Live Review: Rush @ Madison Square Garden, 4.10.11

have never been a huge, committed Rush fan. For a while I owned their best-of disc, The Spirit of Radio; a couple of years later, I upgraded to Gold, a two-CD set. I liked some of their songs, particularly from their early '80s hitmaking period ("Subdivisions," "Limelight," "Tom Sawyer"), a whole lot. But it wasn't until I saw Beyond the Lighted Stage, the documentary about the band, that I decided I needed to seriously investigate their work. Now I have their first 12 studio albums, everything from the debut through Hold Your Fire, in my iPod, and while I still haven't listened to all of them, I have listened to a lot of that material. So when they came through town on the latest leg of their "Time Machine" tour (which began in 2010), I decided to check out the show.

The set list includes a complete performance of the band's 1980 album Moving Pictures. But that's only seven songs, and about 40 minutes of music—roughly 1/3 of the show. The first hour, following a video intro that was much funnier than the one Ozzy Osbourne played before his shows earlier this year, offered a big dose of their '90s and '00s material, including songs from Presto, Counterparts and their most recent album, 2007's Snakes and Arrows. They also played a song from their currently unfinished album Clockwork Angels; it's called "BU2B," which stands for "Brought Up to Believe," and it's pretty hard-rocking, in a sort of math-metal way. They wound down the first half with songs from Permanent Waves, Power Windows and Signals, closing with "Subdivisions." 

When they returned after a 10- or 15-minute break (which bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee justified by explaining "We're all about a hundred years old"), there was another entertaining video, and then they played Moving Pictures. The album's first song was accompanied by more video comedy—the big screen alternated between footage of chimpanzees playing Rush's instruments, and the bandmembers swapping instruments—Lee on drums, guitarist Alex Lifeson on bass, and drummer Neil Peart making guitar faces that rivaled Lifeson's real-life ones. This was followed by another Clockwork Angels song, "Caravan" which, like "BU2B," was heavier than recent Rush has been, and made me interested to hear the next album. After hearing this much of their music all at once and unified by live performance ('cause a band's sound differs from one studio album to the next, as we all know), I've decided that I like their most intense, focused, almost metallic material best. This record could be a return to that style, though it clearly won't be anywhere near as berserk as their '70s work.

The show's definite low point was Peart's drum solo. He's an astonishing drummer—within the context of Rush's music. But left alone onstage, he tries to be a jazz drummer, and it doesn't work at all. He can't swing; he's a prog rocker. So while the solo started out okay, by the time the big video screen was showing some late '90s-style computer animation of a giant drumming robot, and sampled horns were making the whole thing sound like the old Tonight Show band, it was almost embarrassing. When the other two bandmembers returned for "Closer to the Heart" and the first two sections of "2112," it was a massive relief.

Overall, it was a really good show. I admire Rush for a couple of things: for having fun at their own expense (not just with the video segments, but with their willingness to display old photos of themselves looking like utterly focused musician-nerds), but more importantly for doing everything with only three people. Unlike, say, Black Sabbath, they don't have a keyboardist tucked away backstage; they don't have background singers or a tour-only guitarist, or anything else. Like ZZ Top, they seem to have a pretty simple rule: If three people can't do it, they don't do it. I like that. And while Geddy Lee can't hit every ultra-high note anymore, he gets pretty close, and where a song has to be slightly adjusted, he does it in a way that still works. Rush are a kick-ass live band, and this tour's gonna continue through the end of April, before heading to Europe for a month or so and returning to the US to finish up in June and July. I highly recommend checking it out if they come through your town.