Why I love Rush
Kind of like trying to explain why one likes chocolate. It's just awesome.
Waiting for Clockwork Angels to drop is killing me. It's been almost a year and a half now since I watched them play two of the new songs live in front of me, and they are both awesome. The new album is rumored to have a 10-minute track on it; it's like they are getting back to the roots with guitars and prog rock.
As long as I've been old enough to start listening to music, Rush has been there. They change their sound every album, but they still sound like Rush. The music has so much feeling behind it, so much emotion, and so much thinking. The musicianship set the standard for rock musicians ever since. Rush is not a metal band, but they've influenced countless technical and prog metal musicians.
In the 80s, hair metal and new wave bands made music for all the wannabe popular kids. Rush released Signals, with songs like Subdivisions and Countdown to appeal to the smart kids trapped in the boring suburbs who would later go on to become techies and engineers and build the world we live in today. The other kids all grew up, got fat and stupid at age 22 and waste time reliving their glory days on the high school football team. They think Beiber and Nickleback are cool. Rush fans now rule the world. We infiltrate every place where brains are required to get stuff done.
And it drives the anti-Rush trolls nuts. The band is so good that haters actually go out of their way to comment on an imdb page for a documentary about a band they don't even like. Only an awesome band with a huge fan base could inspire that level of hatership.
Other bands from the early 70s, if they are still around, are mostly doing the same thing and play like tired old men. These three guys are making bran new music that sounds different and then they go out night after night and blow away sold out crowds at max volume. They put younger bands to shame and make them look comatose by comparison. And the smart kids know it. The fans range from age 10 to age 60, and the kids are getting into playing music know who to look up to.
Going to a Rush concert is almost like a religious experience. When the lights come up and that first riff from Spirit of Radio blasts out, all is right with the world. When Freewill shifts into the guitar solo/instrumental part, it's as though I get to see what heaven is like for 60 seconds.
Why are you a Rush fan?