RUSH
Rush is a Canadian rock band formed in August 1968 in the Willowdale neighborhood of Toronto, Ontario. The band is composed of bassist, keyboardist, and lead vocalist Geddy Lee; guitarist and backing vocalist Alex Lifeson; and drummer, percussionist, and lyricist Neil Peart. Since the release of the band’s self-titled debut album in March 1974, Rush has become known for its musicianship, complex compositions, and eclectic lyrical motifs drawing heavily on science fiction, fantasy, history, and philosophy. According to the RIAA Rush ranks 80th with sales of 25 million units in the United States. (More from Wikipedia)
My brother Tom Winfree thought he had found a copy of Bang for me one Christmas, but it turned out to be the first album by Rush instead, though that was another really good one.
(March 2010)
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Even progressive rock bands whose albums sold well from the beginning often didn’t reach their creative peak for awhile. The magnum opus for Emerson, Lake and Palmer, “Karn Evil 9” was on their fifth album, Brain Salad Surgery. Jethro Tull’s classic album Aqualung was their fourth album. This also applies for several rock bands of the same time period that do not truly fit the progressive rock category. It was Queen’s fourth album, A Night at the Opera that included their unforgettable “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Canadian hard rockers Rush came up with 2112 as their fourth album (that title is exactly 100 years from now, as it happens). The Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd’s space-rock masterpiece that took up near permanent residency on the Billboard album charts – was the band’s eighth album. With Trillion though, the band was never given the opportunity to develop an audience or to refine their sound.
(October 2012)
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Other Canadian rockers include Bryan Adams, k.d. lang, Rush, Loverboy, Klaatu, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, and so many more. Anna McGarrigle wrote the title song “Heart Like a Wheel” on Linda Ronstadt’s 1974 breakthrough album, Heart Like a Wheel that was later used as the name of a 1983 film also called Heart Like a Wheel about drag racer Shirley Muldowney; while Kate McGarrigle was married to Chapel Hill-born singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III whose union resulted in the birth of two more musicians, Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright. I have a CD somewhere that features the whole family if I remember right.
(April 2013)
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We have been bombarded with important anniversaries this year. Though I purposely did not research all of these anniversaries and undoubtedly missed plenty of them for this post (I have been adding them as I think about new ones, however), I know about several others: A long-time favorite food that I still enjoy, Sun Maid Raisins was started in 1912; I lived for nearly 7 years in Jackson County, MS, which was founded in 1812; and the first book of fairy tales and folk stories that were assembled by the Brothers Grimm was published in 1812. The “unsinkable” ship Titanic went down in 1912. The first Whitman’s Sampler – the standard by which all mixed chocolate boxes should be judged IMHO (though not since their acquisition by Russell Stover in 1993 – and yes, I do think that Godiva is over-rated) – came out in 1912. The time-traveling sequences in one of my favorite romance movies, Somewhere in Time (starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour) were set in 1912. As I noted in the UARB post on Trillion, one of the best known albums by Rush is called 2112; this album placed second on a readers’ poll by Rolling Stone on “Your Favorite Prog Rock Albums of All Time”. My alma mater, North Carolina State University celebrated its 125th anniversary this year.
(Year 3 Review)
