Man, that was doubleplusuncool.

Guh. I dunno what to think now. I had thought that Kittenbasket loathed Rush. Now he says he’s a fan. But how on earth could a fan actually think they are still diehard Randroids, as he’s implied several times?

Whatever. He still managed to piss me off. Again. Led Zeppelin = Hobbits how? Two songs, right? The Battle of Evermore and No Quarter maybe? Okay, that’s apparently more Ye Olde than Rick Wakeman’s and ELP’s total output, plus the video to the Safety Dance, COMBINED! I mean, Robert Plant wears armor and quotes the knights of nee, like, always. SHUT UP! I saw it at Knebworth!

Christ. Obnoxious buttrock, yes. Fake blues, yes. Eye-rolling Aleister Crowley fetish, yes. Hobbit rock? No. Not unless a couple of songs an oeuvre makes.

He’p! He’p! I’m back in L.A. in 1973!!

Wait a sec… that photo says 1976. How could ZolarX still be around in ’76? I guess maybe they didn’t have to pay for food, or anything else, in the future.

Oh. Your. God.

OMG I hadn’t watched the vid to ‘Subdivisions’ in years. That kid is playing Tempest in the arcade. Tempest!

Overload. Pleasure overload. I’ve died and gone to nerd heaven.

Wait a sec… that photo says 1976. How could ZolarX still be around in ‘76? I guess maybe they didn’t have to pay for food, or anything else, in the future.

I’m not sure how to say this, but they’re still together.

I now feel an overwhelming need to go fight space aliens. Usually I just get that when listening to Coheed and Cambria…

The Poor Man is all talking about Rush again.

I was sooo utterly confused for like 5 minutes until I realized you didn’t mean Rush-as in Rush Limbaugh-you meant Rush-as in Canada’s band that had Geddy Lee in it.

That hurt my head trying to figure out how Limpballs had anything to do with weird, glam-type rock….

And I’m all over Newt Gingrich for his latest email/commercial for his two year-old book.

This guy’s gone off the deep end for sure.

You wanna be timeless? Good news! Your drummer already is.

Incidentally, It’s Fountain of Lamneth

Yes, I’m a Rush geek. And I liked Tempest. Pass the spaceship shaped bong, please.

Okay, it’s Lame-neth.

NOW I get it. Ha-ha.

I’m tired. Sue me.

And no one has passed the bong yet.

I was sooo utterly confused for like 5 minutes until I realized you didn’t mean Rush-as in Rush Limbaugh-you meant Rush-as in Canada’s band that had Geddy Lee in it.

[Fixed!]

Hate to disagree, but I think this band totally rocks.
reminds me of ron goedert band.
I’m not kidding. these guys fucking rock! I can’t believe I’ve never heard of these guys.
http://zolarx.com/
and http://www.geocities.com/zolarx1/
“Jet star 19 is from 1976?” Holy shit.
That is way ahead of its time. These guys are the opposite of lame.
thanks for posting this.
.

>Overload. Pleasure overload. I’ve died and gone to nerd heaven.

Fry about to defeat some space invaders:

“It’s Saturday night, I have no date, a two liter bottle of Shasta and my all-Rush mix tape, let’s rock!”

Apparently high school was nerd heaven.

And every year thereafter.

Oddly I was in highschool when Rush Limbaugh started becoming prominent and saw something on 60 minutes about a new rightwing chatterbox. All his interviewed fans were saying that they loved Rush, and I thought to myself “How bad could this guy be?

jesus, i still have to be on “rush eats total shit” patrol, all these years later? really?

i know, unununununununununironically meta[meta] and all that, i do or don’t get it. that’s not the point. the point is…the point…let me just hit this spaceship shaped bong for a sec gbgbgbgbgbpppphhhhhhhhhhhhhhhsssssssssss

what?

bob, you had the bong?

don’t bogart it dude. pass it over.

robert green,
I’ve been wondering for years how to render that particular collection of noises into a text-based medium. With the exception of a lighter ignition noise, your effort is perfect, I believe.

