I just bought Rush tickets, which seems simple, but no other band has had a greater impact on my life. I know it sounds dramatic, but just hearing them links their music with my memories.
My sister is the one who first introduced me to the band in middle school, back when Roll the Bones and Counterparts had just come out, and being the younger sister, I followed her lead. More than that, I slowly came to appreciate not just the radio-friendly songs like Limelight or Closer to the Heart, but the true talent shown by all three members and their ability to capture in lyrics what I was feeling.
When I was at band camp (no American Pie references, please!) both albums were constant companions. We would perform flag drills to Where's My Thing, which was four plus minutes of non-stop spinning to strengthen our arms. When I was upset, I would sing (or recite in my head if others were around) Roll the Bones, Ghost of a Chance, Cold Fire, or You Bet Your Life.
I remember watching the sun rise in Wildwood, sitting outside our motel room singing Dreamline. I started buying their back catalog, and was thrilled by 2112 (the full 20 minute version as well as the entire album), Red Barchetta, Freewill, The Camera Eye, and of course Limelight from Moving Pictures, La Villa Strangiato and The Trees from Hemispheres and so much more. I remember going into Sam Goody's every time I went to the Bridgewater Mall to see if they had any older albums in the racks of CDs that I hadn't discovered yet.
In my senior year, I pulled an all-nighter for my art class, meticulously gluing small punched circles of colored paper to recreate Seurat's "Circus Sideshow." The soundtrack to keep me going was listening to Test for Echo on repeat, as quietly as I could, so I wouldn't wake my parents.
My quote under my high school graduation picture was from Rush, from the album Hold Your Fire, the song Mission, to be exact. "We each pay a fabulous price / for our visions of paradise / but a spirit with a vision is a dream / with a mission." It was expressing the pain of having been isolated due to my intelligence and lack of social skills in the past, but with a hope for the future that I could change that, relate and integrate more into life at college.
Oddly enough, after Test for Echo (1996), they took a long hiatus, and, as it turns out, so did I. I went to college and continued on with my life, but no one there had heard of them, except maybe Tom Sawyer (which, incidentally, I despise). In 1997 it was all Matchbox 20 and Backstreet Boys. I tolerated those bands, but rationalized the poor music with the thought that it was a different situation, so I might as well just go along with it. My CDs gathered dust.
I've been dusting them off recently. Not just Rush, but Tori Amos, They Might be Giants, Barenaked Ladies, Dave Matthews, and many other groups that were popular from the 1980's to the 1990's when they were popular, since they actually had talent. These are all different bands that I have mental associations with, not just for the instrumentals, but for the lyrics and the way they remind me of other times and places in my life.
Rush was the first band in terms that introduced me to how powerful the connection of music and emotion can be, yet I've never seen them live. Now I'm finally going to.
My sister is the one who first introduced me to the band in middle school, back when Roll the Bones and Counterparts had just come out, and being the younger sister, I followed her lead. More than that, I slowly came to appreciate not just the radio-friendly songs like Limelight or Closer to the Heart, but the true talent shown by all three members and their ability to capture in lyrics what I was feeling.
When I was at band camp (no American Pie references, please!) both albums were constant companions. We would perform flag drills to Where's My Thing, which was four plus minutes of non-stop spinning to strengthen our arms. When I was upset, I would sing (or recite in my head if others were around) Roll the Bones, Ghost of a Chance, Cold Fire, or You Bet Your Life.
I remember watching the sun rise in Wildwood, sitting outside our motel room singing Dreamline. I started buying their back catalog, and was thrilled by 2112 (the full 20 minute version as well as the entire album), Red Barchetta, Freewill, The Camera Eye, and of course Limelight from Moving Pictures, La Villa Strangiato and The Trees from Hemispheres and so much more. I remember going into Sam Goody's every time I went to the Bridgewater Mall to see if they had any older albums in the racks of CDs that I hadn't discovered yet.
In my senior year, I pulled an all-nighter for my art class, meticulously gluing small punched circles of colored paper to recreate Seurat's "Circus Sideshow." The soundtrack to keep me going was listening to Test for Echo on repeat, as quietly as I could, so I wouldn't wake my parents.
My quote under my high school graduation picture was from Rush, from the album Hold Your Fire, the song Mission, to be exact. "We each pay a fabulous price / for our visions of paradise / but a spirit with a vision is a dream / with a mission." It was expressing the pain of having been isolated due to my intelligence and lack of social skills in the past, but with a hope for the future that I could change that, relate and integrate more into life at college.
Oddly enough, after Test for Echo (1996), they took a long hiatus, and, as it turns out, so did I. I went to college and continued on with my life, but no one there had heard of them, except maybe Tom Sawyer (which, incidentally, I despise). In 1997 it was all Matchbox 20 and Backstreet Boys. I tolerated those bands, but rationalized the poor music with the thought that it was a different situation, so I might as well just go along with it. My CDs gathered dust.
I've been dusting them off recently. Not just Rush, but Tori Amos, They Might be Giants, Barenaked Ladies, Dave Matthews, and many other groups that were popular from the 1980's to the 1990's when they were popular, since they actually had talent. These are all different bands that I have mental associations with, not just for the instrumentals, but for the lyrics and the way they remind me of other times and places in my life.
Rush was the first band in terms that introduced me to how powerful the connection of music and emotion can be, yet I've never seen them live. Now I'm finally going to.
posted by AnonymousX at 6:05 PM
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