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. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 