The Live Machine

When it comes to reading, I tend to like biographies best. Of course being a diehard music fanatic myself, I read my fair share of music related bios. I’ve often thought that it would be an interesting read if someone were to sit down and write about their own various live concert experiences. I’m most certainly not the same guy I was when I started going to shows back in the mid 1980’s, but I still have my memories (good and bad) of so many shows. I could tell some stories.

Live concerts in 2011 do not hold the same magic feel they did in 1985 for me. I have seen so many bands and styles of music in so many different settings that it becomes hard to compare and to feel the same exhilaration that I once did. You can never hear Van Halen and Kiss again for the very first time. A sense of jade comes into play. Plus it’s hard to compare the likes of seeing someone as iconic as Paul McCartney to watching Loverboy play a tiny festival stage to a small crowd of unwashed fans. Apples and oranges my friend.

Plus there is the fact that I have seen many of the same bands a few times over. Yes leads the pack…but I doubt I will be adding to that ticket pile anytime soon. Coming in a strong second place however is the Canadian mega monster Rush. These guys have easily taken hold of the second spot on my all time greatest bands list behind the unbeatable Beatles. Plus what would this silly blog be if I didn’t post at least once about them? I devoted a whole month to Rush on the previous version of this site. Some things will never ever change, I guess.

Live albums are sort of a funny thing for me. To be honest…I don’t like most of them. I think they are nice to have if you attended that particular tour with the band or if you have to own every last note a certain artist has ever played. Mostly those live albums just sit in my collection. I find it tedious most times to listen to endless live versions of a specific song that are only a year or two apart from one another. Overkill. Some bands took the live thing to an extreme. The Dead were known to let fans openly trade tapes of live shows. They released endless “professional” recordings of gigs too. Pearl Jam released every single show from a tour they did. They came in brown packages with little decoration. Peter Gabriel also released a lot of live material at one time. I suppose in some ways those can be nice. A band like The Dead or Dave Matthews or to a lesser extent Pearl Jam can be known to switch up the set each and every night. It is cool to catch a brilliant moment of improv…but it can also be dull and littered with mistakes and misguided intention. I guess I like a bit of polish on my musical heroes.

With a band like Rush we have been treated to live stuff all along. The first real live album hit the shelves in 1976. The massive hit of EXIT…STAGE LEFT in 1981 cemented the band as powerhouse live band. In the past decade we have been given RUSH IN RIO, R30, SNAKES & ARROWS LIVE, and now TIME MACHINE 2011: LIVE IN CLEVELAND. Oh…and did I forget A SHOW OF HANDS and DIFFERENT STAGES slightly before that. It does border on that overkill thing I was talking about. I grant you this. I think I have enough live versions of “Tom Sawyer” to last me a while. Having said that…this is where I get to the part where I feel a book about concert outings would be a fun read. It is a somewhat long and complicated story, so in the interest of time and the fact that maybe someday I shall write said book, I want to touch on why this particular live Rush outing has relevance for me.

I first saw the band in 1990 on the PRESTO tour. To many Rush diehards, that might be a tad late in their long and storied history. I make no bones about discovering them in 1984…this is also 10 years into their still going musical adventure. The thing of it is…I remember that day like it was yesterday. The insides of the tour programs were all basically photos from the previous tour. When the ROLL THE BONES tour swept through my neck of the woods I opened the new program. Inside were three separate photographs (one for each member). They were obviously taken during soundcheck from behind the stage. Alex, Geddy, and Neil all setting up to play…in what is clearly the minor league baseball park that I and my goofy friends witnessed an amazing show from 10 or 12 rows out. Boom…a musical connection.

Fast-forward…many tours later. I have seen the band from the 5th row, and I have watched them from the lawn. I have NOT missed a tour since that fateful summer night in the ballpark.