And Rush doesn’t suck. They’re boring as hell and one of the earliest bands to totally remove any sort of lower-body-moving impulses from their music, but they don’t suck. They can flat play, I’ll give ’em that.

take yourselves back to a world where FM radio played nothing but various variations of fucky sucky classic rock, a world where said FM stations, who had a veritable monopoly on one’s earspace, should one have been living in say boondockular Western Massachusetts, and imagine…imagine…a place where playing RUsh was considered progressive. now continue to ponder that at that very same time, bands like The Damned, the buzzcocks, X, the dead kennedys, the minutemen, and so on and so on were NOT FUCKING GETTING PLAYED ANYWHERE, let alone while continuing in this dark time to imagine that there was no Television (on the radio, get it?), no Iggy, no Velvet fucking Underground, Not a whisper, nay a whit, of The Modern MOTHERFUCKING Lovers first album, NOT IN FUCKING MASSAFUCKINGCHUSETTS for the love of jesus’ son judea…

wow. and bong hit buddy with his “dude, check out neal peart right…here, yeah that fucking rips” and sure, good drumming and all, but surrounded by the sorrowfully awful musical meandering and mediocre multifaceted mishigas from alex effing lifeson!!!!!!!!!

no dead boys. no clash until london calling, and even then train in vain, surely their worst song up until then. no feelies first album, nope, couldn’t hear that anywhere.

and i’m supposed to take semi-serious posts about nerd 11pwned Rush as some sort of positive nostalgia? you fucking wankers who listened to this shit instead of doing something positive like trying to NOT listen to Dark Side of the Moon over and over and over, you should be sent to singapore and caned.

wow. what was in that pot we bought? why do i feel light-headed?

[robert slumps to the ground unconscious as the lights fade, and the curtain drops.]

Well I can definitely see the Star Trek influence on Zolar X’s wardrobe. I hope they sing better than Nimoy, but I’m not hitting play to find out.

Dude, don’t look at me. I listened to country music almost exclusively (if you count later ’70s era Elvis country and I do) until ’86 or so and I was in high school. Even then, it was Bocephus-approved rock like ZZ Top and the Georgia Satellites.

Best music to get really, really high to: Roger Miller. Scientific fact.

I was in junior high in ’86, not high school. Thus, the dangers of trying to comment and watch a MST3K episode…while high.

I wasn’t even ten when Signals — the album ‘Subdivisions’ is on — came out. I’m not responsible for the punk rawk vs. everyone else war. Sorry the nerds won. Or did they?

Seriously, though, I hate naive art. If I want to look at a painting, it won’t be one by Grandma Moses; if I want to listen to music, it won’t be by the fucking Ramones or most other punk crap; I’d rather read Henry James than a ‘see Jane run’ primer; and while a shaker-style chair might have its merits, give me a plush, overstuffed/overcarved throne to sit on/look at anyday.

It’s not that I’m an elitist. Simplicity (though *not* minimalism, fuck that shit) and naivete can possibly have merits. And of course with regard to music, songwriting and lyricism can be simple and naive and very often fantastic.

Finally, I love Jello, but his music sucks ass and always has.

I’m going to be contrarian here and say that I do not like Neil Peart’s drumming. There, I said it. He inspired thousands of wanker douchebags to acquire 24-piece drum kits complete with roto-toms and splash cymbals. Peart is flawlessly precise, but has little swing and his feel is stiff.

The Anti-Peart would probably be Levon Helm, my favorite rock drummer of all time, who is all feel. Hal Blaine and Bun E. Carlos are two other fave drummers of mine who have nowhere near Peart’s chops but who are far superior musicians.

I like whoever played drums on ABC by The Jackson Five.

I like whoever played drums on ABC by The Jackson Five.

That would be Johnny Jackson (no relation). He was tragically stabbed to death last year.

Great Punk Rock Drummers: D.J. Bonebrake, Charlie Quintana, and please, don’t forget Topper Headon …

Anyone who doesn’t appreciate Rush is beyond redemption.

I roomed with a drummer at uni and he said he listened to Rush and had no idea how Neil Peart did what he did. He was amazed by his skill on a kit.

And, obviously, he couldn’t begin to emulate him.

Side note: I was in Ireland and went to a bar wearing a Rush T-shirt. The lead singer came down to talk with me. He was a Rush fan.

I roomed with a drummer at uni and he said he listened to Rush and had no idea how Neil Peart did what he did. He was amazed by his skill on a kit.

I play drums, and it’s not, you know, mysterious how Neal Peart does what he does. It’s a very complex, measured style of playing with an intimidating amount of notes placed around the kit, such that learning a Rush song is equivalent to something like five regular songs.

