<![CDATA[Exit Stage Right  - Tribute to Rush - ESR Blog]]>Fri, 13 Apr 2012 05:32:29 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[No Changes Are Permanent, but Change Is]]>Thu, 09 Sep 2010 19:33:22 -0800http://www.rushmn.com/1/post/2010/09/no-changes-are-permanent-but-change-is.htmlHaven't written anything for a while. Feel I should because there have been changes.

With Marc's exit comes new responsibilities. In a previous post I mentioned how I couldn't come close to Marc's expertise on keyboards, but Rush kind of lends itself to the bass player being the keyboard player and ,well, that's me. I'm becoming more and more like Geddy Lee every day!! We've decided to become more Rushlike and have since acquired a set of foot pedals, and I'm playing keyboards. It makes for quite the choreography on stage, no more spacing out on easy bass parts because the keys are playing (I've caught myself doing this, old habits are hard to break) but now it seems I'm using my whole brain every time we rehearse.

We started out incorporating the foot pedals first. That gave us the ability to perform most of the better known Rush tunes, since most of those are pretty basic as far as keyboards. Now I'm working up Tom Sawyer, Subdivisions, Analog Kid, a little bit more involved on the keyboard parts, and I'm not sure what I'm going to be working on next after I get those down.

I don't mind, as a matter a fact in some weird way I welcome the change. That's the great thing about a being a musician, you're never done, there's always new territory to conquer and ironically you never really conquer it. Whatever area you "conquer" still needs to be tweaked and maintained, constantly. But everything you take on gives you a bit more perspective about any musical situation and affects your response to it.

Speaking of changes, we are doing a cover show for a private event soon. They want Rush but they also want some other stuff. We've all played and are playing in multiple bands but we haven't yet considered playing non-Rush material until this opportunity presented itself. Not one to step down from a challenge we decided to try it and see what happens.  These are un-Rush tunes we're doing...

Hard to Handle - Black Crowes
Honky Tonk Woman - Rolling Stones
Cissy Strut - The Meters
Fire - Jimi Hendrix
Feel Like Makin' Love - Bad Company
Rocky Mountain Way - Joe Walsh
Little Wing - Jimi Hendrix
Crossroads - Eric Clapton
One Way Out - Allman Bros.
Scuttle Buttin'/Couldn't Stand the Weather - SRV
Man in a Box - Alice in Chains
Machine Head - Bush
Interstate Love Song - Stone Temple Pilots
Cold Shot - Stevie Ray Vaughan
My Own Worst Enemy - Lit
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
Basket Case - Green Day
Billy Idol - Rebel Yell
Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) - Jimi Hendrix

What's great about playing Rush tunes is that everything else you try that is not Rush is a piece of cake. It's amazingly easy to sing and play bass over a straight 4/4 once you have sung  over changing meters (i.e. Natural Science, see previous blog). I can happily say we're overqualified. This is only a temporary digression of course, and once this gig is done, it's back exclusively to the Rush tunes, but it is a nice...change.
]]><![CDATA[Peart's Building Fills - Peter]]>Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:02:16 -0800http://www.rushmn.com/1/post/2010/07/pearts-building-fills-peter.htmlI believe the reason that Neil Peart's drumming is so revered is less about his technical mastery and more to do with his composition of drum parts. There are plenty of professional drummers who can play with amazingly fast and accurate technique. But Neil has set himself above the rest by dreaming up with some of the most memorable fills and beats in the history of rock music. His drum parts are truly musical. You can tell that he sits in a room with each song for days or weeks composing and refining the perfect part for the music that Alex and Geddy write.

One of the signature elements of Neil’s drum compositions (and of Rush’s song structures in general) is a progression within each song from simple to complex –  a constant building of intensity. As a songwriting device this is a classic way to keep a song interesting and seems to be a natural momentum in great music. A song should go somewhere. A guitar solo should go somewhere – take the famous La Villa Strangiato guitar solo as the quintessential example of that. And in Neil’s vision, drum fills and beats should always go somewhere.

To this end, in many Rush songs Neil will at some point play variations of the same fills in the same places in verses and chorus. The first verse or chorus will have a simple fill. The next time the section of the song comes around, he will play a similar version of the same fill but with more complexity or intensity added. To make this shift, he will do things such as injecting more cymbal crashes, replacing snare hits with tom hits, and generally adding more and faster notes. But he will retain some of the original character of the fill. He will also do this with his beats within a song – creating beat variations later in the song which generally have added kick drum notes or busier ride patterns.

