A brief review....
I attended the RUSH concert at Nissan pavillion - west of Washington DC last evening. Man are those guys getting old - but they can still bust out some great tunes and not miss a beat. Forgive me - I can't remember the complete set list, but I'm going to blab with my friends to reconstruct the list from the bits and pieces I remember.

If you're looking for some older tunes, I think you'll be nicely surprised - if you are planning to see Rush soon and don't want to be surprised - then don't read this.

They came out right at 8 and started with Tom Sawyer, after the obligatory 3 stooges intro. I don't remember all the tracks from the 1st set - all Moving Pictures and newer. YYZ, Vital Signs, hmm lemme see, a couple tracks from the new one. All in all they played 4 tracks off the new album (including Ghost rider, and One Little Victory, which was awesome, more on that in a minute). 3 tracks off Roll the bones (Roll the bones, You bet your life, Dreamline), 4 tracks from Moving Pictures (YYZ, Tom Sawyer, Limelight, and Vital signs), they played Between the Sun and Moon off Counterparts, which they said they have never played before on other tours. It was nice to see that they were playing some other tracks you wouldn't expect.

The first set lasted just over an hour. You need to be in your seat for the beginning of the 2nd set, trust me. There was a large screen behind the band, and before and leading up to the beginning of the second set, there is a scene of some mountains and a lake - at first you see a silouhette of the landscape but then you'll see that the sun is slowly rising. Suddenly the thumping gets louder, and the view rotates around and these dragons come up from all around. One of the dragons ends up breathing fire right into the camera eye (sorry.. couldn't resist) and there are some nice pyrotechnics on the stage to sort of continue the effect of the dragon blowing flames - essentially onto the stage. I was about 3 rows in front of the soundboard, on the center line, and could feel the radiation. They played One LIttle Victory.

Lets see, they played a lot of awesome old stuff. The finished the 1st set with Natural Science, and about halfway through the 2nd set, the first notes of 2112 were played, and the Man-Pentagram logo slowly faded up onto the screen - the crowd went nuts. I think the crowd appreciated the older stuff. They didn't play the whole thing, just the Overture and the Temples of Syrinx. Other notable songs include Working Man, the beginning oc Cyrinx - book 1, The spirit of radio, La villa strangiato, the drum solo was absolutely mind blowing - for as old as Neil is, he did not miss one beat. Although I didn't recognize the medley - he incorporated several familiar themes from the known drum solos - as well as some new beats - well at least that I didn't recognize.

When they came out for the encore, they took the laundry out of the 3 laundry driers on the stage that had been running the whole show, and they throw the laundry out into the crowd. They played By-Tor and Cygnus.

There are a few other little surprises I'll omit for now. Alex and Geddy will play something acoustic after Neil's solo. I also noticed the number of instrumentals, neatly punctuating the set I guess to give Geddy a rest - YYZ first, the instrumental off of Counterparts (the name escapes me now), and La Villa.

The intermission was a punctual 20 minutes, and I believe the show was all wrapped up shortly after 11. They may be geting old, but they still rock out an awesome show. Just listening to people milling about after the show, people were pleased and surprised with some of the older and less heard of tracks I guess.

One notable omission was The Trees. With such an archive of music to select from, it must be difficult to select tracks to play. I would not mind hearing A Passage to Bankok or Witch Hunt, but thats me.

Oh, and about the 3rd song into the 1st set, there was a severe thunderstorm - and Nissan is an outdoor pavillion. Although the pavillion is covered, the wind was blowing the heavy rain sideways into the pavillion. Actually the rain was quite refreshing and cool - it had been hot and humid. It was cool watching the trails of water vapor streaming in... Well the rain did not bother the crowd and the Trio didn't skip a beat - and joked about the deluge between songs.


So now I am going to attempt to figure out how long it would take to listen to every album from first to last (Rush to Vapor Trails), Without simply adding up the track times... I'm going to Maine on a road trip in my Empeg equipped vehicle in a few weeks. It is a 12 hour drive. I am prepared.

Well sorry if this isn't terribly detailed - I'm at work now and dont' have a lot of time to bang out some nice long and descriptive review. I can post back tonight or tomorrow to describe the stage setup, etc etc.

It was awesome! I want to go again!!