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TDC - Neil Peart


Teh

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18 minutes ago, cynic said:

No.  Heck, he died three days ago and we're only just now seeing it in the news.  

Interesting, as I was surfing the YouTubes last night and came across their recent “cover” of 2112 (below) *and* Time Stands Still, watched them both (big Rush and huge Aimee Mann fan) last night. 

 

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So sad to hear.  I am glad I got to see Rush live (4 times), and it was always a fantastic show.

This one hits hard, especially having somebody close to me suffering with a Grade 4 Glioblastoma...same thing that killed Neil.  :(

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1 hour ago, cynic said:

No.  Heck, he died three days ago and we're only just now seeing it in the news.  

Yeah, he was an intensely private person even to the end. He faced so much personal tragedy in the past couple of decades... I cannot even imagine. I'm just devastated. 

RIP Neil.

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3 hours ago, Studio Custom said:

Neil’s lyrics were always overshadowed by his drumming, when they were on par or better in many instances.  

Exactly.  Most Rush fans don't even know Peart was the real lyricist.  

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8 hours ago, The Shark said:

Exactly.  Most Rush fans don't even know Peart was the real lyricist.  

I think most Rush fans knew Neal wrote the lyrics.  I had conversations with Rush fans that were an intellectual step above fans of other bands.  Seriously, the conversations were about books, science, and music other than hard rock.  Rush was a band with an audience that paid attention to details. 

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^^^^The opening medley at that Frankfurt show is an absolute jaw-dropper, even by Rush's strident musical standards. So help me, it looks like it was staged inside a zeppelin hangar.

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This makes me really sad. I saw Rush once. One of the best gigs I've ever seen. I wanted it to never end, and it was a long show as it was. 

Pearts lyrics took me through some tough times when I was a teenager. I started to listen to Rush with All The Worlds A stage and the earlier stuff. But it was Power Windows and Hold Your Fire that were the most important albums to me at the time. Perhaps because I bought them when they came out. They were not "old" records at the time. Grace Under Preassure also made a big impact then, due to it's apocalyptic soundscape and dark futuristic lyrics.

Great great great drummer, one of the most technically  skilled ever. I would not use the word "groovy" and Neil Peart in the same scentence. But he had such feel in his drumming, such musicality. He tought me a lot about listening to music. And as a lyricist he always wrote from the heart. Honest, thoughtful. Sometimes a bit goofy, but still great. My teenage dreams were fueled by those lyrics. And when I read Ghostrider I think my eyes teared more than once, such a tough thing to go through. Losing your child and then your spouce. He lived a great life for sure. But also had to see a lot of tragedies. And then to get brain cancer at past 60. When all he should be doing was to sit back, enjoy life with his wife and children and get older with grace.

 

 

This is a great watch. Not much Neil innit. But what a cool show. Alex just rips on that 335. 

 

 

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3 hours ago, Steve Haynie said:

I think most Rush fans knew Neal wrote the lyrics.  I had conversations with Rush fans that were an intellectual step above fans of other bands.  Seriously, the conversations were about books, science, and music other than hard rock.  Rush was a band with an audience that paid attention to details. 

I'm talking about the casual fan that knows all the hits and maybe seen them live once or twice.  

Not sure listening to any band puts you "an intellectual step above" anyone.  Trust me, some of my least intellectual friends loved Rush!

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Loved Rush!  Neil Peart was our drummers favorite.  We learned a few of their songs, Spirit of the Radio, Limelight,  Digital Man, FreeWill, Beneath Between and Behind, and butchered many more trying to learn them.   Brian spent hours playing along with Rush on his drums.

RIP to one of the very best.

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I fall into the "Big Rush Fan" camp. (50+ shows, can play most of it while watching the news, blah blah blah)

Since the news broke I have been contacted by at least 10 people from my distant past (think 30+ years since any contact) making sure I am OK, but mostly thanking me

for our shared love of the band-reminiscing about shows or trying to learn crazy songs that were way above our ability at the time or just getting stoned in the woods with a boom box.