I scanned in a few examples of this from the drum charts I scrawled out while learning songs for ESR. Instead of writing out a song in linear fashion, I would go section by section so I could see how the parts were related as the section recurred through the song.

There are some good examples in the section of Red Barchetta with the lyrics “Jump to the ground as the turbo slows…” the first time and “Ride like the wind straining the limits of machine and man…” the second time later in the song (Neil is playing a driving beat with quarter notes on a loose hi-hat during the section.)
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Here I’ve written out the 3 fills in the section for the first time on the top line and second time in the song on the bottom line. Fill #1 has a crash and snare on beat 4. The second time through he starts the fill the same way but moves the kick drum and adds and extra kick beat after the crash. In fill #3 he plays a triplet pattern between the snare and kick drum in the exact same way both times. But the first time he uses an open high hat on the snare, while the second time it’s a crash cymbal, building the intensity. (Interestingly this guitar riff is also played after the guitar solo but it’s barely recognizable because Neil plays an entirely different beat over it with quarter notes on the snare.)

A similar thing happens in the instrumental section of Red Barchetta that occurs right before the previously discussed segment. Neil is playing a rock beat with eighths on the ride cymbal. The second time through, he adds intensity by hitting crashes on all of the snare back beats. In addition the fills get busier the second time as shown here.
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For fill #1 he does a similar rhythm both times but uses quick hi-hats the first time and cymbal crashes the second. He also ends fill #1 with a tom run the second time where he kept it simple the first time around. Fill #2 is a basic eighth note pattern with flams on the snare drum the first time, but the second time Neil spices things up with a burst of 16th notes alternating between the snare and kick.

Finally here is a interesting segment from Tom Sawyer where Neil is playing eighth notes on an open high hat (Geddy is singing “the world is the world is…”). He plays the exact same beat pattern both times but adds a few extra kick drum beats here and there the second time through, which I circled. This increases the funkiness of the section but still retains the original theme.
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I didn’t bother writing out the whole beat the second time, just the differences. When trying to memorize Rush drum parts, it’s important to find patterns that repeat so as to keep your head from exploding from information overload!

There are countless examples of this same thing happening in Rush songs once you start to watch for it. The song Freewill is another great example to listen to.

When you’re playing drums on your own songs (or covers) you can keep this building concept in mind. Don’t start out a song with your flashiest, fastest fill in the first verse. Play simple, restrained fills early and save the fireworks for later in the tune. And experiment with theme and variation on your fills and beats, bringing back ideas with small changes that up the ante a little higher each time.

PG
]]><![CDATA[The Star Bar Report - Rob]]>Fri, 09 Jul 2010 08:52:30 -0800http://www.rushmn.com/1/post/2010/07/the-star-bar-report-rob.htmlThe Star Bar Report

Rob here, checking in. It's my turn to write a blog for the week and it's a couple of days before the Star Bar gig, so I figured I'd cover a bit of how I practice and prepare pre-gig. I will follow up with a little post-gig report as well.

Gig Prep
Sometimes I feel like I've got it kind of easy in this band -- I don't have to do multiple things at once like sing and remember lyrics while playing crazy bass lines and doing math equations, or play drums in odd time signatures like the best rock drummer ever (also while doing math equations). The Geddy and Neil spots are some big shoes to fill and Jonathan and Peter really do a fine job at it. It takes a lot of work to do it. It's incredible how Geddy does what he does just with his bass playing and singing, even more so when you factor in the keyboards and foot pedals along with that. In our case it took two guys to do it, and Marc handles the keyboard part of that equation and any background vocal duties. So that means I can just focus on playing the guitar parts (and doing a few math equations here and there). I even have the luxury of getting to improvise from time-to-time...

But, as I am the Lead Guitar player and fill the Alex Lifeson position in the band, that also means that I play lots of solos (in front of people, even) and there's a good amount of time that I am the only one playing in an intro or section. Sometimes that's kinda scary...

So when practicing up for this gig, I figured I'd take the scariest bits and prioritize them. After our last gig at Tuttle's, which was our first full two-set show, I learned a couple/few things about what I really need to practice and brush up on in the couple/few days prior to the gig, and perhaps more importantly, what not to practice...

