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| Rush in Toronto October 16 2012 |
The Angels Are Out When Rush Present A Clockwork Show In YYZ For The 2nd Night
What was different tonight from Rush’s Toronto October 14th show a couple of nights ago that we reviewed here? Very little – to be precise the setlist had four changes Body Electric, Bravado, Seven Cities of Gold and Manhattan Project were taken out and replaced by Middletown Dreams, The Pass, Wish Them Well and Dreamline respectively. The other thing that was different was the number of people in attendance. Tonight the vast majority of the 300 level seats were covered up and empty. If I had to guess there were at least 5000 people less tonight that on Sunday night. Since Rush presented basically the same show, we will use them as inspiration and present the same review with updates as needed.
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| Geddy Lee of Rush in Toronto’s ACC October 16 2012 |
October 17 2012 – In T-Mak World‘s guide to Toronto’s Upcoming Must See Concerts (Summer/Fall 2012 edition), we had a huge asterisk beside the hometown boys from Rush. October 14th and 16th were the long anticipated dates, and Rush brought their caravan into the Air Canada Center for the second of two shows tonight. Here is what we had to say about the gig in our preview article:
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| Neil Peart of Rush in Toronto’s ACC October 16 2012 |
Tonight’s performance began with the band’s attempt at a humorous video (as they have been doing the last few tours), but the crowd really took notice with the opening notes of Subdivisions. My personal favorite Rush song lyrically really set the tone for the night. Immediately after that another of the “softer” side staples Big Money kicked in and let the band show off brief spurts of the musical mastery. If you were unfamiliar with the set list of this tour before you walked into the arena, you would very quickly begin to see a theme with the next few songs – and that theme is the 80’s specifically from 1982-1991. In fact the first 9 songs of the set were from all from the six albums of that time span (Signals 1982, Grace Under Pressure 1984, Power Windows 1985, Hold Your Fire 1987, Presto 1989 and Roll The Bones 1991).
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| Alex Lifeson of Rush in Toronto’s ACC October 16 2012 |
Like a linearly tuned time machine Rush then took us to 2007 for Far Cry from Snakes and Arrows. Aside from the opening song Subdivisions and the closing song Far Cry, the first half surely was not one for casual Rush fans (is there even such a thing?) The band seemed to put away the hits so far, and focused on some deep catalog songs some of which have not been played in ages. Territories for example was last heard in 1988 – yes 25 years ago!! All indications were that this tour was going to reward long time Rush fans to the dismay of the ones that wanted to hear Freewill, Closer To The Heart, or Limelight for the umpteenth time.
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| Geddy Lee of Rush in Toronto’s ACC October 16 2012 |
Rush’s vocalist and bassist extraordinaire Geddy Lee addressed the crowd after the third song “Thank you and good evening Toronto…. how you guys doin? … , you must be my neighbors right … you guys all live around the corner” as he looks out into the electrified Air Canada Center. “Like the other night we have a gazillion songs maybe a thousand I dont know, hours of music for you“. No matter how many times you see Rush it still is a very cool feeling knowing that these guys go to the same movie theaters, eat at the same restaurants and drive the same streets that you do everyday. Guitarist Alex Lifeson is also a resident of Toronto. Only drummer Neil Peart has moved away to LA and no longer calls Toronto his place of residence.
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| Alex Lifeson of Rush in Toronto’s ACC October 16 2012 |
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| Neil Peart of Rush in Toronto’s ACC October 16 2012 |
Highlights of the first half seem to be the solo’s – whether it be Lifeson’s blistering solo on Analog Kid, Lee’s bass grooves, or particularly the Professor Peart’s drum solo on Where’s My Thing. This tour does not feature the massively popular Peart extended drum solo of the past few tours but does offer Peart doing 3 smaller solo’s throughout the night. The electrical anticipation in the audience is beyond description when the spotlights converge on Peart and you can see him on the big screens focusing with razor sharp concentration at the beginning of his solos. Magic, pure musical magic.
