Nov 23 2013 – Rush. Where does one begin to comment on the significance of this band to Toronto? These hometown heroes continue to deliver top shelf music 45 years after their creation. Only The Beatles and The Rolling Stones have more consecutive gold or platinum records than Rush and both of those bands are way beyond their musical peak. Rush still continues to deliver as evidenced by the fantastic Clockwork Angels album of 2012 and although they have recently announced they will take 2014 off for personal endeavors they will be back in 2015 for more rocking goodness.
My Favorite Headache. Four local guys that delivered an epic Rush tribute show at Toronto’s El Mocambo and blew the roof off the place. The band consists of Frank Marino on vocals, Jason Popovich on drums, Mirko Zadravec on bass and keys and Andy Kim on guitar. Rush has arguably the best drummer in the world, one of the best bassists in the world, and one of the best although very underrated guitarists in the world. Not only are the three guys in Rush virtuosos of their instruments they produce insanely complex songs with frequent tempo and timing changes that would challenge any musician in trying to reproduce them. Having said that My Favorite Headache were up for a big challenge if they wanted to pull off a carbon copy of Rush.
When we talked to people about seeing a Rush band the first question was “Is the singer any good?” in regards to Geddy Lee’s very unique falsetto singing voice. Well Marino does Geddy like a champ and the cool thing is he is having fun doing it. My Favorite Headache played a set that spanned Rush’s discography from the first album to the last and not even Lee himself can hit the notes of his younger self. Marino did an excellent job catching the overall sound of Lee and the answer to the previously mentioned question is “Ya, the singer is damn good”.
Next on the checklist is the Neil Peart. Pratt or The Professor are his nicknames and he truly is the modern king of rock drumming. Popovich is clearly an accomplished drummer who did not shy away from tackling even the hardest of Rush songs. His performance was excellent and along with Zadravec delivered an excellent rhythm to the show. Kim is clearly a killer riff master and his playing on the guitar was both intense and refreshing at the same time. Overall, individually the four guys meant business and had tons of fun being up on stage.
The first set consisted of a “Best Of” set that spanned all of Rush’s discography and included all the fan favourites but also some deeper cuts who the hardcore in attendance loved. After the first set we had the great fortune to catch up and interview the band outside of the historic El Mocambo. Check out this interview below:
The band hit the second half flying with Rush’s most succesful album Moving Pictures that they played end to end. With a track listing that includes Tom Sawyer, YYZ and Limelight the hit parade got into full swing at this point. We were very impressed with an excellent rendition of Red Barchetta which you can view below:
Highlights of the show were killer renditions of Limelight, Headlong Flight, The Trees, Witch Hunt and the show opener R30 Overture (which is a jam of 6 Rush songs). This is a band which we give our highest possible recommendation for.
The guys played their hearts out all night and clearly spent countless hours mastering the complexities of Rush – but they nailed it! The band closed the night with an encore of Working Man and here you can see it:
posers to say the least. not impressed.
What can I say, we can’t please everyone, we are having fun, we love Rush, life is short. Do what you love to do, in our case play Rush songs as best as we can….peace!!
Frank do not pay attention to random anonymous internet posts from someone not even at the show. There will always be haters on forums and comment threads that think its cool to diss (and usually they are too young to go to the bar to see the show) You guys ROCKED and its true cause I SAID SO ;-)
Thank you for that T Mac….
Great review, dead on!
I was there that evening, it was an amazing show!
They are fantastic! I am not just saying that because Frank Marino is my cousin:). Even if you don’t particularly like Rush (how could you not?), you will have a good time.oxoooxxox