There is a guy that periodically comes to the store to play with the keyboards and shoot the breeze with me. I am not good with names, but I cannot possibly forget his, because when I did the Good Little Sales Counselor Name Exchange, he laughed and told me to call him Ishmael. Izzy for short.
Anyway, Izzy comes in and plays with the keyboards, and we kibitz. Mostly about music. In talking to him, I learned that I am one of a minority: a female Rush fan.
I've always been considered weird for my taste in music. In grade school it was Styx. Sure, every other kid knew the words to "Mr. Roboto." But I was the only one who knew the lyrics to damn near every song they'd ever done to that point, and I was the only one who knew that there had been another guitarist before Tommy Shaw joined. In high school I listened to stuff like Tubular Bells and Dark Side of the Moon, and racked up more "weird" points with the spiral-permed trendy twinks. I'd listened to Rush on and off, and then rediscovered Moving Pictures after I joined the Air Force. And the rest was history.
I tried to listen to the popular stuff. I couldn't do it. At that point, "alternative" had ceased to be alternative, and I couldn't listen to rap for more than five seconds without projectile vomiting. I did find a few good recent releases...Primus and Dream Theater stick out in my mind. That was about the time I took up the bass. I worshipped Geddy Lee and Les Claypool.
And then Counterparts came out. I was in heaven. I played "Stick It Out" full blast and rattled the windows in my dorm room and played along with it on the cheap bass I'd ordered from the AAFES catalog. "Between Sun and Moon" quickly became my favorite track off that disc, though. It just had that quintessential Rush feel that you can't quite put your finger on to it. And everything about that disc amazed me. The fact that these guys have been cranking along for what, 25 or so years now with only ONE change in the roster amazes me to this day.
Having played all four staple rock band instruments--guitar in junior high and early high school, percussion in high school, bass in the Air Force, and most recently keyboards, I can safely say that Geddy, Alex, and Neil are divine entities. To this day I am convinced that the guy you see playing drums at Rush concerts isn't really playing, and he isn't really Neil. I believe that the real Neil Peart is actually from some far-off planet in the Cygnus constellation and he has six arms and four legs. No human being could possibly make drums do what he makes them do.
I have played keyboards on and off for most of my life, and recently took that instrument up again. Maybe the imaginative child living in my brain still entertains fantasies of jamming on the displays at w*rk, unaware that Geddy, Alex, and/or Neil are standing behind her and suitably impressed to a degree that they drag her onto the tour bus and put her on stage with them, barely visible behind a towering rack of keyboards wich she manages to play with untouchable skill.
I keep trying to tell this inner child that the person she lives in can barely plunk out something that sounds like "Subdivisions." She's not a good listener.
I've always wanted to front a Rush tribute band. I would call it Force Ten, and we would close every show by playing "Hemispheres" in its entirety. in the real world, it's probably not going to happen. I'm too busy, too broke, and let's be honest here: I suck. With practice, I may eventually cease to suck, and maybe someday I will have that band. In the meantime, I will annoy my neighbors by singing "Hemispheres" at the top of my lungs along with the CD.
On a sadder note, I was browsing through a few Rush pages a few weeks before the release of Different Stages and found out that Neil's wife had passed away. A few weeks later, I found out that he had lost his daughter as well. As corny as it may sound, the loss hit me hard, and I can definitely understand the band's requests to be left alone at this time. Last I heard, they have no plans to tour or record for the next two years. While part of me is certain they'll get bored sooner or later and go back to business as usual, another part fears that this is the end, there will be no more tours, no more albums, no more Rush. Even with all the crap in my life with bills and hostile customers and a mate whose life is nonexistant if I'm not at his side every second of every day, I can safely say that this is the most frightening thought in my head right now.