For a short gig - like a one-hour set - I would normally just cue up all of the songs on our setlist and play guitar along from beginning to end, stopping and reviewing at the spots and solos that I need work on. This is a fun way to practice, and doesn't take a lot of time. I can get this done in about 90 minutes or less and usually end up jamming along for longer than that anyway just because it's Rush and it's fun.

Doing this for about 3 hours worth of material is a different story. So rather than go through the whole list, this time I picked some specific songs, sections, and fragments that I felt it necessary to focus on, and tried to keep it to a roughly 90-minute session. It actually covers the material rather well since we have started doing a similar thing as a group at practice; There are songs and sections that individually we don't necessarily need to practice, but really need to practice as a group to get it down tight in a "live" setting, so one way or another it all gets practiced at some point.

Tom Sawyer -- I focus only on the solo section on this one; The odd 7/8 meter is moving by quickly, so if you get a little lost it's kind of tough to get back on track. I never count it, so it's all feel to me. The phrasing is kind of unusual and is really key to the whole thing.

La Villa Strangiato -- This is simply my favorite Rush tune and guitar solo of all time, so it's just automatic that I include this one. In the solos I mostly stick to the signature phrases, but I do get a little room to improv a bit here and there. Lately I've been combining solo bits from different versions of La Villa, including The original 'Hemispheres' version, the live 'Exit...Stage Left' version, The 'Rush In Rio' version, and the "Pinkpop Festival 1979" version....

Cygnus X-1 -- I love this song. We practice this one pretty regularly as a group but since it's one of the long epics we often just practice the second half of the song to save time, from when the lyrics start ("Invisible to telescopic eye...") I always practice this one individually just because it's a blast to play along with and the solo section rocks. The tricky part is the transition from the solo to the spacey quiet section, where Alex is doing the quick octaves in C....

Broon's Bane/The Trees Intro -- The Tuttle's gig was the first time we included the solo piece 'Broon's Bane' before the intro to 'The Trees', so of course I practiced the crap out of those. I first learned 'Broon's Bane' way back when I was about 15-16 and never had a chance to actually perform it until now, so that's kind of neat. It's definitely one of those scary moments though (I'd say even the scariest..), when you are hanging out there on stage playing alone and hoping to not screw it up (haha) So time to practice the crap out of them again...

Xanadu -- Since we are doing 'Broon's Bane' and 'The Trees' like on 'Exit...Stage Left', we are also doing the transition from 'The Trees' into the trippy intro of 'Xanadu'. This of course is chuck-full of Lifeson's volume pedal harmonic swells and whatnot and is kind of like a long guitar solo, so not only is it a section with a lot to play musically, but there's some technique involved too with the volume pedal action. This is a really cool section, so of course it's fun to play as well... This is really a song to practice from beginning to end, but I am concentrating primarily on the intro and the part from the guitar solo to the end. It can get pretty hairy during that part...

2112 - Overture/Temples Of Syrinx/Grand Finale -- I'm really only focusing on the intro, but end up playing along with the full 20-minute version anyway...

Natural Science -- One of my top favorite Rush tunes from my favorite Rush album. Definitely an epic song. I always practice this full song because it's not only one of their more challenging songs, but also one of the funnest to play. The part that always gives me a bit of trouble and that I need to keep sharp on is the bit that you hear in the "Tide Pools" section after the line, "they soon forget about the sea.." and before the "Wheel within wheels in a spiral array..." line. (and again later after the first guitar solo) It's a tricky little guitar bit that not only is one of those scary all-alone moments, but is integral to establishing the tempo of the song.

Subdivisions -- A really easy song from a guitar standpoint, but I always forget what those damn harmonics are right before the end of the guitar solo, so I practice that little fragment and only that.

Between The Wheels -- I only practice the solo on this song, too. It's a great, melodic solo, and as usual with Lifeson, the phrasing is key.

Secret Touch -- this is one of our 'new' songs on the list, so I'm keeping it on the priority list.

Other than that, listening is ultimately the best practice for me. With Alex Lifeson it's really in the details; the chord voicings, the solo phrasings, the tones and combinations of effects, the dynamics and usage of volume control, etc. Sometimes he just does things a different way than you would think...

I once saw an article in Premier Guitar that summed it up quite well:

Where Steve Vai may make us say “I wish I could do that,” Alex Lifeson makes us say, “I wish I’d thought of that.”

