge. National Solo Album Month. Write and record an album within the month of November all by yourself without any help from anyone else. I’m thinking I want to incorporate the saxophone this time around. I’m not sure how. I think we’ll have a bunch of songs in the key of Eb minor with melodies trading off between vocals and alto sax. Something like that at least. I might want to use acoustic guitars more often as well. I don’t know. We’ll see.
Daylight savings ends this weekend. Sunrise at the ocean on Saturday is something like 7:17am and sunrise at the ocean on Sunday is something like 6:17am. I might take the camera out somewhere on one of those days. If I wait until Sunday I can work on the Frugal Film Project rolls for November. Maybe I’ll go into Boston. I’m off work on Monday too. It was supposed to be because we were going to be driving home from the Rush show in Connecticut. Now it’s just a random day off. If the weather is nice, photos might be taken. I have to get this sort of thing in before the weather goes to hell and that’s going to happen any minute now.
I saw something on social media today about the anniversary of the release of R.E.M.’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi record. It occurred to me that I haven’t listened to that album in… in… in a really freakin’ long time. Maybe not since the 90’s. It came out in 1996 and I played the crap out of it upon its initial release but I don’t think I have spent much time spinning it since then. I listened to it today and I think it is better than I remembered it. Binky the Doormat is still my favorite cut. After it was finished I started moving backward through time through their catalog. I’m back to Green now. I remember California. What a ridiculously great band R.E.M. was. We need more bands like that in today’s shitty world.
Okay. That’s all the self reflection I’ve got in me today. If you’re going to one of the Rush shows at Mohegan Sun (tonight/Friday and Sunday) say hello to the gang for me. We’ll get them next time… assuming next time is the rumored residency at The Sphere in Las Vegas sometime next year because if that happens we are absolutely making the trip out west to see at least one but preferably more than one show. Bank on it, Rush fans.
This post is like… eight days late? We went to Cleveland for no reason other than a Rush show. We were traveling anyway so we detoured to the city that embraced Rush enough in 1974 that it lead to them signing a major label record contract in the US and sent the career on the path to greatness that would eventually include a 50 Something’th anniversary tour that stopped in Cleveland while we were traveling anyway.
It was my 27th Rush concert. If I can find the list I’ll tack it on to the end of this post. The show was fantastic. Our seats were… distant. The sound… well… it was a first for me… a Rush show with shitty sound. At least I think it was. A discussion on Threads gave the impression that the sound where we were was awful but down on the floor it was perfect. That, to me, implies that it was the room that sounded like shit, not the mix. It was 40% bass drum, 50% the rest of the drums, 6% vocals, 3% guitar, 1% keyboards, and 0% bass guitar. It did improve as the night went on but not a lot. I know a lot about bad sounding arenas. I have been to shows at the old Boston Garden. I believe it was Billy Joel who famously said that even hockey games sounded like shit at the old Boston Garden.
The set was fucking amazing. We got all of Moving Pictures at the start fo the second set. In the first set we got… and I still can’t believe it… we got A Farewell to Kings. They stopped playing that song in 1978 or ’79 and I had never heard them do it with my own ears. It was awesome. Awesome.
And now, pictures. Shitty pictures taken at a killer, great show.
Holy Shit! The Teardrop Bass!
Here is my list of past Rush shows:
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 2026–09–19 — Rocket Arena — Cleveland, OH
A few random thoughts on this random Wednesday evening.
I believe there are 38 days left until my wife and I see Rush again. Cleveland. The first US city that broke Rush. The city whose response lead to them signing their first real record deal. 38 days to go.
I learned something about life on the third day post-double tooth extractions. Singing hurts. I didn’t have any pain on the day of the procedure. I didn’t have any pain on the day after. I felt a little confident on the third day and tried to record some vocal tracks for the 50 songs in 90 days challenge. Ouch, bro. Ouch. Having said that, they did tell me to expect day four to be the peak of pain and discomfort so maybe I’m just following the plan.
