Rush was supposed to play four dates within the span of about a week at Dickies Arena but had to cancel a couple times: one for immigration issues crossing into the states from Mexico, more recently for frontperson Geddy Lee, who’s battling laryngitis and bronchitis. The makeup shows are Sat, Jul 11, and Mon, Jul 13. Tickets start at $123. Secondary markets may hold some deals as many fans had booked travel around the canceled dates and may be stuck with unusable concert tickets. And that’s no small amount of folding money.
It’s the kind of ka-ching I certainly do not have, but because I’m a big-time media personality whose prose will make you cry (for it to stop), I was able to catch my favorite rock band of all time on Night 1 in the Fort. Dork Mode: Activated!
It was my 12th or 13th Rush show (laugh it up) and my first time experiencing this new version of the Canadian prog-rock outfit, now a quartet with the addition of touring keyboardist Loren Gold and a new permanent drummer. Anika Nilles replaces the legendary Neil Peart, easily the most creative, most musical prog-rock beatmaker of all time, who died of cancer in 2020. Anika (we’re all on a first-name basis here) is amazeballs, but more on her later. This 88-date Fifty Something tour represents Ged and Alex’s first time back onstage together since 2015. No surprise, they sounded superb, and the setlist overflowed with enough creamy Velveeta to coat my awkward, acne-riddled, teen-boy-at-heart heart.
If not the “best,” then the coolest part of how they sounded was the rust flakes. Flubbing the occasional note was something I’d never heard them do in all my years as a fan. That these two seventysomethings kept on rocking even louder, even harder gave the night a freewheeling, almost punk energy that I never realized had been missing from all those other (let’s not say) “sterile” Rush gigs. Anika capitalized, rolling off Neil’s most popular fills note for note while doing what the open-hearted Neil would have wanted and improvising whenever. As much as Neil was a student of drumming, always challenging himself, always learning, “The Professor” was also a great teacher and ambassador of the instrument. I hate to make a reach like this, but having read two of his nonfiction books, which both show how indeed open-hearted he was as a human being, I can’t see him quibbling with Anika’s addition. Or her additions.
The setlist covered a lot of ground, and there’s a lot there (19 studio albums in 50 years). From the short film intro segueing into a song that I don’t think the band has ever opened with, “Xanadu,” off 1977’s Farewell to Kings (a.k.a. No Kings in my house), late-’70s/early-’80s Rush predominated, which makes sense since it was their most fertile and popular period. The decidedly not popular and rather long but totally buzzsawing “Natural Science” from 1980’s Permanent Waves was one of several performances that rocketed me out of my seat. (Stop. I had already eclipsed my 10,000 steps that day and had earned a cush for my tush. You bet I sat when I could.) Easily a Top 5 Rush track for me, it came to life flawlessly, with Alex hunching over and tearing off the syrupy, bouncy riff like a madman and Anika motoring through the frenetic, propulsive, powerful stickwork looking as cool and on-it as a fighter pilot.
Of the scant early-’70s material and ’90s-onward work, Rush best handled “La Villa Strangiato,” “The Garden,” and the first of two encores, “By-Tor and the Snow Dog.” (The show closed with the always appropriate blue-collar anthem “Working Man.”) Like 1991’s “Bravado” earlier in the set, the band dedicated “The Garden” to Neil, whose lyrics had only grown deeper and more open-hearted as he got older. His wordsmithing on the entire album from which that track comes, 2012’s Clockwork Angels, bears that homespun, casual, friendly quality that made Billy Collins famous: “The measure of a life / Is a measure of love and respect / So hard to earn, so easily burned / In the fullness of time / A garden to nurture and protect.” *wipes away tear*
Another strophe stood out to me at Dickies, this one from 1984’s “Distant Early Warning,” and it held little to no meaning to me before I had become a dad: “The world weighs on my shoulders / But what am I to do? / You sometimes drive me crazy / But I worry about you / I know it makes no difference / To what you’re going through / But I see the tip of the iceberg / And I worry about you.”
As the father of a young teen in a rough patch (incessant bullying, responding inappropriately to said bullying, wild hormones), I inhabited those lyrics: the stress, the worry, the fear of the future. For me, Neil’s words always registered equally strongly to my young mind as the band’s knotty, muscular music — none of that “baby, baby” b.s. for Neil. Or me. Just as I inhabited “Distant Early Warning” last week at Dickies, I lived the disaffection of 1982’s “Subdivisions” as a sixth grader being raised in cold, dark-at-4pm, minimum-wage Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: “Growing up, it all seems so one-sided / Opinions all provided / The future pre-decided / Detached and subdivided / In the mass-production zone / Nowhere is the dreamer / Or the misfit so alone.”
After seeing the band on their Signals tour that year or in ’83, I remember waiting outside the Civic Arena with the buddy I went with, on the lookout for our ride home (his pops, a taxi driver literally), gazing up at the bright night sky, my eyes watering, and thinking something like, “If it weren’t for Rush, my small, stupid, PB&J-everyday life would pretty much suuuuck, man. Thank you, Geddy, Neil, and Alex.”
The show almost wholly revolved around Neil, and Anika’s drumming paid him the ultimate tribute. She ruled the night. Every time she nailed one of his memorable fills, the crowd erupted. As a friend said afterward, Rush is probably the only classic-rock band able to pull off replacing one of the most beloved manly men — not just drummers — on the planet with a woman. Based on the welcoming Anika received at Dickies, supporters far outweigh the detractors. And I also bet the haters tog their “Anika” T-shirts in red eponymous-album font everywhere now, because she rocks. She didn’t follow Neil to a T except for the steady rhythms and complex passages, where the familiar precision keeps the other bandmembers on track. She brought her own subtle, dynamic flair to almost everything else, which only makes me hope the threesome starts writing new Rush material together. For the first time in a while, I feel like that sixth grader at the Civic Arena again.
Minus the abundant, eye-watering weed smoke.
Courtesy Etsy