Post-Gig

Well, the gig at the Star Bar was fun and we played pretty good. There were some mistakes (as always - this stuff ain't easy...) but no train wrecks, so that's always good. The turn out was pretty light, but those that were there seemed to dig it. The sound in the first set wasn't going that well, but after some tweaking at halftime the sound report from out front was excellent.

For some reason I had a tough time with 'Broon's Bane' and the intro to 'The Trees', despite the practice. It came out pretty choppy and I just couldn't really get it on track...nerves, probably....I certainly had a few other mistakes elsewhere, but those are the ones that stood out.

It would be cool to have a classical guitar and one of those fancy stands that Alex has so that he can just walk up to a classical/acoustic guitar and play it, then back off to play electric. Did you know Alex invented that stand? Yeah. I think it's called The Omega Guitar Stand. Or something...

Anyway, that's all for now. Thanks to those who came out to the show. Hope to see you at the next one!]]><![CDATA[Becoming Geddy Lee - Jonathan]]>Fri, 02 Jul 2010 05:47:32 -0800http://www.rushmn.com/1/post/2010/07/becoming-geddy-lee-jonathan.htmlMy bio is truthful - my brother did buy Moving Pictures and that's how I first heard of Rush. I had just acquired my first bass about year after the album came out and had been listening to a variety of different bands and bass players, all within the rock genre. I learned from album songbooks, piano reductions, which saved a lot of time rather than learning by ear. I had a bunch of different books, a couple Foreigner books, Cornerstone by Styx and others that I have since forgotten. I was kind of scared to buy Moving Pictures since what I heard from that album seemed incredibly daunting. But I did ended up buying it.

All in all it took me probably about four months to get through the whole thing, excluding YYZ which at that time was way beyond my skill level. I didn't try to learn YYZ until I got a few more years under my belt and was in a band. If I remember right, we never got through the whole thing. Later I  got the book for Signals and learned that album all the way through. The tough bass line on Signals for me was getting that riff in the beginning and between verses in Analog Kid.

The amazing thing about Geddy is that his bass playing is such a large part of the sound, no one can play his lines like he does, and no one performs improvised lines like he does. John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, Jack Bruce of Cream, maybe Chris Squire of Yes, are the only rock bass players that come close to Geddy's level of technique and creativity with bass lines. I honestly can't think of another rock bass player that plays the chord changes during guitar solos like he does. The solo section of Freewill is a work of art because Geddy seems to play a solo underneath Alex but retains enough of the chord changes so the listener still knows what is going on. It's more the way a jazz bass player would think, not a rock bass player. I can guarantee those lines weren't thought out note for note and were probably different for each take in the studio. Maybe he had a general idea, a roadmap of sorts, of what he was going to do, and possibly he worked out a few signature licks, but I'm guessing that's about it. He does this on a number of songs, but really seems to take it to a new level starting with Permanent Waves and continues the tradition with subsequent albums.

I bring this up, because becoming Geddy Lee on bass guitar requires a knowledge of music beyond what is normally required for rock bass players. Moving Pictures inspired me to to practice more than just the notes on the page and start expanding my musicianship so I could not only emulate his technique but also understand what he was thinking and spirit behind his playing. He has become such a big part of my overall technique that he comes out in my playing in other genres in my other bands.

And I still keep learning from the Ged Monster. I wanted to play Secret Touch off Vapor Trails because I thought the bass line was technically very cool. In the song, he plays 16th notes throughout the entire verse and during the solo. But these aren't just any 16th notes. If you listen closely you can hear a bright click on each note and the sound is very aggressive. This tells me that he is not just plucking the notes but is pulling the strings slightly and letting them slap back against the frets which is what provides the bright clicking sound. I went to a bunch of bass forums and discovered that he is not plucking the strings but is using his index and middle finger with his thumb providing leverage as though he is actually using a guitar pick. His downstroke consists of playing the strings with his fingernails and the upstroke is the fleshy part of the finger, which provides the punchy slap back on the frets. I have since used this technique on a number of gigs, thanks to Geddy.

When it comes to rock, Geddy is a bass player's bass player.