I’m not doing a liquid diet but I am doing a mostly liquid diet. I’m just playing it safe. I bought a chocolate protein shake mix. The label says to mix it with cold water. Its okay with water, but it is 100 times better when mixed with skim milk. Unfortunately, the mix doesn’t really… mix… with milk. Probably 3/4 of it mixes okay but the rest… lets just say that the protein shake is a smidge on the chunky side.
Did I like the third season of House of the Dragon? I was fully on team Black after season two, but in season three the Blacks were kinda dicks and now I don’t know who I’m rooting for. Weird. At least I’ll have time to figure it out before season four comes out… two freakin’ years from now.
We are three episodes in to the new season of Star Trek Strange New Worlds and I am loving it. The first episode was a great time travel story. The second was a great full blown haunted house horror story that was creepy as fuck. The third episode was basically The hangover and featured David Foley from The Kids in the Hall, confirming that Kids and Star Trek are in the same universe… as if there was ever any doubt. Episode four comes out tomorrow and I can’t wait to see what they do next.
Okay… that’s the state of Robert’s world tonight. It’s 8:36pm and this old fart is ready for bed. G’night, all!
Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut has two shows, one in late October and one in early November. It was always more or less a given that we would go to one of them. Now we officially are.
There are two shows in Boston but we can’t make either one. We will be in San Diego helping my step daughter move into her new apartment ahead of starting her PHD program. That’s going to be epic in and of itself. Weirdly, on the day we are flying home Rush is playing in Cleveland. Somehow, mysteriously, our flight home was magically rerouted to Cleveland instead of Boston so… yeah, we’ll go to that show too. I mean, that one is a total accident, right?
Now the only question is… do we stop with two more shows or do we try to accidentally snag some tickets for a third show as well. We’re already clearly insane so why not just lean into it, right? At this point literally every Rush show could turn out to be the last Rush show. One never knows.
Here is my updated list of Rush shows:
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 2026–07–28 — Madison Square Garden — New York, NY __________Upcoming Show Dates____________________ 2026–09–19 — Rocket Arena — Cleveland, OH 2026–11–01 — Mohegan Sun Arena — Uncasville, CT
Jen, Bellana, and I took a train from a little South of Boston to New York on Tuesday morning. Mike the bass player took the same train on Monday. Kevin the drummer flew into New York from Arizona on Monday. Sarah and Adam, two of Bellana’s friends, came into town from somewhere to the South (sorry, I don’t recall exactly where) on Tuesday too.
Jen, Bellana, Kevin, Mike, and I met for dinner before the show and had some excellent sushi and steak. I had three pieces of salmon sashimi and it was delicious. I also stole some of Jen’s french fries because I am a stinker who enjoys getting in touch with his Irish heritage by eating all things potato based. The fries were (and I am not overstating this in the slightest) spectactular.
When dinner was wrapping up, Bellana went off to meet Sarah and Adam and we all converged on Madison Square Garden. It wasn’t until after we got inside that things started getting weird.
The tickets we bought were in section 328. Section 328 however, isn’t an actual section. I don’t know what the hell it is. I think it’s a press box of some sort. There were two rows, separated by a stairway, and the seats were folding chairs up against a sort of desk with monitor screens under a glass table with a glass partition-like thing sticking up in front of it. We would have had to look over the glass and down to our left to see the stage.
Those seats would have been fine and we would have been able to stand with no one behind us complaining. It just felt odd. The situation, however, was about to get even weirder.
Bellana and Sarah and Adam went off to find a merch table while the rest of us stayed in our press-box-ish seats. I should mention that we only had six tickets and Adam was going to sit by himself somewhere else, down in the 200 level. As the rest of us were discussing the weirdness of our seats am MSG staff member approached us. He told us he had a number of seats that had not been sold (why?) and he offered to upgrade us.
