I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: RUSH-“Not Fade Away” (1973).

I never understood this song.  Grammatically it drives me nuts.  “Love is real, not fade away.”  Why would someone write that?  Anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of English would know that that is just a horrible way to speak.  Okay, I got that off my chest.

So this is the first single that Rush ever released.  You can find out information about it on the web (of course, I didn’t know it existed until a couple of days ago).

What we get here is a pretty rocking version of this rock n roll standard.  The band has some nice group vocals on the chorus.  I like the echoed chanting of the chorus before the solo kicks in.  And I love the rough sound that Alex’s guitar has as the song opens.

As I noted the other day with the concert from circa 1974, the band was really all about Alex’s guitar work back then.  Geddy doesn’t do anything impressive on the bass (a couple of fills, but nothing special).  But Alex’s guitar solo is amazing (and you can hear snippets of future guitar solos buried in this solo).

It’s funny to me that when they recorded their covers EP Flashback, that they didn’t include this song, too.

Check it out:

The B-side comes tomorrow!

[READ: March 12, 2011] Babymouse: Skater Girl

Well, fair enough, I said that I liked Babymouse: Dragonslayer because it had a plot.  This story has a plot, too.  Interestingly, it ties in kind of nicely to the Dragonslayer story, too.  (It’s all about winning something).

As the story opens, Babymouse feels bad because she never wins anything.  She’s looking at all of the trophies which she has not won; then there’s an amusing fantasy of all the things she has won (honorable mention for spelling the word “the” correctly; honorable mention at the swim competition for “getting wet”; and amusingly, archenemy Felicia Furrypaws’ trophy for worst whiskers).

But despite her complaints about not being good at anything, we quickly see that she is actually very good at ice skating.  She rules the pond in town–until the big hockey players crash into her, that is).  She even daydreams of winning a skating trophy.

And her dreams seem to come true when the coach sees her skating at the pond and offers to train her for the forthcoming championship.  But serious training takes a lot of work!  That means getting up early (gasp) doing homework in the car on the way to practice (gasp gasp), two practices a day (ouch) and, worst of all…no more cupcakes (faint).

The story was fun if you like mocking coaches (and who doesn’t).  It also takes a realistic (well, realistic within the confines of a cartoon about a mouse) look at what’s required to win a championship (lots and lots and lots of practice).  And it posits the very valid question of whether or not it’s worth it.

This story seems to have pretty much written itself.  It flows very easily and was quite fun.  And there’s a happy ending too (no, that’s not a spoiler).