RUSH!
Rush at the MEN Arena, October 2007
Where the hell do I start with this one?! It was just me and Pete for this gig and it was good to see the 'ol bugger, as we've not had much chance to hang about lately. Needless to say, we were both pretty keen to get to the gig and get on with it. So I picked him up early and we got to the arena in very good time. Things were on the up from the start as we pulled into the dodgy car park and didn't have to pay the usual fiver, so we parked up and wandered to the arena.
Shopping was the first task of the evening. I was non-plussed by the T-Shirts, but splashed out on the HUGE limited edition book of tour programmes from the past years with which I got a nice free Starman bag. I also splashed out on the current programme to finish the set. I tell you, I'm glad it was a seated gig as I wouldn't fancy lugging that book about all night, it really does weigh a tonne. Pete got a snazzy hat and some badges, which I was jealous of. :)
...And then to the seats. I'd taken the unusual step of getting floor seats, which was a gamble, but it paid off as we got a great pair of seats on the aisle forward of half-way back with a clear view everything and not too far away. It wasn't as full as the last time they played there, but the arena was pretty rammed. The pre-gig atmosphere was a little wierd and possibly a bit flat, maybe the Sunday night was to blame, but as soon as those lights went down, it went mental and everyone woke up. Prior to this, the set start was signalled by an odd instrumental cover of "2112", which was funny.
The pre-show film was as bizarre as normal with Alex, Neil and Geddy starring in their own odd little nightmare movie. Very funny stuff, very self-deprecating with Geddy wearing a kilt and putting on a very odd "Fat Bastard" Scottish accent and giving himself a bollocking as a character known as Harry Satchel. Then the band came on at about 7.45pm and they were off. They opened with "Limelight" which closed the show last time they played Manchester and there was no let-up for 90 minutes.
The sound was a little muddy at the start with Lee's bass getting list in the thud occasionally, but this got sorted pretty quick during the show. Sometimes the keyboard and drum samples got a bit muddled too. Lifeson's backing vocals sounded OK though and he seemed to be doing a lot of singing during the night. He must be getting into it now!
The on-stage dryers this year had been replaced by commercial cooked chicken ovens. At some points during the set, a bloke with a cook's apron and hat wandered on to attend to these, which was funny. Alex had all manner of crap on his backline and a monkey (I think) standing guard next to his stacks. Geddy also had some fun stuff, but more about that later.
The first set was full of surprises. I'd got a hold of a few live bootlegs from this tour, but put them away and not looked or listened to them so I wouldn't spoil the surprises of this show and the tunes just kept on a-comin'. There was a good selection of stuff from "Snakes and Arrows" which was no real surprise, but the presence of songs like "Circumstances" were a nice touch to get som old stuff in there. There were a few tunes repeated from the last tour ("Between the Wheels" and "Dreamline" notably) and it was all lovely.
There were the usual between-song movies that were put in there to keep it all going including one in the first half with two gents talking about eating crisps (sorry, "potato chips") for "The Larger Bowl". Geddy was pretty talkative this year too, which was nice as it kept the proceedings friendly.
Mr Lifeson was seemingly enjoying himself too, pulling the usual faces and hamming it up like the old pro he is. Even the Professor looked pretty happy a lot of the time. In-between the scowling at his kit (more about that in a bit, of course) there was a lot of mugging at the other members of the band and pulling faces at the camera at the end of some songs. Sometimes you'd be led to be believed from his books and writing that Peart hates touring and doesn't really like leaving the States to play shows, but it didn't show last night. Maybe Manchester is just "his town"?
So, the first set blasted on for 90 minutes and it got very hot and sweaty in the arena. There were some people around us with some serious personal hygene issues, which was a drag and some really shitty singing from behind us, but that was OK and all par for the course. The audience was generally middle-aged gentlemen let out for the evening. The UK Rush Convention had taken place that day in Manchester somewhere, so they were all down at the show that night and got a mention from the stage at one point. There were a few young-'uns there on a family outing, which was great. I hope that the band come back one more time when my young-'un is old enough so I can bankrupt myself and get him a ticket!
"Dreamline" brought the first half to a storming close and the lights came up for 20 minutes. I took the obligatory self-portrait (wearing the same T-Shirt as the last time I saw Rush to see if I could tell in twenty years which gig was which) with Pete and we chatted for a while. Pete found out that The Police gig from the next night had been called-off due to Sting being ill again, so that helped to pass the time.
The second half came round at about 9.30pm and they did a solid run of five songs from the new album which was great. The new material really did shine in the show and most of the album was played during the night. The set was preceeded by a very bizarre movie of Alex. It's a bit hard to describe, you'll have to wait for the DVD to see it :) After this, it was another selection of oldies with a few surpsrises and some welcome returns of good old friend songs. "Subdivisions" was great and "Natural Science" was also a top addition to the set.
This was the point of the night where we had our trauma of the gig. Pete's bag with his hat was missing and nowhere to be seen. I told him he beat my record for losing gig merchandice in the shortest time (Queensryche hat, Promised Land tour '94, bus on the way home, 3.5 hours) by a long chalk, to cheer him up. I saw a random bag down the line of seats and thought that ths pisshead that passed up before the second set started may have kicked it up there. I checked that it didn't belong to anyone sitting infront of it and found the damn hat. Lucky... Trauma over.