Upgrade us? The fuck? I have never even heard of someone getting a ticket upgrade at a concert before. I mean… huh? Are we interested in seats in the 100 level? Well, seven hells yes we’re interested! He handed us six tickets, four together and two a row behind, and walked away. Kevin summed it up best when he said, “did we just manifest this?” He then grabbed the guy and asked if we could get one more ticket so Adam could sit with us. That’s when Bellana and Sarah and Adam came back to join us and told us that a different staff member had approached them with upgraded tickets too! What the hell is going on here?
We tried but were unable to get seven upgraded seats, but we did manage to get six together. Adam took one of their upgrades and the rest of us sat together. Through out the whole first set there was an empty seat next to us so Adam joined us during the intermission only to have the owner of the missing seat show up during the second set. Oops. We were all standing though so we all just stayed there like nothing weird was happening.
Ticket upgrades? At a supposedly sold out arena concert? Who knew?
Okay then… how was the show?
It was fucking amazing.
It was absolutely awesome.
Geddy Lee’s bass playing was his normal level of amazing. He really sounded like someone who never stopped playing over the last 11 years. The really impressive thing was his voice though. In some of the last tours before retirement he was struggling at times. His notoriously high voice was not as high as it used to be, as is normal for human beings as they get older, and there were things that he just couldn’t do. Sure, the band adjusted the keys to steal him a few extra notes but there will still times where he sounded like he was haing a rough time. Last night though there was none of that. He has mentioned that once they seriously starting playing again he worked with a voice couch to try and recover some of his range and apparently it worked because he was in the best vocal form I’ve heard since probably the early 90’s. It was so impressive.
As for Alex Lifeson’s guitar playing, he did have some issues. I am a guitar player and he is one of my absolute guitar playing heroes so I may have been more sensitive to everything he did than the normal obsessive Rush fan would be, but I did hear some struggles. I believe he has arthritis in his hands and there were definite signs of pain. I saw him shaking his hands out in between songs a couple of times like he was trying to loosen them up a little. There were a few times where he was going in for the kill on a solo and his hands just weren’t responding and he didn’t quite get there. There were other times where he did though, and hold shit were those moments amazing. The intro to La Villa Strangiato stands out as an example where he was jaw droppingly amazing. The end of the 2112 Grand Finale too. I was in awe. Amaze Amaze Amaze. I would say that the struggles represented maybe 2–3% of the show. The rest of the time he was absofuckinglutely perfect.
As for the new folks, we’ll start with keyboardist Loren Gold. We were joking before the show that he probably doesn’t have a lot to do as Geddy is still playing quite a bit of keyboards. I think he was handing all of the sampled sounds that the whole band used to trigger throughout the show, and there were times when I heard keys playing that were not there on the studio records. That was cool. The big thing I noticed was that as Geddy was playing the keyboard solo in Subdivisions, he was playing it as well. I couldn’t hear any doubling but I could see that they were both doing the same things with their hands. Spoiler alert, I will have to pay attention to that at the next show we go to. Loren was also singing harmonies all through the show. That was really cool.
Now… for the topic everyone wants to know about, how did Anika Nilles do? Neil Peart is the greatest rock drummer the planet has ever known. Filling his role in the band is literally an impossible challenge for any drummer alive. Having said that, Anika toured with Jeff Beck. Look through Beck’s long, illustrious career and look at the drummers he worked with. Every single one of them is unbelievably incredible. She fits in with that crowd perfectly. She is absolutely equal to this challenge. Without question. She was amazing. She was astounding. She was astonishing. I need to rethink my hierarchy of the world’s greatest drummers in a post-Neil Peart world. I was pretty convinced that the top spot went to Gavin Harrison of Porcupine Tree, The Pineapple Thief, and King Crimson fame, but now? Now I am not so sure. I think my favorite parts of the entire show were the moments where she did something different than Neil. The moments where she took a piece of Rush music and made it her own. Those moments were incredible. To say I was impressed is a massive understatement.