But honestly, I’ll tell you what amazes me: Stewart Copeland just playing the hi-hat.

Stewart Copeland just playing the hi-hat.

Yes.

I forgot Copeland (although The Police couldn’t be called punk rock) … but there is no way Neal Peart can come close to Keith Moon …

Geez, about a month ago I made the mistake of ragging on Rush, and the trolls jumped my train. Never underestimate the residual loyalty of the bespectacled ex-high school Brainiacs; they’ve spent years listlessly rolling 12-sided dice and obsessing over whether the maples v. oaks battle of “Trees” is really a metaphor for Vietnam or WWII.

Still, if you can avoid being cornered by one of their fans desperate for any kind of human contact, some of their music is pretty cool and … and … hey, is that bowl totally cashed? (*flink* scritch. “snarglarglearglearglehfffffffff”)

Neil Peart just has 500 drums. Big deal, me playing the pots, pans, canned food and cereal boxes with some wooden spoons could do that. You just get a lot of stuff and bang on it. Hey, how come jurassicpork never comes by 3B to tell us what is on his blog?

Also, I’M IN LOVE WITH MASSACHUSETTS WITH THE RADIO ON ROADRUNNER ROADRUNNER

baby sitting money? haha, he sounds like one of my big sisters!!

what about the voice of Geddy Lee? how did it get so high?

that’s all I think about when somebody mentions Rush – which I guess is better than some high tom sawyer dude….

Rush: the Josh Trevino of rock and roll.

I too have hung out at the Worcester Centrum on a schoolnight. But that was probably a good 15 years later. But the bong remains the same….

[…] with all these people having babies? « Fountain Of Lameneth […]

…Bocephus-approved rock like ZZ Top and the Georgia Satellites…

Arrgh, flashback, the only time I ever heard the G.A. they were opening for Bob Seger in Detroit. I would be surprised the band members survived the hail of thrown trash greeting their efforts (including the “We’re giving you an encore whether you want it or not, and from the universal BOOOOOO! YOU GUYS SUCK! noises that would be ‘not'”) except that brain damage patently holds no fear for anyone yowling “Keep yo’ haaands to yo’seffff!” in a public forum. Maybe they were better on their home turf, or maybe the drugs were just stronger in the red states.

That song just freaked out my cat.

hmm. that’s really weird. I used to be in a band called ‘Solar X’, which was in no way related, I swear!

this is not blogwhoring ala dr blt, just proving that I was in a band for about a year called solar x!

Led Zeppelin = Hobbits how? Two songs, right? The Battle of Evermore and No Quarter maybe?

+ Misty Mountain Hop and Ramble On (’twas in the darkest depths of Morrr-dor…)

Uh dude, have you never listened to the fully lyrics of “Stairway to Heaven”? There’s a whole faerie/otherworld thing going on there. Just sayin’…

“full” lyrics – d’oh!

Preview Button come back! Come back to where you belong!

well, after a good long sleep…

it’s not whether or not neal peart was/is a great drummer. it’s “who gives a shit?”

if you drum fabulous patterns and fills in terrible songs, fuck off. you are a loser. sorry. bob mcadoo may have led the knicks in scoring for a couple of years, but they sucked, so he’s not a great player in the way others are. if you see what i mean.

rush didn’t write good songs. they didn’t write particularly memorable songs. they wrote wank-y songs.

and as for html’s “simplicity” issue, you will please note that very few of the bands i listed were simple. the complexity on “machine gun etiquette” is just as…complex as a rush album, only with great songs. and, frankly, better drumming on some of the songs.then on 2112 or whatever (possibly the most embarrassing piece of shit in history). and please, the buzzcocks may be remembered for simplicity, but they also wrote brilliantly complex music like “i believe” and “why can’t i touch it” with its math like repeating structure and drumming (now that fucking guy could drum like no one’s business, and i don’t even know his name. the drumming in “autonomy” is better than anything neal peart has ever done.)

complexity for its own sake without regard to melody or structure…hey html, i have my burn-out cousin’s al dimeola albums, you should check them out. right up your alley. or i hear there is this thing called jazz. when it comes to rock, it’s not that rush was the worst band in history, it’s that they were the worst important band in history, spawning a thousand other shitheads and giving lost stoners some bullshit to ponder in place of actually going out and finding the good music that was available.

