Rush R40

That pretty much describes them the last time I saw them in Dallas a couple of years ago. Very tight. Excellent Paul tone. Geddy struggled on a few of the high notes. 95% men in the crowd and they poked fun of that live onstage.

Saw them in Chicago on this tour. Absolutely amazing. It's interesting to compare the earlier stages of the tour with the latter stages. In Chicago, I thought Geddy's voice sounded better than I'd hear him in previous shows within the last decade. He was certainly better than when I heard him on the R30 tour. Neil's solos were some of the best he's done. He just nailed everything. Alex was incredible. His leads during the encore were staggering. If this is to be their last major tour, they're going out on their terms at the top of their game.
 
You're absolutely right about the toll a 3+ hour gig repeated every other night takes on people of a certain age. If I tried that, I believe my spine would crawl out of my mouth and beat me senseless. I'm not saying that would take long, but still, it could be a bit embarrassing. 

they played a lot of 'deep cuts', they haven't played live before, or at least in a long time.
that was kinda cool.
 
 
gotta say, the light show was about the best i've ever seen.
 

Haven't seen them since the Roll The Bones tour but I have a bunch of the later DVD's. Love 'em, they're like fine wine. Great sense of humour too, something other bands of their vintage lack. Watched a couple of vids yesterday of them doing 'Losing It' on this tour, what a great song that is.

yea, i already have R30 (which is great) but my favorite is the rush in RIO vid...
that, is off the charts.
insane.
the extras alone, are worth the cost of the vid
 
 
if i need a 'rush' fix,
i just put on Hemispheres,
which is by far my favorite of their entire catalog.
 
which is probably also the album that people that hate Lee's voice in general, hates in specific!
LOL
 
 
from a recent rolling stone front page article:
It was Lee who pushed hardest for Rush's Eighties transformation, after hitting prog overload with 1978's Hemispheres. Among other problems, they wrote and recorded the backing music for the entire album without checking whether Lee could sing over it. "We wrote it in such a phucked-up key," he says, his frustration still fresh 37 years later. "It was just the worst two weeks of my life recording vocals."


 
another excerpt:
 
"This next song features Minnie Mouse," Geddy Lee informs an empty arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma, adopting a squeaky falsetto. It's a dress rehearsal a couple of weeks later, and Rush just finished the surging 1977 song suite "Xanadu," with both Lee and Lifeson wielding double-necks (Lifeson named one of his "Heavy" and the other one "Bastard"), and Lee attempting high notes that seemed both easy and in excellent taste when he was 23. "You have to get over yourself and just say, 'Well, OK, I'll just get into the period,' " Lee says offstage. "I didn't really know what I was doing back then. I was just kind of screaming. It took me, like, 10 years to learn that there are some keys that are better to sing in." 



entire RS article here:
http://www.rollingstone.c...e-cover-story-20150616

I agree with you, Bats. I love Rush in Rio. The concert footage is fantastic, the bonus material is excellent, and the audio sounds incredible. They managed to capture the sense that the band was blown away by the crowd. You don't see that often with bands that have been performing together for this long. 

this:
 
https://qello.com/concert/R40-Tour-Webisodes-6353#track-6353-1
 

Me and the missus kicked back and watched the whole of the R40 gig on our big telly last night. Dirk did struggle with his vocals in places, but who cares?
 
I'm trying to think of a highlight of the show, and I can't. If I had my arm up my back and I had to think of one, it was bursting into Tom Sawyer after the "intermission."
 
It was interesting that they played Jacobs Ladder. I bet I haven't heard that song since the early 80's.
 
I've since dusted off my R30, Rush in Rio and Beyond the Lighted Stage videos to watch in the near future...
 
here's one I like:-
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK1hmDpa8bo
 

I'm pretty certain that I've heard Geddy specifically say that Rush are not a prog rock band.
 
Perhaps Rob can shed more light on that, being the top Rush fan here 

Who cares about putting music into neat labelled pigeonholes marked 'prog' or 'pop', and why would one band be more 'important' than another, for any reason? Music's there to be enjoyed, not endlessly analysed and rated. Rush are what they are, they continue to tread their own path and long may they do so.
 
(not directed at Craig btw, he can't help it...)

jamesg1213
Who cares about putting music into neat labelled pigeonholes marked 'prog' or 'pop', and why would one band be more 'important' than another, for any reason? Music's there to be enjoyed, not endlessly analysed and rated. Rush are what they are, they continue to tread their own path and long may they do so.
 
(not directed at Craig btw, he can't help it...)

I have a LOT of different types of music and, most of the time, when you're in the mood for one type, you definitely don't want some of the others jarring into your mood.  Now, if you only have a couple of hundred songs (or even albums), maybe this isn't an issue, but I have almost 6,000 artists with tens of thousands of albums and somewhere around 300,000 songs (I'll actually have all the totals once I finish loading them into MediaMonkey).
 
You HAVE to have some way to categorize music.  If it was all lumped together, I'm willing to bet that Rush would probably have 70% fewer fans since they wouldn't have thought to listen to them.
 
Actually, the answer to your question "Who cares about putting music into neat labelled pigeonholes marked 'prog' or 'pop', and why would one band be more 'important' than another, for any reason?" is almost everyone.  
 
Personally, I don't give much weight to the names of the genres/subgenres, in fact, I used to simply have groups loosely based around a primary genre (e.g., "PR1," "PR2," etc. for Prog Rock) where each group just contained artists that sounded good together.  That way I could shuffle-play a group and know I won't be jumping up to fast-forward over a song that clashed.

kzmaier
Whats wrong with PRS guitars??? 

actually, that was a bit of joke...
i dig PRS guitars, and alex has his own signature acoustic PRS...
 
he's been using PRS for a long time, live, and he always sounded more clear when he played them...
but that original sound, the 335, that's really the rush sound,
and i guess sticking with les pauls for the most part (he also has a signature les paul model) is just good marketing.

batsbrew

kzmaier
Whats wrong with PRS guitars??? 

actually, that was a bit of joke...
i dig PRS guitars, and alex has his own signature acoustic PRS...
 
he's been using PRS for a long time, live, and he always sounded more clear when he played them...
but that original sound, the 335, that's really the rush sound,
and i guess sticking with les pauls for the most part (he also has a signature les paul model) is just good marketing.

+1 I must agree!!!

I like showing off my PRS at any opportunity 
 

Yeah... My missus is so annoyed that I can't play for toffees...