The show was incredible. The show was amazing. The show was an absolute joy. How incredible? Incredible enough that Jen and I bought tickets to the November 1st show at Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut. We’re also trying to see if we can work any other show dates into our schedule. It was that good.
Now for some photos…
Pre-upgrade view
Xanadu with the double necks
Alex playing Heavy Bastard
Geddy and Anika… hiding behind her cymbals
All four of them
Two things. First, the only way my camera saw Anika was when she was on the screen. Second, I forgot to put my camera into burst mode of the pyro in Far Cry so this is all I got. Sorry.
They did three tributes to Neil. This was Bravado. They also did video montages for him on Time Stand Still and The Garden. They did a little tribute to John Rutsy during Working Man as well.
Alex auctioned off the real Whitey for charity, This must be a replica.
The whole band
Lasers
Geddy playing a Gibson Thunderbird. Awesome.
Old people rock
Lasers and missed focus
The Omega Stand
No bass? No!
During Tom Sawyer, Alex was trying to make Geddy laugh so Geddy was trying to block him out
The only time I could see Anika’s face was on the video screen
And there we have it. My 26th Rush concert. The first since 2015.
To quote Rocky from Project Hail Mary, amaze amaze amaze!
We are home, safe and sound and in one piece after a great two day New York adventure. I’ll share the details eventually, but for now it’s getting late and I am tired from traveling and I want to go to sleep.
I will leave you with this. Sort of a preview for a larger post that’ll probably come tomorrow.
Tomorrow is the long awaited day. We’re heading South to New York to see Rush. My step son is not going to make it. Between school and work he was just too busy. My step daughter will be with us though. I’m super psyched. My wife is super psyched. My step daughter is super psyched. We’re all super psyched.
I thought it would be fun to post a shit load of photos from the last time I saw Rush in New York. These were June 29, 2015. Just over 11 years ago. I honestly thought I would never see them again, but here we are. Neil Peart is gone and tomorrow’s show will be different. It will be new. It will be joyous and amazing and brilliant. I can’t wait.
Okay, that’ll do for now. Here’s hoping that in a couple of days I’ll do another post just like this but with 2026 pictures instead of 2015 pictures.
Six days until the Rush show. Six long days. It feels like an eternity.
Tonight I was sitting in the living room working on the 50 songs in 90 days thing. My wife and my step daughter were out running errands. When they came home my wife asked if we could watch the dinner scene from the Rush Beyond the Lighted Stage documentary.
My wife and my step daughter are going to the Rush show too. They are starting to get psyched too. We are all getting psyched. It’s only six days. So close, yet so far.
Eight days from now I will see Rush. I have seen them 25 times dating back to December of 1987. It has been 11 years since my last show. 11 years since Neil Peart first retired, effectively ending the band, and then passed away, seemingly definitely ending the band. I said at that time that I wanted them to stay finished. No Neil, no Rush.
Then last year Geddy and Alex let it be known that they were getting together on their own and jamming. Then they let it be known that they had started jamming on Rush tunes. Then they let it be known that they had started jamming with a drummer, Anika Nilles, and then they announced a tour.
I surprised myself by going from no Neil, no Rush to OH MY GOD I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE THEM AGAIN in the amount of time it took me to read through the tour announcement. They didn’t announce any shows in Boston, but they did announce four in New York and we were able to snag some tickets. Of course they did eventually announce Boston dates but we will be in California those days. There are still two shows in Connecticut though. They are sold out and the resale prices are absurd. We’ll see how they look in October though.
Oh, and there is a rumor of a residency at The Sphere in Las Vegas. If that happens… we might have to be there for it. Just one show, that’s all.
Vegas and Connecticut are questions for future me. Current me just has to make it through the next eight days without spontaneously combusting with glee. You might be able to tell from reading through this blog, but music is really important to me and since 1981 (when I was all of 10 years old) no music has been as important to me as Rush. To my musical soul they have always been the beginning and end of it all. It is going to be different without Neil Peart, but it is still going to be amazing. I just have to get through eight more days.
