Last week my brother, son and I went to see Rush in concert at the USANA Amphitheatre in Jordan, UT.
Short Take: They still rock. USANA, however, doesn’t.
Longer view:
This tour, called the Time Machine tour, was not in support of a new album, although they did play some songs from an album in progress. The premise, basically, was play as much as they can from their 30 stellar years. And they did. 3+ hours with a short intermission.
They played tight, as usual – rendering their amazingly complex, rich, and literate songs with relish and except in a few cases true to their original forms.
As a guitar player, I don’t understand out Alex Lifeson can remember much less play these complex tunes – but he does. And how the heck does Geddy Lee play that bass that intricately, as well as sing, trigger effects with foot pedals, and play keyboard? Neil Peart… to me he defines drums and how they can contribute to songs. Oh.. and he writes the lyrics, and not a love song amongst them.
Amazing talent *3 yields **3 the music. We loved it!
I’ll definitely see them again. As long as they want to bring it, I’ll watch it.
But… not at USANA. The location has real potential – a lovely setting, easy parking, easy access to vendors. But it has one HUGE flaw… it is too flat. I’m 6’ tall, had great seats and struggled to see. Those around me shorter couldn’t and were pretty pissed about dropping money on “good” seats. Rush delivered, but USANA didn’t. I’ll not go back there, period.
Oh… and RUSH should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
August 19th, 2010 at 7:25 am
Professional anything is stiff competition in which only the very best make a ton of money. Golf, bridge, rock bands, lawyers, surgeons, …
August 19th, 2010 at 9:11 am
Awesome photo.
Bridge players make money? How?
August 19th, 2010 at 9:33 am
Make money at bridge? First you have to be very good, much better than I am. Rich people who want to win top tournaments hire the best players for their teams. About a dozen guys make $100K a year just for the three biggest events, and they play week after week in regional tournaments with clients. Meckstroth and Rodwell the best, Passell, Hamman, Wold, Lawrence, Stansby and Martel, Lair, Levin, Weinstein, Cohen and Berkowitz, our Steve Robinson, and others. Locally we have Kales, Lublin, and Roman playing professionally. New York has a bunch of them. I’ve played against them all at least once. It’s like playing 1-3 tournament holes directly against Tiger, Phil, or Ernie or comparing scores with them for 18 holes.
August 19th, 2010 at 9:48 am
Are they that much better than you, as you suggest in your analogy? Seems kind of lame to hire someone to play so you can win a tournament.
August 19th, 2010 at 10:51 am
My compliments to the photographer…
Alas, the camera lies beneath ocean waters now, lost at sea in a kayaking mishap (-;
August 19th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
Oh, those rich people are like the rest of us: first they decide something on emotion and then they rationalize it. And yes, the pros are that much better. In any sport, a relatively small margin results in a big advantage near the top.
August 19th, 2010 at 7:45 pm
I can see how for sports there is a physical component that allows TW to be a better golfer, for example, but bridge is a mental activity. You are supersmart- why are they better?
August 19th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
Concentration. Counting carefully and continuously, inferring unseen cards from the bidding and play pattern of both partner and opponent, devoting more time to more exact bidding and signalling schemes, developing partnership cooperation. They count better, they play better, the bid better, and they infer better. They know more exactly the probability of the distribution of the unseen cards and they can combine the probabilities better to adopt the highest percentage play more often than I can. And since the only stable partnerships are those with players of about equal ability, my partners are no better than I at the various aspects. Thus, we lose twice to the stronger pairs.
Meckstroth and Rodwell (Meckwell) are the best pair. Once in a national tournament, Abigail and I were playing in a smallish regional level event when Meckwell showed up unexpectedly in this side event and playing our way in our section, meaning that we had to compare scores with them directly for at least that session. In the second session they played in a different section. When the smoke cleared, we had won the event and they were fifth out of about fifty pairs. It is still a game of probability where the mistakes made by the opponents contribute to your score in a way you cannot control. We had played our nearly best and the our opponents made more than the expected number of mistakes.
August 19th, 2010 at 9:31 pm
The brain is a physical thing and can be organized better for certain activities. Like Einsteins. The “best” bridge player, may live in Bangladesh and never heard of the game.
November 16th, 2010 at 9:28 am
[...] pleased my son likes Rush. The legacy [...]