Oh to be fabulously wealthy. I missed out on Clapton’s ES-335 and Gilmour’s gold top Les Paul, and now I am going to miss out on Alex Lifeson’s custom made 1976 ES-355TD. Sweet Christmas, he’s going to auction off his guitar collection to raise money for charity. Read this article.
As with all guitar god auctions, the first thing I look for is random 1959 Les Pauls. The article only mentions one Les Paul, and it’s the 1970 he bought on the 1974 tour and used on 2112. I would imagine Al has collected a few more Les Pauls than that, especially since he played a bunch of them over the last few Rush tours and he actually has a signature model. The question though… are there bursts?
More important than that, He’s Selling The 355!
It’s not actually this ES-355…
It’s the one that guitar was copied from. It’s this one…
He’s also selling the Hentor. The guitar he used the shit out of in the early 80’s. It started out as a Fender Strat but he modded the holy hell out of it and turned it into something else.
He’s also selling the Howard Roberts Fusion. Off the top of my head, I don’t know anyone else who played one of those, but he used it all over Moving Pictures and it’s a hollow body legend.
If I were disgustingly wealthy I would buy them all. Seriously. I would have bought all of Clapton and Gilmour’s guitars too, but this is Lerxst’s collection! Epic!
I was feeling curious about the amplifier line Alex Lifeson released 2-3 years ago. They are way too powerful for my use (though I now know they can step down from 50 to 25 watts which makes them more interesting) so I didn’t look very close when they were first released.
Today I decided to poke around and I found this interview. Speaking as both a Rush fanatic and a gear nerd, this video is literally Gold.
He talks about stage volume and monitor mix preferences! Oh my god the gear dirt he shares! Can you believe it? Wow!
It’s Sunday and Jen and I are just hanging out in the office. We’re in the midst of a grande experiment to improve one facet of our existence. It’s something incredibly important that everyone deals with every day……..
Pillows.
We’re trying to up our pillow game, big time. Jen ordered some pillows the other day and we used them last night. They were very firm. Much firmer than we’ve ever used before. Jen didn’t like them. I haven’t really decided yet. Too firm? Maybe. Too firm to use? I don’t know. We are trying another set of pillows next that are a little squishier. I expect they will be Goldilox: just right.
What else is going on? I am going to have a painful week at work this week, so I’m enjoying the calm today. I’ll pay for it later. I have another day off this week too. Wednesday. That’s three consecutive Wednesdays I’ve been out of work. The other two had actual reasons. This week is just because I had to burn eight hours of vacation time in order to avoid maxing out at the end of the month. I will likely have to do a couple of days in February too, but at least I can use the RPM Challenge as my excuse.
I am a little sad today. A few weeks ago I ordered a pile of new clothes. Two t-shirts didn’t come quickly, but they finally came at the end of last week. The two shirts came from the Rush Backstage store. Yup. I’m wearing my fav band on a t-shirt. Unfortunately, the first of the two that I’ve tried on is really small. It has made me sad. I guess I am going to have to go through a weight loss surgery process in order to get smaller so the shirt will fit. I’m guessing the second band shirt is going to be small too, but I haven’t tried it on yet.
I can’t think of anything else to write about. Jen picked up a copy of NHL ’22 and I started playing it yesterday. Maybe I’ll sneak in another game tonight. I’m playing through the Spengler Cup. I have no idea how that tournament works, but I haven’t lost a game yet. I have it on the lowest difficulty level though, so if I lose a game it means I royally suck.
Okay. Ms Patches just came into the room and she’s meowing for attention. I think I’ll post this and go pet her. Bye for now.
Listening to the audio from the Rush Grace Under Pressure Tour video today has had me in the mood to listen to bootlegs of complete shows from that tour.
Here’s a good one:
1984 was memorable for my Rush fandom. I first started listening in 1981, but they slipped the Signals album and tour past me without me being aware. I was 11 years old, so that’s not too surprising. By the time we got to ‘84 I was a complete fanatic and I had run out of records to buy. The Grace Under Pressure album was the first one I had to wait for, and the first one I had my first listens to at the same time as the rest of the cult.
It was also the first time I had knowledge of a tour. They played the Worcester Centrum. I didn’t go, of course, but after the show one local radio station played every song on the set list and I heard a tape of that. As lame as it was, it was still pretty exciting.
So when bootlegs became a thing I could dip my ears into (thank you, internets) I was always kinda drawn to shows from 1984.
I didn’t go out for car music today. Nope. I was going to. I woke up at 6:45am (on a Saturday, you savage!) and my watch told me it was 2 degrees out. Yikes. Well… we’ll see how things look after my shower and stuff. When I was all dressed and ready to go my watch told me it was 1 degree out. Welp, maybe next time.
That’s one thing dropped from the to-do list. We are hoping to add one thing too. There will, hopefully, be a FaceTime call with Bellana today! All the way from The Netherlands where she is quarantining and probably super bored. I still haven’t decided if I want to share their YouTube video or not. I’m hoping they post things regularly so we can feel like we’re a distant part of their adventure. Fingers crossed. I probably won’t post the videos here. I don’t know. Maybe, but probably not.
In closing, yesterday I listened to a podcast that broke down the Grace Under Pressure Tour video that Rush released in 1984 or so. It brought this little masterpiece back to the front of my brain and it doesn’t show any signs of leaving any time soon.
Fear. A sort of suite. Sort of. In 1984 when Rush released the Grace Under Pressure album, the song The Enemy Within was subtitled Part One of Fear. Well what the hell did that mean? They eventually explained it to us. One of my friends in Junior High said he had figured it out, but I don’t believe him.
Fear is a three song suite-ish that includes one song each from three albums… in reverse.
Part One is The Enemy Within from Grace Under Pressure, released in 1984. Part Two is The Weapon from Signals, released in 1982. Part Three is Witch Hunt from Moving Pictures, released in 1981.
Simple, right? If I remember correctly, Neil said he numbered them in order of the hardest to write to the easiest… or was it the other way around. Damn it. I don’t remember for sure. It doesn’t matter, they were numbered based on the writing process, that’s all you need to know. I don’t recall if The Weapon and Witch Hunt were ever officially given a Fear subtitle on any subsequent release, but they might have. There was also a fourth song, Freeze from Vapor Trails, released in 2002, but they never played all four of them together. In fact, they never played Freeze live at all. They were never supposed to play Witch Hunt either. That was written and recorded as a studio only thing as there were little things that couldn’t be pulled off live with just three people at the time. As a result, this arrangement is a little different than the Moving Pictures album and that was something that Rush just didn’t do, making this version extra special. Years later, as sampling and triggering technology caught up with the band, they did do Witch Hunt as it was originally arranged. I really like this one though. It lacks the cowbell in the beginning, well most of it at least, but it adds that killer guitar solo at the end. Awesome.
Gee, I hope these videos actually play though… seems like a lot of people have posted this with the sharing options off. Yikes.
Sure it’s not Rush. There will never be new Rush. Even if they spend the next 50 years slowly but surely emptying the vaults, there will never actually be new Rush. Why? Because the universe sucks, that’s why. This, though… when you listen to this and hear a guitar, or a sound that doesn’t sound like a guitar but was actually played on a guitar, what you are likely hearing is Alex Lifeson.
Inside the Red Head's Head 