Our 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
 


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