Jump to content
Required Reading for any Longhorn ×

Neil Peart RIP

jimmyjazz

By jimmyjazz
in Music

 Share

Recommended Posts

Rimbo

Rimbo 26158

Posted
Posted

Think of all the heroes you've had in your life. You live long enough, eventually their flaws catch up with them, you outgrow them, they fall apart, some devastating reveal... The handful who somehow survive this culling are precious.

That's why old people cry when their heroes pass away. By the time you hit a certain age, there's just so few left.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
tbone_

tbone_ 14191

Posted
Posted

Subdivisions always spoke to me. 1 because the dude in the video looked exactly like me at 15-16 when it came out.

 

Be cool or be cast out - totally identified with that. Never felt like I quite fit in anywhere.

 

Sprawling on the fringes of the city in geometric order, an insulated border- always resonated with me. Creativity, quirkiness, and personality. So often missing in the modern world.

 

Which makes my entire career developing residential real estate - residential subdivisions, condos, and apartments frankly kind of a struggle, though I’ve always tried my best to to it with integrity and soul. Many many times I’ve wondered if Neil would approve though.

 

There were others too. Dude did way more to shape my life philosophies than any religion ever did.

 

 

 

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Rip76

Rip76 4967

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, tbone_ said:

Subdivisions always spoke to me. 1 because the dude in the video looked exactly like me at 15-16 when it came out.

 

Be cool or be cast out - totally identified with that. Never felt like I quite fit in anywhere.

 

Sprawling on the fringes of the city in geometric order, an insulated border- always resonated with me. Creativity, quirkiness, and personality. So often missing in the modern world.

 

Which makes my entire career developing residential real estate - residential subdivisions, condos, and apartments frankly kind of a struggle, though I’ve always tried my best to to it with integrity and soul. Many many times I’ve wondered if Neil would approve though.

 

There were others too. Dude did way more to shape my life philosophies than any religion ever did.

 

 

 

Subdivisions covers it all.  The awkwardness of not fitting in a group, and trying to figure it all out.  For me, “Signals,” was a masterpiece.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites
dcar00

dcar00 14380

Posted
Posted

this sucks.  was always a fan and wore the grooves out of moving pictures, signals, exit stage left.  even had Caress of Steel.  had never seen them live and when they came to Austin on R40 at the last minute I said "I'm going".  asked my 15 yr old son if he wanted to go and he said he was going to hang out with some friends. He has an affinity for classic rock(since I forced it on him when he wanted his first ipod😊).  I begged him to go and said this might be it.  He bailed.  huge regret that I didn't put him in the car.   what a show it was.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
LFS

LFS 58

Posted
Posted
7 minutes ago, Gil Bang said:

ah.  OK.  

 

Jim is also the "C'mon Dave...gimme a break" voice in the VH song. 

 

"One break...comin' up"

not gonna hold it against you that you didnt remember the mid 80's roger waters album about the mute in the wheelchair who starts WWIII communicating  w/ satellites in morse code he sends from his head narrated by jim ladd.

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
dcar00

dcar00 14380

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, LFS said:

not gonna hold it against you that you didnt remember the mid 80's roger waters album about the mute in the wheelchair who starts WWIII communicating  w/ satellites in morse code he sends from his head narrated by jim ladd.

 

 

Waters wants everyone to forget that album...

Link to comment
Share on other sites
dcar00

dcar00 14380

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Chad Fuck said:

 


I have a friend who loves this album (or at least he did in high school).

If there was a Vic thread of albums that’d be a good lead off.

 

I don't completely hate it but its not good(not a huge fan of Waters, in mulitple ways, anyway) but he loathes it.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...
Horn Under a Bad Sign

Horn Under a Bad Sign 20519

Posted
Posted

This is a phenomenal read.


 

 

Neil Peart, Beyond the Gilded Cage

Fans of Rush marched to the beat of a different kind of drummer.

Bret Stephens

By Bret Stephens

Opinion Columnist




Whenever I’m walking in Midtown Manhattan, there are moments when a lyric written about 40 years ago runs through my mind.

The buildings are lost / In their limitless rise / My feet catch the pulse / And the purposeful stride.

The words are from the song “The Camera Eye,” written by Neil Peart, the drummer and lyricist of the Canadian progressive-rock trio Rush. It’s an 11-minute, B-side track from the band’s best-known album, “Moving Pictures.” Along with other Rush classics like “2112” and “Permanent Waves,” I must have played it about 10,000 times or so in high school.

Not that this is the sort of thing that, until news of Peart’s death of a brain tumor broke last week, I would have easily admitted to anyone. LA Weekly once called Rush “the anchovies of rock music”— loved by a select few, hated by many. Growing up, my friends listened to Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, the Steve Miller Band, Pink Floyd. To be a Rush fan in the 1980s had about as much social cachet as being treasurer of the math club.