You know, I was in high school back in those dark days of the 70’s, and although I went punk as soon as I heard it (elvis Costello on SNL), I’ve always kept a fond spot for some of that bombast – Rush, Queen, things like that.

What I wonder is why we’re not supposed to like more than one type of music?

“I delight in all manifestations of the Terpsichorean Muse!”

rush didn’t write good songs. they didn’t write particularly memorable songs. they wrote wank-y songs.

I counter with Spirit of Radio, a better song than any The Buzzcocks ever wrote.

“Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor, I met a girl so fair….”

Huh? A girl? In Mordor? Or in the basement where Iistened to this stuff? Never happened.

Unless that isn’t the lyric, which is very possible given my memory of those times.

I’ve always kept a fond spot for some of that bombast – Rush, Queen, things like that.

Queen were a whole lot better than Rush, plus a sense of humour. Never feel guilty about Queen.

RB, I don’t feel guilty about any of this stuff, not anymore. Life’s too short for that.

Except maybe that Kansas. All the bombast and seriouso of Rush, but even less of a sense of humor (And Rush has a pretty good sense of humor. Their last tour, they were introduced by a video of Jerry Stiller, wondering if they would play the stoner song “Passage To Bangkok”)

One of the most funky-assed bands in Mass was the late lamented Groovasaurus, whose drummer if memory serves had I think 3 pieces in his kit: snare, hi-hat, and a huge kick. That was it. From which I learned a valuable lesson, when hunting for drummers, about the inverse relation between kit size and superb playing. Not that it has to be taken to that extreme necessarily, but the second a roto-tom is unveiled the audition is over far as I’m concerned.

I’d add David Lovering as having the nicest touch of drummers in the art-rock-punk whatever-genre-the-pixies-belong-to universe.

Ah, billy pilgram, I agree about not feeling guilty about “that old stuff” even including Kansas.

But what about the “new stuff?” Folks still make this artsy rocky stuff ya’ know. Porcupine Tree. The Flower Kings. I’ve seen the Flower Kings twice and they are just great.

I’m so unhip.

Rush has a pretty good sense of humor.

But not in their songs, whereas Queen could be a laff-riot.

I should say “Rush weren’t intentionally funny.”

Anne Laurie,
You paid money to see Bob Segar in the eighties? Hadn’t you heard “Like A Rock” on car commercials enough?

Bob Seger was uncool long before the eighties.

Hey, they do too have a sense of humor. Or, at least Geddy Lee does. Take Off! To the Great White North!

Hey, was that Pinko with the Joan Jett namecheck? Good one!!

mikey

Take Off! To the Great White North!

I don’t believe that this was a Rush song.

Man.

Everyone knows that the greatest drummers ever are Alan Myers and George Hurley. I thought that was just a given.

Bob Seger was uncool long before the eighties.

Holy shit, Bubba, I had never seen that before. I always thought he was just, you know, boring. Now it seems he was a chickenhawk too. Damn.

But in his defense (tepid though it may be), I did find this:

“Two years after Yellow Beret was released, the hawkishness would give way to the scorching war protest, “2+2+=?” In that sense, Seger made the same journey many of us did…from scoffing at antiwar protesters to joining them. (Later, he recounts that journey on Mongrel’s “Leaning On My Dream,” in which the song’s narrator goes from yelling at the protesters to yelling with the protesters.)”

http://www.segerfile.com/singles.html

Holy shit, Bubba, I had never seen that before. I always thought he was just, you know, boring. Now it seems he was a chickenhawk too. Damn.

I first heard the Seger thing on Michigan Brand Nuggets which was also where I heard the first MC5 singles in all their overloaded glory. I have a friend who believes that that version of “Looking at You” is the greatest rock song ever: they just turned up the volume on everything and went nuts. Brain-melting.

take yourselves back to a world where FM radio played nothing but various variations of fucky sucky classic rock, a world where said FM stations, who had a veritable monopoly on one’s earspace, should one have been living in say boondockular Western Massachusetts

I hear ya, man. You can only take so much WAAF. WBCN was better, back in the day. But not to the extent that you mean.

Everyone knows that the greatest drummers ever are Alan Myers and George Hurley. I thought that was just a given.