Of course singing is another thing altogether. I realize I don't sound like him, but my voice has improved dramatically since I started with this band. I've probably added a few notes to my top end as my voice becomes stronger in this range. The key for me is a smooth transition from chest to head voice, not falsetto as some would assume. Head voice is a stronger vocal technique than falsetto that lets a person sing beyond their normal range into high registers without ruining their voice. To Geddy this seems to come naturally, as far as I know, and in his earlier recordings I can't tell if he is still using his chest voice or is going up into head voice - the verse tag after the solo in, once again, Freewill is a good example. Either way, I didn't want to shirk my responsibility as a singer and "sing it down an octave" which was suggested at one point. I had a feeling that people would start throwing tomatoes at me if I did that. Some previous voice lessons came in handy to help me with endurance and not push the high notes which is another key to emulating Geddy's chops, and of course I drink lots lots of water.

So anyway, I'm not quite where I want to be yet covering all of Geddy Lee's parts, he also plays keyboards and pedals. I can tell you that I'm probably not going to go there anytime soon. I can play keyboards but Marc is way, way, way, way beyond my skill level. Pedals? Yeah right...

JT]]><![CDATA[Playing Bass and Singing - Jonathan]]>Thu, 24 Jun 2010 22:19:29 -0800http://www.rushmn.com/1/post/2010/06/playing-bass-and-singing-jonathan.htmlThe joy of singing and playing bass. When I joined ESR I made it a point to be able to sing AND play bass, not just play bass like I do in other bands to which I belong. That was the decision I made when I first contacted Peter on Craigslist. My thought was that I already play bass I need to step up and try something new and be a lead singer. Before ESR, I was at most a sporadic background singer.

I didn't realize at first what I was getting myself into. My first audition tunes were exactly what you'd expect Tom Sawyer, Limelight, The Spirit of Radio... all songs I knew relatively well and could pull off on bass guitar. Playing them was easy, singing and playing, not so much. Even though for Rush tunes I think singing and playing guitar would be equally as difficult, generally playing guitar and singing is easier because either you're strumming throughout the song and just changing chords, ala John Mayer or David Matthews, or in some cases you can simply drop out and let the other band members cover your part. But the bass can't drop out, it's and integral part of the song, establishing both pitch and rhythm. I'll stereotype at this point to mention most bass lines are extremely easy, usually straight eighth notes or something simpler. That's not Rush, of course.

Geddy's bass lines can be over-the-top difficult. I don't think he considers the bass line/vocal line juxtaposition while writing and recording.For instance, in Natural Science, there are a few parts that are excruciatingly difficult to sing and play. The "Hyperspace" section where both Geddy and Alex play the same riff simultaneously and Geddy sings "A quantum leap forward..." is hard but it's the same riff, repeated over and over again without any change in rhythm or position. The same thing occurs in the verses of Vital Signs, it sounds and looks difficult but doesn't take much concentration once you have the riff. The section in Natural Science that is very difficult is during "Permanent Waves" where he starts singing "Science, like nature, must also be tamed..."  The bass line changes from a 6/8 feel to a 4/4 feel back to a 6/8 feel but, this time, just in the bass while the drums continue in 4/4 - this all happens mid sentence and occurs continually throughout the rest of the section. Sometimes it still messes me up. Secret Touch is another song that has some difficult sections where the vocals don't coincide with the accents being played on the instruments.

The most interesting song to play bass and sing to is Jacob's Ladder, I think this where the term "math rock" came from. The rhythm sequence set up before the singing starts is short-short-short-short-long-long-long and short-short-short-short-long-long-long-long (for those more musically inclined 4 eighth notes followed by 3 quarter notes and then 4 eighth notes followed by 4 quarter notes) which repeats and continues once the singing begins and is completely unrelated to the vocal line. Another way of looking at it is that the vocal line is in 4 and the rhythm sequence is in 11 (two "shorts" equal one "long", making the first part of the sequence 5 beats and the second part  6 beats, giving 11 beats total for the whole sequence). The least common denominator is 44 which means they will both end at the same time on the 44th beat, which is the measure of "twilight premature", but before that the vocal line and the sequence will start and stop in different places. It was quite the conundrum coming up with how to sing and play this at the same time. The answer? I figured out where the four short notes (the eighth notes) hit the vocal line. Once I memorized the vocal line (thank god Jacob's Ladder only has one verse), I found the syllables where the four short notes occurred, or whether they happened in the spaces between vocal phrases, and memorized the pattern that way. For instance, the four notes appear on the "ding" in "brooding" and next on the word " bruised." After a while it became second nature and I didn't really have to think about it too much anymore. If you know of another way of doing it, please tell me.