A run-though of "Malignant Narcissism" took us to the bit most of us had been waiting for as the rest of the band left the stage and left it to Mr Peart to entertain us with his solo. Starting on the acoustic kit, he took us through a nice and shiny new solo routine with some bits that he'd kept hold of from previous years. Some bits were nice references to old solos and old masters, the crossing-hands on the snare and tom fills being a particular bit I was watching for. The feet were doing the usual incredible independant soloing too, which was great. I'd recently watched his "Anatomy of a Drum Solo" DVD (cheers John) and it was nice to be able to watch a solo and kind of understand what he was doing for parts of it (but not all, by any stretch). The electronic kit section was similar to the last solo arrangement, but with a different selection of sounds. This was the only time he used that kit on this tour. We got the marimba tune on there and an excellent "song" before the kit rotated back and he led us into the big swing ending. Not sure what the song was, but he seemed to play a longer arrangement than his "One O'Clock Jump" bit that he had used for the previous tours. That was great though with film clips of the old masters playing behind him as he wellied it out for all it was worth. A great solo though that ran for about ten minutes, although I can be sure as I didn't time it. All in all, it did it's usual job of reminding me and the other drum freaks in the audience that we were, in fact, totally shit really.
This year's kit was pretty much in the same configuration, but with new shells and bass drum head front. The album snake and arrow insignia was all over the set-up (and on Peart's shirt and hat) and looked great on the red shells of the kit.
It was around this point (on "Subdivisions", I think) that the audience were shown Geddy's nice little Spinal Tap reference with his little model Stonehenge on his keyboard. My photo is damned blurred, but you get the point. This is a trivial bit of knowledge, but I had to drop it in there...
Alex played his solo acoustic piece after the solo and eased us back into the final run to the set's close. We were spared the "Summertime Blues" which people had seemingly been complaining about this year and got "Distant Early Warning" instead, which is a winner. "Spirit of Radio" got a huge reception, as expected and then we were treated to an excellent South Park animation of Cartman and gang playing "Tom Sawyer" before the band kicked-in for the song proper and brought the main section of the show to a close. This was a great clip and I suggest you search for YouTube for it. I think that Peart had a few technical problems around this point as there was much scowling down to his feet at one point. Wonder what was going on there?
The second set ran for another 90 minutes or so and left the audience gasping. There was plenty of cheering for more as the band took a breather but this was kept brief as the band came back on for few more numbers.
"One Little Victory" had the dragon and the columns of flame, which is cool. There was pyro for another tune on the night, but I'll be fecked if I can remember which it was! "Passage to Bangkok" was a nice nod the Jerry Stiller's intro movie from the last tour and sounded massive last night. "YYZ" brought the night to a close. As the lights were brought up, a final video as Geddy dressed up as his Scottish alter-ego shouting "Thank god that shite is over!" played and bid us all a fond farewell as we traipsed out. The clock showed the time to be about 10.50pm, as I remember, so we got a good three hours worth of stuff.
A big mention should be included for the light show yet again. As you can see from the photos and the video, they really pushed the boat out again. There were times that the moving lighting trusses and the strip-lights made the whole affair look like the closing scenes of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" with the aliens landing, I half expected the five tone tune thing to be played half the time. Excellent stuff. Anyway, the lights and lasers were great and added a lot to the show.
Getting out and home was a total surprise as it didn't take 45 minutes to get out of the car park or queue up in the traffic to get to the motorway. I had Pete dropped off and got home in fourty minutes, which was a minor miracle considering how much of a nightmare the MEN can be to get home from.
So, all in all, another excellent Rush show which was completely different than the last. How a band can stay so exciting after nearly 35 years of performing and producing is beyond me. Especially as you have bands of a younger vintage settling into ruts and just re-treading the same-'ol-same-'ol year after year. I just hope that they don't give up just yet, talk Peart into it and get back to England again (2010, boys?).
Set List
- Set One
- Limelight
- Digital Man
- Entre Nous
- Mission
- Free Will
- The Main Monkey Business
- The Larger Bowl (Bob and Doug McKenzie intro)
- Secret Touch
- Circumstances
- Between The Wheels
- Dreamline
- Set Two
- Far Cry
- Working Them Angels
- Armor and Sword
- Spindrift
- The Way The Wind Blows
- Subdivisions
- Natural Science
- Witch Hunt
- Malignant Narcissism
- Drum Solo
- Hope
- Distant Early Warning
- The Spirit of Radio
- Tom Sawyer (South Park intro)
- Encores
- One Little Victory
- A Passage to Bangkok
- YYZ
Close Encounters of the Rush Kind
The video is in FLV format and should stream quite quickly to your computer. Excuse the distorted sound, the microphone on the camera isn't the best when recording high-volume noise. Please be patient if the video doesn't load immediately.
Site Accessibility
© 2006 Graham T. Ebbrell