I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: RUSH-Oak Oppression: Cobo Hall, Detroit, December 17, 1978 (1978).

This is another bootleg from Up the Down Stair.  This is a 1978 show, right after the release of Hemispheres.  I have always loved this era of Rush, and the fact that they play so many looooong songs in this show is music to these ears.

We’ve got a 12 minute “Xanadu”, a 10 minute “Cygnus X-1”, followed by “Cygnus X 1 Book 2 Hemispheres” (18 minutes), a 10 minute “La Villa Strangiato” and and 18 minute complete “2112.”  That they can fit 10 more songs into this concert is pretty amazing.

The show is of good quality, although aside from the track listing there aren’t a lot of surprises here (Rush shows don’t deviate all that much from the records).  The nice surprise is in the drum solo.  It’s pretty much the same one from All the World’s a Stage, but it has some really fun effects on it at the end.

[READ: August 4, 2010] “The Train of Their Departure”

David Bezmozgis is another of the New Yorker’s 20 Under 40.  I enjoyed this story, set in Russia in 1976, because it was like two different stories combined into one saga.

Polina is a twenty-one year old married woman.  As the story opens, we learn of the cute courtship that her husband Maxim treated her to.  He followed protocol, her treated her very nicely.  He waited every step of the way, from kissing to petting to more.  He even used contraception (something most Russian men didn’t bother with).  Their courtship felt inevitable, even if Polina was never really smitten with him.

Then one night he didn’t have any condoms with him.  But Polina insisted.  With the inevitable result.

They decided to get an abortion.  And Maxim’s protocol is the only thing that kept her from leaving him.  He did everything exactly right.  And soon, they were speaking of marriage.

The fact that that is not even half of the story shows how much Bezmozgis packed into this piece.  I haven’t even mentioned Alec, a man who is making advances towards her, or the rifle competition, or even…  well, I’ll leave that out.

I’ve always liked stories from this part of the world.  And this one is really strong as well.  Bezmozgis doesn’t rely on any trick or devices, he just tells a good story.  In fact, I felt satisfied with just the Polina/Maxim courtship.

I’ll be reading more from him in the future.

His New Yorker Q&A is available here.

The Q&A reveals that this is an excerpt.  And yet I found it self contained enough that I didn’t realize it.