I just got back from the Rush show at the PNC Bank Arts Center (which most people still call the Garden State Arts Center – that’s from before the state started selling naming rights to everything).

I’ll update this post with lots more details later – it was a great show. In the meantime, I thought I’d put up some of the pictures we took. Photos by me unless noted otherwise.

In keeping with the theme of previous tours, there’s a particular set layout (in the past we’ve had a laundromat and chicken rotisseries). This time the set style was steampunk, with boxes with tubes, dials, steam vents, etc. – one of which was making sausages!

Although Rush has been touring for 35-odd years (well, the first time I saw them was in 1977), they still seem to be having a genuinely good time. Given how few bands from that era are still touring with their original members*, this is even more amazing.

Photo by S. Forte

Alex plays the mandolin. He seemed to be having some trouble with guitars tonight – there were a number of unexpected swaps during the show, and at one point he made hand signals to the stage crew that he couldn’t hear anything in his headphones.

Photo by S. Forte

Here’s part of the animation that played during Moving Pictures.

Photo by S. Forte

During Neil’s drum solo, a fanciful animation of a robot playing drums played on the giant video screen.

Photo by S. Forte

At various points in the show, characters came out to tend to the sausage machine and remove sausages, to dust Neil’s drum kit with a feather duster, and so on.

As the show progressed, the signs behind Geddy changed from Real Time to Half Time to Bass Time to Sausage Time.

Performing is hard work – particularly when you’re a 3-piece and don’t use additional musicians. And these guys are each 57 years old! There are points in the show where Geddy is playing bass, performing keyboards, and singing at the same time. And I know people who can’t walk and chew gum at the same time… Alex was really working up a sweat – by this time, his shirt was soaked through. I counted at least 4 different shirts on him, all of which got soaked.

Near the end of the break between sets, the clock on the Gefilter started counting up toward the present.

The Starman from 2112.

Here’s a video I shot of Red Barchetta:

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* Yes, I know about John Rutsey. But he’d left the band before I saw them for the first time.

Zero Zero is the title of a Mike Batt album which is the soundtrack to a video production he created for Australian TV in the early 1980′s. If you’ve heard of it, you know exactly what it is. If you haven’t, the one-line summary is “Boy in a future society where emotions have been banished falls in love and gets a lobotomy for his trouble.”

This video has never been officially released. All that has been available has been a YouTube video of one of the songs.

Mike Batt’s official web site entry says “Since opening the Official Mike Batt website, we have received more corespondence (sic) about Zero Zero than any other project.”. At various times, a stand-alone release of Zero Zero was reported to be “coming soon”, and earlier this year, “this Fall”.

While a stand-alone release of Zero Zero still seems to be unavailable, a DVD of the performance has been included in the Mike Batt Music Cube, a compilation of nearly all of Mike’s work (the only albums that appear to be missing are “Classic Blue” and “The Very Best Of”). In his usual humorous way, Mike says: “After 40 years in the industry, this could either be seen as a service to fans or the biggest ego trip on Earth. In fact it is a combination of the two.”

I was lucky enough to get an early shipment of the Music Cube from Amazon UK, when they had it priced at £48.68 + £3.08 shipping to the US (about US $84). The Amazon UK price has since increased to £74.98. If you want to help improve their profits, Amazon US will sell it to you for $207.98 (up $16 from when I first posted this article).

Of course, the first thing I did when I got it was to pop the Zero Zero DVD into the player (article continues below):

I won’t spoil the surprise for you, but I will say that there is something about Number 36 that you’ll discover when watching the video, even if you’ve listened to the record many times.

Picture quality is quite good for something that’s nearly 28 years old. Judging by some lint on the image, at least part of the project was originated on film and then transferred to video. As is usual with video-to-DVD transfers, there is some slight underscan, so you can see the last interlaced line on the bottom of the image and there is some fuzziness at the left and right edges of the video. This does not detract from the overall appearance, though. The only other video copies I’ve seen have been Nth-generation copies of an off-air taping of the show, and this DVD far exceeds all of them in quality.

The disc is Region 0 (plays on any player regardless of country) but is mastered in PAL, so some NTSC players and televisions may have problems with it. You can always watch it on a PC that has a DVD drive, of course.

Audio is similarly good. And of course the Music Cube includes a remastered version of the CD if you just want to listen to the music.

This vendor is fantastic – I needed some surface-mount rework equipment in a hurry, and I found these guys via a web search. I placed an order via their web site after 10 PM and inquired if they carried an item I couldn’t find on their web site. Within minutes, I had an emailed reply saying they’d pull the item out of another kit and include it in my shipment. They shipped the next morning and I received it the next day.

If you need any tools or supplies related to soldering or brazing, these are the folks you should talk to.