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| Rush in Toronto October 16 2012 |
The second half of the show brought 8 additional musicians up on stage behind Peart’s drum kit. The 8 comprised an unorthodox orchestra as they were head banging and grooving for almost all of the second set. They were there to assist the band musically on the presentation of Clockwork Angels (Rush’s recently released album). Clockworks Angels is an excellent concept album that even has an accompanying sc-fi book authored by Kevin J. Anderson and is based on Neil Peart’s lyrics and concepts. We were at the global book launch and you can read about it here. The basic premise of the book is about a discontent young man seeking adventure. He is growing up in a mythical place called Albion that is ruled by The Watchmaker who instills clockwork precision on every minuscule tasks of his citizens. His rule is questioned by only one man named The Anarchist who thrives on chaos and disorder. The world is based on mythical magic where alchemy powers all the machines. The young man goes on a journey to find his place between the extreme order of The Watchmaker and the extreme chaos of The Anarchist.
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| Geddy Lee of Rush in Toronto’s ACC October 16 2012 |
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| Rush in Toronto October 16 2012 |
Clockwork Angels (the record) has 12 tracks on it and 9 of them were presented to start off the second half, all of them accompanied with the 8 piece rocking orchestra. This string band of musicians were standiing up and dancing around with the music of Rush. Fire and pyrotechnics were used liberally for the opening track Caravan. Highlights of this part of the show were Headlong Flight and its really hard rock brand of pure old school Rush and Halo Effect which had smoke machines cover the floor of the stage to a very moody and hypnotic effect. Surprisingly Seven Cities of Gold was not played today which is a shame because that is one real good rocking tune!
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| Geddy Lee of Rush in Toronto’s ACC October 16 2012 |
The stage featured props as expected in a Rush show – gone are the rotissairie chicken roasters, the washing machines and the time machines from past shows. This show four props behind Lee labelled BIGHORN (a big horn from a gramophone record player), BRAINSTORM (a brain floating in a vacuum tube with headphones on it), TOPHORN (an assortment of horns on top of a box) and POPCORN (featuring a giant popcorn maker). We even got to see a re-interpreted version of the Star Man as seen below:
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| Rush in Toronto October 16 2012 |
The second set finished off with Dremaline and Red Sector A surrounding Peart’s 3rd drum solo of the night. From this point on the audience was finally off their seats and going wild, YYZ (featuring 2 dancing gnome characters) leading into The Spirit of Radio leading into the encore of Tom Sawyer and 2112 (Overture, The Temples Of Syrinx, and Grand Finale). This last half hour or so of the night had reciprocal audience energy of the highest magnitude. Every one legged hop by Geddy or drumstick finger roll by Neil brought thunderous cheers. The party was on, and if you ever get to only see 30 minutes of Rush in your life the end of yesterday’s show would be the thing to watch. Sadly most of the audience sat for most of the show but the last 30 minutes brought everyone to their feet. Excellent sound and lights made this show stand out far above the numerous concerts we have seen this year right up there with Roger Water’s The Wall.
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| Rush in Toronto October 16 2012 |
Verdict: 5 out of 5. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that a Rush concert in Toronto is magical. Although tonight’s choice of set list would be difficult to digest for casual Rush fans the concert felt like it was presented in three acts – “The 80’s”, “Clockwork Angels”, and “The Hits”. Since we are NOT just casual Rush fans, we loved every minute of the show although we preferred the October 14 2012 setlist just a bit more.
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| Neil Peart of Rush in Toronto’s ACC October 16 2012 |
I would have to disagree with the song set opinion…….quote “Although tonight's choice of set list would be difficult to digest for casual Rush fans the concert felt like it was presented in three acts – “The 80's”, “Clockwork Angels”, and “The Hits”. Since we are NOT just casual Rush fans, we loved every minute of the show although we preferred the October 14 2012 setlist just a bit more.
……” The October 16th concert rocked.” …..the song set was a hit.
I would have to disagree with the song set opinion…….quote “Although tonight's choice of set list would be difficult to digest for casual Rush fans the concert felt like it was presented in three acts – “The 80's”, “Clockwork Angels”, and “The Hits”. Since we are NOT just casual Rush fans, we loved every minute of the show although we preferred the October 14 2012 setlist just a bit more.
……” The October 16th concert rocked.” …..the song set was a hit.
just watched it…nice! C. Colbert
I think they could have included some songs that could have worked well with the themes, imagery and storyline of Clockwork Angels (e.g. Red Barachetta and Free Will) . Personally I'd love them to do Which Hunt and Natural Science