SOUNDTRACK: NEIL PEART-September 12, 1952-January 7, 2020.
When I was in high school, Rush was my favorite band, hands down. I listened to them all the time. I made tapes of all of their songs in alphabetical order and would listen to them straight through.
I still loved them in college, but a little less so as my tastes broadened. But every new release was something special.
It’s frankly astonishing that I didn’t seem them live until 1990. There were shows somewhat nearby when I was in college, but I never wanted to travel too far on a school night (nerd!).
For a band I loved so much, it’s also odd that I’ve only seen them live 5 times. However, their live shows are pretty consistent. They play the same set every night of a tour (as I found out when I saw them two nights apart), and there wasn’t much that set each show apart–although They did start making their shows more and more fun as the years went on, though).
One constant was always Neil Peart’s drum solo. It too was similar every night. Although I suspect that there was a lot more going on than I was a ware of. It was also easy to forget just how incredible these solos were. Sure it was fun when he started adding synth pads and playing music instead of just drums, but even before that his drumming was, of course, amazing.
It was easy to lose sight of that because I had always taken it for granted.
I am happy to have seen Rush on their final tour. I am sad to hear of Neil’s passing. I would have been devastated had it happened twenty years ago, but now I am more devastated for his family.
So here’s two (of dozens) memorials. The first one is from the CBC. They included a mashup of some of Neil’s best drum solos:
But what better way to remember the drum master than with a supercut of his drum solos? From a 2004 performance of “Der Trommler” in Frankfurt, Germany, to a 2011 performance on The Late Show With David Letterman, to his first-ever recorded drum solo (in 1974 in Cleveland, Ohio), dive into nearly five minutes of Peart’s epic drum solos, below.
I was only going to include this link, because it was a good summary, then I saw that Pitchfork ranked five of Neil’s best drum solos (an impossible task, really). But it is nice to have them all in one place.
You can find that link here.
Starting in the 1980s Neil’s solos were given a name (which shows that they were pretty much the same every night). Although as I understand it, the framework was the same but the actual hits were improvised each night.
Even after all of these years and hearing these drum solos hundreds of times, watching them still blows my mind.
- “The Rhythm Method”
- “O Baterista”
- “Der Trommler”
- “De Slagwerker,”
- “Moto Perpetuo”
- “Here It Is!”, “Drumbastica,” “The Percussor – (I) Binary Love Theme / (II) Steambanger’s Ball”
[READ: January 2020] Canada 1867-2017
In this book, Paul Taillefer looks at the most historically significant event from each tear of Canadian history. And he tries to convey that event in about a page. Can you imagine learning the history of your country and trying to condense every year into three paragraphs?
And then do it again in French? For this book is also bilingual.
I can’t read French, but i can tell that the French is not a direct translation of the English (or vice versa).
For instance in 1869, the final sentence is:
This, in turn, signaled the start of the Red River Rebellion which would not end until the Battle of Batoche in 1885.
Neither Batoche nor 1885 appears in the entire French write up. So that’s interesting, I suppose. I wonder if the content is very different for French-reading audiences.
It would be absurd to try to recap everything that Taillefer writes about (a table of contents (not included) would do that.
But here’s some highlights I found interesting.
1867 – Canada’s Birth.
1869 – The Red River Rebellion with Louis Reil.
1871 – B.C joins Canada.
1873 – North West Mounted Police formed.
1876 – Bell invents the telephone [I did not know the “Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you” occurred in Ontario.]
1879 – Time zones adopted in Canada [Standford Fleming, he creator of times zones was from Canada]
1884 – It amuses me that the main thing in this year is the creation of the Eaton’s mail order catalogue.
1893 – Lord Stanley gifts the Stanley Cup to hockey.
1897 – Queen Victoria;s Diamond Jubilee. It’s often easy to forget how connected to England Canada was and still is.
1905 – Alberta and Saskatchewan become provinces.
1912 – Governor General Earl Grey (yes) and his wife Lady Grey (yes) donated a cup, The Grey Cup, to Canadian Football.
1924 – The Red Ensign becomes the official flag.
1929 – The Stock Market crash affected Canada too.
1939 – 1945 Canada during WWII.
1947 – Introduction of the Canadian citizenship act.
1954 – Marilyn Bell became the first person to swim across Lake Ontario (20 hours and 59 minutes). She was also the youngest person to swim the English channel and the Strait of Juan de Fuca (which took 10 hours and 38 minutes).
1957 – Lester Bowles Pearson awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work resolving the Suez Canal Crisis.
1964 – Parliament adopts the new flag (the maple leaf that we all know).
1968 – Trudeaumania runs wild.
1969 – Montreal Expos founded.
1972 – Team Canada wins Summit series over Russia.
1974 – CN Tower built.
1980 – “O Canada” became the national anthem.
1983 – Metric system adopted.
1992 – Blue Jays win World Series (it amuses me that that is the most significant event of that year, and for many, it was.).
1993 – Kim Campbell becomes the first female Prime Minister.
1995 – Quebec almost votes to leave Canada. Final count 50.6% – 49.4%
1999 – Nunavut became the country’s third territory.
2001 – Canadians take in fliers stranded after 9/11 attacks. (The basis of the musical Come from Away).
2003 – SARS outbreak.
2005 – RCMP Biggest Loss in 120 Years: 4 dead in raid.
2009 – Newly elected President Obama travels t o Ottawa and eats a “beaver tail.” (I love that THIS is the biggest thing to happen to Canada that year).
2010 – 14 Gold medals at the Olympics.
2015 – Justin Trudeau becomes first Prime Minister whose father was a Prime Minister.
Leave a Reply