Dale from the Melvins. Heavy.

yeah duros, and to add to it much more: mass had some amazing music. the lyres, the modern lovers, mission of burma, gang green, dinosaur jr., pajama slave dancers (only northamptonites will remember them), human sexual response, the lemonheads (and all associated taang! records bands) and so on and so on.

but if you listened to the “spirit of the radio”, your WAAFs, whatever the one in springfield was and so on, you had a whole range of choices, from AOR to MOR to singles only formats. and it squeezed out any originality, any attempt to be different (and again, the complexity thing is just risible–MOB were more complex than anyone when they wanted to be, and far better to boot than anything playing on AAF), any local flavor, any movement. it was corporatism at its worst, and sorry, but faux “progressive” (a misnomer if ever there was one) rock was the worst of the lot, bloated and sanctimonious, with nothing to say and an endless stream of mediocre riffs with which to say it. and i blame the pot as well, to an extent. but i can’t just let this nostalgia for back when everything sucked pass without comment.

the kids won’t remember it, but once upon a time the music really did matter, and rush was the perfect representation of everything that was wrong with pop culture circa 1979-1990 (i put the end of this interregnum perhaps at the playing of “head like a hole” on mainstream radio, not as a comment on that song but rather an opening in the format madness).

Cripes, a whole bunch of words about math rock and not one mention of the confusemeisters Yes?

I feel kind of stupid listening to that stuff. Partly because I can’t find the beat in the polyrhythmic pseudochaos, and partly because I’m trying to.

“Best music to get really, really high to: Roger Miller. Scientific fact.”

Whoever said this just nailed it.

Robert Green: “yeah duros, and to add to it much more: mass had some amazing music. the lyres, the modern lovers, mission of burma, gang green, dinosaur jr., pajama slave dancers (only northamptonites will remember them), human sexual response, the lemonheads (and all associated taang! records bands) and so on and so on.”

Don’t forget The Bags, one of the best bands in Boston.
My old band mixed down at J. Mascis’s house in Leverett. Good times. He looked like Ziggy, and would come into thre restaurant where I worked in Northampton and eat bean burritoes with Zeke Fiddler.

just bought the bags, and while we aren’t forgetting, bullet lavolta, another excellent band.

see how many of these good bands there were, that none of you had heard of, that weren’t rush? funny world, isn’t it, that those wankers are still worth a blogpost.

just bought the bags, and while we aren’t forgetting, bullet lavolta, another excellent band.

Now Bullet Lavolta, they just sucked. Pre-band Sebadoh was pretty fun though.

Robert Green:

At the time in question (well, the later half of the 80s, anyhoo) I was listening to most of those bands on FNX…. shoulda moved out of the sticks!

Oh, and even though I was listening to all those fancy-ass bands, I STILL went to that Rush show at the Centrum.

And it was fucking rad. The inflatables? The primitive computer animation?

Can’t beat that.

btw surprised you didn’t mention the pixies, for chrissakes.

yes, the pixies and of course sebadoh, i mean jason lowenstein was my next door neighbor in NoHope so that goes without saying.

and i do remember FNX, on those forays into Boston they were a decent station.

fucking martha’s vineyard though, where i would go to build houses for rich people every summer…fucking MVY, playing james taylor and carly simon and livingston taylor and paul simon and on and on.

and once i was old enough to figure it out, UMASS had a good station there in amherst and whatever.

the centrum was like a crazy pipe dream for those of us who had to cadge rides to the springfield civic center. i did once hitchhike back from a show at the centrum (run dmc and the beastie boys? could that be true?) to northampton without being axe murdered.

You paid money to see Bob Segar in the eighties? Hadn’t you heard “Like A Rock� on car commercials enough?

As I remember it, this was the tour just before the commercial. Besides — it was Michigan. I was offered a choice between Bob Seger and going to a Spartans / Wolverines matchup…

“complexity for its own sake without regard to melody or structure…”

I’ve often noticed this sort of observation about a variety of great musicians. Melody and structure are everpresent in Peart’s work, but it’s a bit more challenging to grasp than the average Sesame Street song. I think sometimes Peart might have helped his own reputation by slowing down so that the wankers could keep up.

Anyone who does not dig Rush, and Zolar X concurrently, is sorely lacking. You are commanded to read Atlas Shrugged again, thank you.