In closing, add keyboards and pedals to the mix and you got some serious choreography going on for Geddy. Geddy's bass lines are a major signature of the Rush sound and I have to give him credit for not dumbing down his vocal or bass lines to better suit the other.

JT]]><![CDATA[Tuttles 6/12/10 - Peter]]>Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:00:12 -0800http://www.rushmn.com/1/post/2010/06/post-title-click-and-type-to-edit.htmlOur show at Tuttle's was momentous occasion for us, being our first attempt to fill a whole evening with Rush music. Previously the longest show we had done was about 90 minutes. Since then we have added at least a dozen songs and were ready to try to play everything we knew in one night without any supporting act. It was unknown if we had the endurance to maintain a high level of playing throughout such a long show. We all play in other cover bands which play standard 3 set shows and it's nothing terribly difficult, but playing 3 hours of Rush music is something else entirely. For whatever reason, playing the songs takes a level of concentration and energy far beyond what is required for basic bar cover songs.

We were also going to play all of the songs from the Moving Pictures album in sequence. This was an idea we had early on in the history of the band, but we hadn't learned the final song Vital Signs until last winter and we hadn't had a long enough show to play the whole album. When we heard that Rush themselves would be playing the album on their upcoming tour, we were validated and felt renewed urgency to present the mighty Moving Pictures. It resulted in some interesting changes to our normal song order because we tend to start or end the show with Limelight or Tom Sawyer, two of the most universally popular Rush songs. But unlike many cases with "hit songs" from other bands which tend to be a low denominator, those two Rush hits are also very satisfying to play and masterpieces of songwriting that we never get sick of featuring in our shows. This turned out to be a lot of fun during the show, and ending the first set with Vital Signs was perfect given the climactic ending section.

We cruised though the first hour plus set at Tuttle's without too many problems. The sound was great thanks to our house engineer Bob. He has seen every Rush tour since Caress of Steel so he knows the material and Rush sound as well as anyone. At that halfway point we were pretty spent and were thinking we still an hour and half of music to play. Refreshed a bit after the break and talking to some of the great fans at the bar, we went up for set number two. We started with 2112, which we had only played a handful of times in rehearsal. It actually is not as hard as some other songs in the Rush catalog, but then we only did the R30 arrangement of Overture / Syrinx / Finale. Hopefully we will learn the rest in the near future. Within the rest of the second set, we proceeded to play several of the epic 10 minute songs in our catalog - Xanadu, Cygnus X-1, La Villa Strangiato, Jacob's Ladder. We were all definitely feeling tired by the end but we made in through fine. We certainly gained a new appreciation for the level of physical endurance that Alex, Geddy, and Neil must have to play such demanding music night after night on tour.

In addition to performing Pictures, we also went on to realize another dream which was to play 'side 3' of Exit... Stage Left (if you had the double LP like me) which of course featured the connected arc of Broon's Bane, The Trees, and Xanadu. This went over well. Before the show we had never actually heard Rob play Broon's Bane all the way through and he played it flawlessly. We are in fact now only one song away from knowing the entire Exit... Stage Left album - the abridged version Beneath, Between,and Behind. Well two songs, if you count the famous YYZ drum solo. I have attempted to learn bits and pieces of that solo but it is really the point where mere mortals cannot hope to imitate Neil's super human drumming skills. That is the definitive Peart solo for me, even though it is much shorter than his contemporary solos and does not feature any electronic percussion. I still hope to do a version of it someday.

Surprisingly one of the most satisfying moments was our closing encore of Working Man. We had never played this song live before and had only really played it in rehearsal a couple of times, but we knew it was ready. The contrast with the complex Rush music was obvious when we ripped through it on our first try. Normally when we learn a new Rush song, it is barely recognizable for the first several weeks of practice and we slowly learn bits and pieces until we can put everything together correctly. We had previously looked down on Working Man a bit as an immature work, but we now realized it was just plain fun to play and a song that the audience really responded to. After seeing the Rush movie, we were also reminded that it has a very important place in Rush history, being the song that first got Rush onto mainstream radio when it resonated with listeners in Cleveland. Rush themselves have said that they like to put some of their more straightforward songs at the very end of the show and we learned first hand that this is a good strategy. But the bottom line is, Working Man rocks!

PG]]>