That is what Rush is about.

For me, It's like losing the best teacher I ever had, except that instead of one semester or school year the learning has continued for 39 years-from the point I figured out what I was getting out of the relationship until now and will likely continue. The guy set a nearly impossible standard for self-improvement, intellectual curiosity, and finding a way to bounce back from some of the most horrible personal stuff imaginable.

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My brother had a musician friend.   He was a high school senior already making good money playing weddings.   He was one of those guys who looked 25 even tho he was a senior.    Heck maybe he was 25.    But...  Since I was just starting guitar he was like a god to me.  he turned my brother onto rush and every day after school. My eardrums would be bashed but 2112.      My brother once tried to explain the concept.    Some dude finds a guitar. Starts strumming and a minute later they’re playing a magnum opus.    I was like. That’s really fruity.     But as soon as he left for the military.   I took all his zeppelin. Rush and the first nugent album and ended up digging it. Definitely got me started on a cool lifelong hobby.      My local suburban rock station (Rock 101) has been playing the same ac-dc and rush rock blocks for 39 years.   Which I find nuts .  But it speaks to how much they connect with people.    

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I caught maybe 15-20 RUSH shows over the years, from 1981 to the 2015 farewell tour. That’s 34 years of great concerts!

I understand Neil’s perspective when he wrote “I can’t pretend a stranger is a long awaited friend,” but that’s how the band seemed to me. Every time they’d pass through, I’d get a visit with my long awaited friends.

Mourn the loss, celebrate the life, enjoy the music and writings he left us. Thanks, Neil!  We’ll miss you.

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I too was introduced to Rush by way of All the World’s a Stage: the local FM station (97.1 KAYD, “FM-97”) would play the live version of “Working Man” on a regular basis. (This was in the days when FM radio had no issue playing 15-minute songs in regular rotation.) I bought the album and was off and running as a Rush fan.

I only got to see them six times; I wish it could have been more.

10/25/1977 - Beaumont City Auditorium, Beaumont, TX

03/04/1979 - Fair Park Coliseum, Beaumont, TX

04/05/1982 - Lake Charles Civic Center, Lake Charles, LA

01/15/1986 (or maybe it was 01/16/1986) - The Summit, Houston, TX

06/11/2011 - Frank Erwin Center, Austin, TX

04/23/2013 - Frank Erwin Center, Austin, TX

--

Neil’s second book, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road, came out in 2002.

After his daughter died in a car crash and his wife died from cancer (“The doctors said it was cancer, but I knew it was of a broken heart”) in a span of about 10 months, the only way he could think of to deal with it was to get on his motorcycle and ride. He covered roughly 55,000 miles of North and Central America, trying to heal what he referred to as his “little baby soul.” Ghost Rider is a chronicle of that journey.

Several years ago when I first got a Kindle, I downloaded it, kind of skimmed through it and thought it was an interesting travelogue.

But I recently read it again from a paperback edition. As I’ve mentioned before, my wife of thirty years died in 2014. So this time I read it with a whole new perspective.

Obviously, Neil Peart’s life and mine are (were) very different. I lost my wife; he lost his wife AND daughter. He was a successful, world-famous musician living his dream life and I’m…not. And I couldn’t exactly get on a R1100GS and check out from the world; I had a nine-year-old daughter to tend to and an 18-year-old son just out of high school trying to figure out what to do with his life. Not to mention I had to get up and go to work every day.

But many of the things he wrote about really struck a chord – besides, loss is loss, regardless of your life situation. So I felt a bit of a kinship to him.

“If the first is the year of sorrow, then the second is the year of emptiness.” How very true.

As I read, I found myself wishing I could reach out to Neil and have a conversation. Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen, but there are many things I would have liked to have talked to him about – and none of them pertained to music or Rush.

I was a couple of chapters away from finishing the book when the news broke that he had died. So even if I HAD found some way to communicate with him (which I never had any delusions of doing anyway), it definitely wasn’t going to happen now.

So goodbye, Neil, from your longtime fan and brother in loss.

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