Due to bizarre circumstances, I was poised to not make the TIME MACHINE show. When the second leg of the tour was announced, I knew it was coming, but I opted to skip it. A tradition broken. Until someone sent me an email letting me know that that was not going to happen. April 2011 in Toledo, Ohio (a couple hours from my home) was going to make the streak continue. Like many things in my life…things did not go as planned. More bizarre circumstances ensued. The show was rescheduled. Through many emails, texts, and phone calls I managed to score the day off and make it to the show. It was stressful getting to that point, but it was worth it for a number of reasons. It became just as vivid of a night as that one from long ago.

What was cooler about the whole thing was being able to take along a very close friend…one that shared that very same 1990 evening with yours truly. He too is a Rush fanatic (maybe not as deep as me, but close), and he was having less than swell days on the domestic front. It was nice that this opportunity dropped from the sky. It allowed both of us to forget about the world for a while and make a road trip to see “our” band. The Toledo show was on a Wednesday night. The show just released was the Friday night show in Cleveland. That’s as close as I have ever made it to a proper appearance on a live album I guess. I felt like we witnessed the warmup gig. Very hip.

The TIME MACHINE premise was established by the band setting out to include the entire MOVING PICTURES album in the set. For years much of that seminal album has always been there in the live show, but a couple tracks from side two were just what the doctor ordered for some crazy Rush fans. To finally have the chance to hear and see “The Camera Eye” live was amazing. It happened.

As I sit and listen to this new album, a couple of things strike me. Like I said Rush has released a lot of live material in the past few years. Dare I say too much? I think sometimes bands release live material/albums to help bridge a gap between studio records. With Rush though…while there is some truth to that…I just feel like every live release had a purpose. RUSH IN RIO was the capper on their glorious return after Neil’s tragic personal events. R30 took time for the band to reflect on their legacy. It gave them a chance to stretch out a bit and relax without having to plug a new album. The SNAKES & ARROWS LIVE disc was a celebration of an even stronger album and that finally many that were never inside the cool Rush circle to begin with started to take note of just how powerful this band is. How influential. How musical. How popular. How musically amazing. (What took you so long Rolling Stone? Eh…you were never that cool anyway.)

As the band strikes out to write a new album in a world where the album seems like an afterthought these days…they decided to record a bit, tour, record a bit more. They decided to experiment that way. They feel like they wanted to make the live thing charge their creativity for new material. As a result two new tracks were recorded and performed during this tour…a tour that was also a celebration of MOVING PICTURES. Has it really been 30 years?

Alex Lifeson has changed his playing style over the years. He has always been a somewhat strange soloist, but his overall tone these days is much darker, heavier, and at times muddier. Geddy Lee is forever pinned as the screeching guy that plays bass. I dare say he hasn’t squealed since MOVING PICTURES really. His voice has ceratinly aged and changed. He sings different these days. How can you not after 37 years of being on the road? He's still Geddy though. No mistaking that. Neil Peart is also different behind the drum kit. He still plays with fire and passion, but he pulls back the overplaying he might have been guilty of all those years ago. He is brooding and smart. He is not content with just being the drummer. He is part of the melody.

The companion Blu-ray of the show is amazing. The show is “directed” by the same team that brought us IRON MAIDEN: FLIGHT 666 and BEYOND THE LIGHTED STAGE (also about these loony Canucks). Scott McFadyen and Sam Dunn are brilliant at what they do. You can tell that not only are they uber fans like us, but they get into the cracks to bring us things that only the uber fan would want to see. The picture is crisp, clear. The sound is brilliant, bright, well mixed. What can I say?

Like almost every other live album out there, I don’t know how much I will pull it off the shelf and jam on it. To me…I always enjoy watching the show so much more. Alex at times is a bit muddy. Geddy’s voice is strained in spots. Neil (at times) has a strange tone from some of his drums. This is all nitpicking. You are hardest on the ones you love the most, right? Any other band would KILL to be this great. The band is brilliant. I cannot think of any other group of guys out there that is able to still be chugging away like this all these years down the line. I think I just might dig this one out a little more often though. It just has that personal connection for me. That is something that is very cool in my book. And…I admit…I never get sick of hearing “Limelight”.

Time Machine 2011 (Live In Cleveland) - Rush