rush nerd

i got the rush doc as a christmas gift this year and was oddly excited. i don't get too up about things, so this was quite an occurance.

i finally had a chance to watch it one sunday afternoon and i was immediately captivated all the way through.

a lot of people who know me as a musician only go a few years back, to either the swindles, buttercup, lara & reyes or mike morales.

but if you went a little further back. you would have heard some serious 70's metal guitar.

the beatles were too tough as a kid for me. there was something there i didn't have yet. a voice. and i didn't really sing. and the songs pitched around in keys all over the place, not mention tuning issues from song to song. i liked singing along. but playing guitar along with those records was too hard.

but loud electric guitar is easy to define. it's usually the loudest thing in the track. and if you have a quick ear, you can begin to see the patterns emerging on the fretboard of the guitar.

and as i grew old enough to drive, i started getting more music tips from my friends. san antonio had a radio station that championed these obscure metal bands, long before anyone besides their friends and local fans had ever heard of them.

and so along with what was actually popular, the cheap tricks and kiss and aerosmiths of the world, there were judas priest, ufo, triumph, april wine, moxy, legs diamond and on and on they came.

there were tons of guitar parts there to learn, right off the radio.

but rush songs were another story.

i hadn't yet heard any jazz-fusion or flamenco or classical music yet. the band Yes was maybe the most technically complex music i'd heard in a rock context.

and then i got 'all the world's a stage'. which is pretty much the live versions of the best parts of their first four records. it's still so much fun to listen to. and the guitar parts were amazing.

i still really enjoy making that much sound. as a three piece band, rush could fill up so much. alex lifeson used open strings combined with barre chords in a way i'd never thought of. they really cared about arrangements and technically flawless recordings.

and that's where i went for twenty years. studying guitar feverishly, and playing in metal, then fusion, then nylon-string, guitar-based bands.

but none of it would have been possible without 'a farewell to kings' or 'hemispheres'.

i remember playing 'la villa strangiato' with just the drummer of the band i played with in high school. somehow we made it to the end.

i also remember playing the recording of 'the trees' in my middle school english class to complete some kind of assignment. a true rush nerd move. i had complete freakouts over other bands as well (judas priest was definitely my guide to any twin-guitar playing that would happen later), but rush compelled me, for some reason. i think i really felt they were making art, not just music.

and in a way, my whole career can be traced right back to this band from canada that everyone thought sucked so badly back then. it was truly a dividing topic amongst teenagers in the late 70's. and their music was true girl poison. no one wants to make out to 'by-tor and the snowdog'.

but i was not dissuaded. i guess i'm still not.

it's only after watching this film, that i realized just how much they mean to me as a band. it was a very nice gift. something to help me rekindle this love i've always had for music. it's easy to lose confidence in yourself, but knowing you can do just one thing really well. that's maybe the lynchpin that holds a life together in those dark, lonely moments.