BEFORE: Oh, I'm so close to the end now - just one more "talking heads"-type documentary, and one more concert to go. It's been over FIFTY films since I've watched anything even close to a narrative, and I can't wait to get back to that this weekend. But now I'm second-guessing my choice of film for that return to fiction, because I found out that the actor in question doesn't REALLY appear in that film - I'll explain this in a couple of days, I guess. But I spotted a possible replacement film on Netflix with the same actor, so I've got to make a decision in the next 48 hours.
Kirk Hammett carries over from "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster", presumably to be interviewed about his thoughts on Rush.
THE PLOT: An in-depth look at the Canadian rock band Rush, chronicling the band's musical evolution from their progressive rock sound of the 70's to their current heavy rock style.
AFTER: The back-story of Rush is just like the back-story of any other band, only it's not, right? There are always those little details that make any particular band stand out, like Geddy Lee (who was born Geddy Lee Weinrib) being the son of Holocaust survivors who emigrated to Canada. He met Alex Lifeson, himself the son of Serbian immigrants, in high school in Ontario, and a long friendship was born, one that has stood the test of time and touring and fame. Both had old-school European parents who didn't consider rock music to be a viable career, but if you were born in 1953 and were a teenager during the 1960's, great rock was everywhere, and who wouldn't want to be in a band after the Beatles and the Stones and the Who came into being? (Not to mention Clapton, and Zeppelin, and such...I'm thinking now that rock music is a virus, and the desire to create it spread from person to person during that decade.)
After a few years on the Ontario high-school circuit, Rush broke into the American market by way of Cleveland, when a few DJs played their early records, causing fans to call the station and ask when that new Led Zeppelin album was going to be released. Both bands had singers with high voices, you see, and Rush probably didn't mind being confused with Zeppelin, or thought of as the "Canadian Led Zeppelin".
I don't own any of Rush's music myself, but of course I know quite a bit of it from listening to mainly classic rock stations over the years. I think my wife has their Greatest Hits CD, I should probably just borrow that next week and rip the CD on to my iTunes so I can save some cash. Renting all these rockumentaries on iTunes has put a serious dent in my expenses over the past two months. They've got a lot of great tunes, but I admit that I had no idea before this what the "2112" album was all about, or that albums like "Hemispheres" got them labelled as a prog-rock band, whatever that means. I didn't know that they dabbled in reggae sounds on "Permanent Waves" or went through a new wavey-period in the mid-1980's when they used a lot of synthesizers, which apparently pissed off a large number of long-time fans who just wanted Rush to return to good old guitar-oriented rock.
Which they did (after, it seems, more brief dalliances with jazz-like sounds, and even some elements of funk and hip-hop) but then the band went on hiatus in 1997 after Neil Peart lost his daughter to a car accident and then his wife to cancer in 1998. He dealt with this by getting on his motorcycle and just riding around North America, more or less incognito, for nearly five years. Hey, if you've got the money and the freedom to take five years off and mourn, why not? Most of us wouldn't have the means to do something like that, but whatever gets your head back in a good space...
But eventually drumming, and music comes back to creative people, and it does so on its own schedule, because it turns out you can't mandate songwriting like Metallica tried to do. Hetfield tried to say, "OK, we'll write songs on weekdays between 12 and 4, as long as that doesn't interfere with my sobriety and our therapy session schedule." Yeah, that's not how creativity works, you can't schedule it or mandate that it only occurs during certain time periods - nice try, though.
There was a segment here where Neil Peart sort of had to re-invent his drumming style, because anyone can hit a drum kit, but not everybody can do it RIGHT, and it turns out there are different ways to do it, which can have long-term health consequences, so to find a BETTER way to play drums, he turned to the "Yoda" of drumming, Freddy Gruber. (I thought they said "Freddie KRUGER" at first, like the evil guy from "Nightmare on Elm Street", but no, I just mis-heard it.) Gruber's an older guy who knows just about everything there is to know about drumming, and how to drum, and the meaning of drumming, from both a physical and a meta-physical standpoint. Like, he knows what the sound of one hand NOT hitting a drum is, if you know what I mean. This kind of makes me want to be the "Yoda" of something, like I want to train somebody to do what I do, whether that's setting up a Comic-Con booth, or keeping proper payroll records, or maybe it's linking movies according to actor appearances to set up 300-movie chains, I don't know. But now I really want to train someone to do something that I'm good at - maybe just to prove that I'm good at that.
There's no shortage of rock musicians and bands here who say they were influenced by Rush - from the Smashing Pumpkins to Primus to the Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails and Death Cab for Cutie - it's a great list that's probably not even complete, but it's contemporary enough for me to feel like I've maybe come to the end of the cycle, over the last (almost) two months I've gone from the birth of the Beatles to the end of Rush. I'll watch the film that features their final concert tomorrow, and then that will be that.
Also starring Geddy Lee (last seen in "I Love You, Man"), Alex Lifeson (ditto), Neil Peart (ditto), Sebastian Bach (last seen in "Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back"), Jack Black (last seen in "Bob Roberts"), Mick Box, Danny Carey, Jimmy Chamberlin, Les Claypool, Tim Commerford, Billy Corgan, Taylor Hawkins, Jason McGerr, Kim Mitchell, Vinnie Paul, Mike Portnoy, Trent Reznor, Gene Simmons (last seen in "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years"), Matt Stone (last seen in "Bowling for Columbine"), Zakk Wylde (last seen in "God Bless Ozzy Osbourne") Liam Birt, Terry Brown, Cliff Burnstein (also carrying over from "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster"), Peter Collins, Ray Danniels, Bernie Finkelstein, Freddie Gruber, Donna Halper, Rupert Hine, Nick Raskulinecz, John Roberts, Kevin Shirley, Vic Wilson, with archive footage of John Rutsey, Stephen Colbert.
RATING: 6 out of 10 time signatures
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