 

Yet that was also what made the music so irresistible to me. Rush was rock for nerds, by nerds (and sometimes about nerds). You didn’t dance to Rush. It wasn’t heavy enough to bang your head to it or simple enough to tap your feet. You would never play it at a party, or for a love interest, unless your goal was to break up. The music didn’t set a mood, like Tears for Fears, or put you in the mood, like Roxy Music.

What Rush’s music did was compel attention. Songs unfurled in intricate, unexpected, subtle but cohesive patterns that always seemed to involve more instruments than the band had hands, fingers and feet to play. Every member of Rush was a virtuoso, and sometimes the joy of the music came in trying to focus on just one player: Geddy Lee’s bass in the instrumental piece “YYZ,” or Alex Lifeson’s guitar in “La Villa Strangiato,” or Peart’s thunderous drumming in the middle section of “Tom Sawyer.” That’s the section where, no matter where I am or what I’m doing, my arms start air-drumming all by themselves.

And then there were Rush’s lyrics. Most pop songs are about love. Most heavy metal songs are about sex. Most country music seems to be about hard knocks and heartbreak.

Peart’s songs, by contrast, were about — anything else. He wrote about suburban alienation (“Subdivisions”), the cosmological significance of tidal pools (“Natural Science”), metaphorical struggles for equality between oaks and maples (“The Trees”) and a futuristic dystopia in which fast cars are banned by something called “the motor law” (“Red Barchetta”). The themes were political, scientific, interpersonal, futuristic, philosophical. My all-time favorite Rush lyric, “I can’t pretend a stranger / Is a long-awaited friend,” is from the song “Limelight,” a meditation on the decidedly mixed blessings of fame. I think of it every time I’m asked to schmooze before a speech.

No other band did this. None that I know of even came close. To listen to Rush was to march to the beat — the complex beat — and the even more complex thoughts of a different kind of drummer.

Pretentious? It could be, sometimes. But that did little to alter the experience of encountering the music as a teenager and feeling not just transfixed, but also understood by it. At 46, I generally listen to music as a way of relaxing into my work. At 16, I was trying to figure out who I was. Though Peart’s themes and inspirations ranged widely, the through-line for most of his songs was the struggle of becoming, and the anxiety and marvel of being.

Too many hands on my time / Too many feelings, / Too many things on my mind. / When I leave I don’t know what I’m hoping to find. / And when I leave I don’t know what I’m leaving behind.

That’s from the song “The Analog Kid.” As a teenager going to a school 3,000 miles from home, I felt as if it had been specifically written for me. It must have seemed the same way for thousands of other kids my age, just trying to work out our place in the world. Implicit in the lyrics was the reassurance that the songwriter had been there before us, equally befuddled and afraid. And that it would be O.K.

Over years of going to Rush concerts, I always came away awed not just by the quality of the musicianship but also by the length of the shows: The band never seemed to want to give audiences anything but its full measure of appreciation. And while I was never any sort of groupie, I also watched more than a few interviews with the band on the internet. The impression was always the same: Here were three guys who had remained grounded, grateful, humble and sane. Another Rush discovery: Not every star has to be an awful person to be a great artist.

For his 2013 induction speech at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Peart quoted a line he attributed to Bob Dylan: “The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do for anyone but inspire them?”

The inspiration continues. Thanks to Neil Peart for helping so many of us find it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 4 weeks later...
jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 46249

Posted
  • Author
Posted

That clip is interesting . . . first off, kudos to whoever arranged it.  Two things struck me:

-- I didn't really like either singer all that much by themselves, but they harmonized really well

-- I never in a million years would have thought that song would lend itself to such a conventional approach.  It didn't even sound like a Rush song.  I think that's a compliment not only to the band but the cover.

 

Needs Aimee Mann, though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Moby Ric

Moby Ric 2058

Posted
Posted

Primus going out on tour and going to play Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres in full on their tour.  It was planned before Neil's death.

This is a pretty good interview with Les Claypool talking about that and other Rush stuff.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/primus-rush-tribute-to-kings-tour-les-claypool-interview-953590/

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 10 months later...
Handcruser

Handcruser 2805

Posted
Posted


That is a great article. Thanks for posting.

Although there is no “greatest drummer”, he’ll always be the one I think of when someone asks that question.

I thought it was interesting that Geddy said he wouldn’t hesitate to play some Rush songs when he starts playing again if the situation was right. I think we will see Alex + Geddy + a monster drummer + another musician at some point for some new project.

Again, RIP Neil. You were a monster.
  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 11 months later...
  • 8 months later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing


Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business and Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Subscribe!... Donate!... Advertise... COOKIE MONSTER!

×
×
  • Create New...