Another Planet Rock news item – Rush is to get The Ronnie James Dio Lifetime Achievement Award in April.
As Neil Peart said:
Our ‘lifetimes’ are not over yet, and we dearly hope our ‘achievements’ are not either, so I suppose you could say that to us this is the ‘So Far, So Good’ award.
Great to hear that.
It looks like the long-awaited new album from Rush – Clockwork Angels – will be released in May. According to Planet Rock, Amazon and HMV Japan have set the release date for 23 May 2012.
In actual fact, I have pre-ordered my copy from Amazon and the date is set to 29 May. It may have moved back a bit, as pre-order items often do.
I heard Darren Redick mention a few days ago on air that a new single from the album could be released as early as next week, so I’ll be keeping my eyes and ears open for that.
On top of this, Rush appear in Billboard Magazine’s list of the top 40 earners for 2011, earning nearly $6m – slightly behind Foo Fighters.
Update: The new single – called Headlong Flight – has been played to journalists and executives. Actual release is still unclear, but it could be anytime from 19th April onwards. It is due to be aired on select stations this Wednesday (April 11th), according to CX-1, and I would imagine that Planet Rock will be one such station in the UK.
Doing my usual thing, I was flicking through the music channels last night before going to sleep. I was quickly jumping through the “[Insert Channel Name] Introduces…” crap they’re all doing at the moment before they switch over to Teleshopping at 3am, making my way inexorably to Vintage TV in the hope that there might be some classic rock on (instead of 40s big-band stuff or 80s disco – last night it was the latter).
As I skipped through Kerrang, there was a video on which was just ending and – Sod’s Law – they didn’t have the squiggly graphics to tell you who it was. It sounded great.
Fortunately, a casual Google search threw up Evarose – and that’s who it turned out to be. They also come up quite a lot on YouTube.
Definitely one to watch. I’ve already got them tagged so I can find out about impending tours.
Planet Rock – the best radio station there is – has revealed that Rush were voted Best Live Act of 2011 in the annual readers’ poll.
Planet Rock says:
The Time Machine Tour 2011 may be their best live show for two decades, and that’s saying something because most of their other tours have been pretty damn special too.
A three hour set included two songs from their forthcoming album, Clockwork Angels, some of their greatest hits, oh, and the WHOLE OF MOVING PICTURES, all played to perfection.
If you saw Rush this year then than none of this comes as a surprise. The likelihood is that the show you saw is your favourite show of the year. We know this because that’s what EVERYONE says who managed to catch one of the band’s gigs in 2011.
And that’s with knobs on! And there is also the chance of another tour when Clockwork Angels is released during 2012.
Fingers crossed.
Incidentally, I recommend Planet Rock if you’re into decent music. The fact that they play Rush several times a day is only part of what makes the station great.
The last musical event of the year for me was QuoFest last night – the first of an 11-date tour by Status Quo, supported by Kim Wilde and Roy Wood’s Rock & Roll Band.
I must admit that when I was told Kim Wilde was appearing I wasn’t that impressed – even writing about it now feels odd. I mean, it’s hard to be a hard-core rocker when you are watching and writing about… Kim Wilde. It’s like when my mate from Leeds, who I go to these gigs with, is asking me if I can get Spice Girls tickets from my agent (loudly, in the mens toilets during the intermission of Rush’s R30 tour) or, this time, for the Steps Reunion (loudly, at the Evanescence gig, and then again last night). There for his daughters, of course, but it’s still not good for your street cred at these things!
But Kim was a total revelation. She has a good live voice, a great backing band, and she played all her well-known songs, plus a brilliant cover of the Buzzcocks’ Ever Fallen In Love With Someone.
She’s still a bit of a looker, and her backing singer was too – but let’s not allow that to detract from the musical side of the matter, eh? We’re all grown-ups, after all.
Roy Wood supported Quo on a previous tour – I may as well get this out of the way now, but he has a very attractive backing singer, too.
This time round, I felt that Roy was more rock & roll than rock, though he played many of his old hits and some great covers (although he DID write them), so maybe I’m just imagining things.
I should point out that the average Status Quo gig sees a lot of activity around the disabled access entrances with the lifts (more so than at a Queen concert these days). What I’m saying is that the average age of the audience tends to be a little on the high side, and for the support acts in particular people usually remain seated – with just the odder people trying to jive in the aisles. Tonight was no different, until Roy closed with I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday. That got most people up.
Even before Kim Wilde came on, there was a worrying number of inflatable guitars being assembled, along with the wearing of silly, oversized spectacles and Santa hats with flashing lights on. Of course, when Quo took to the stage everyone did stand up (apart from one bloke near the front, who Francis Rossi immediately picked out).
They played many of their hits, plus a few tracks from the latest album, Quid Pro Quo. At various stages, the inflatable guitars obscured any hope of a decent view – I think a lot of these people are so wound up in themselves sometimes that they’re not even aware of the music – but maybe I’m just a grumpy git! In actual fact, a Quo gig is a very musically competent affair – I suppose after all those years, it couldn’t be anything less – but people don’t just seem interested in that. Oh well.
At the end, Kim Wilde and Roy Wood came on stage again and the group did a medley of Christmas songs.
If you get a chance to go to one of the shows, I’d recommend it.
When The Darkness last toured – before they split up – I wanted to see them when they came to Rock City, in Nottingham. That must have been in 2004. Unfortunately, The Sun newspaper did an article on them and mentioned they were on in Nottingham, at which point the tickets sold out instantly.
This time round, and several years down the line, I get email alerts for all the bands I’m interested in before tickets go on sale, and The Darkness were one of them. This gig was still a sell out, but I’d got tickets the moment they went on sale – and I was really looking forward to it!
There were two support acts. The first was a Californian band called Crown Jewel Defense (or CJD). Their mySpace page describes them as “Powerpop/Arena Metal”, but I’d put them in a number of other categories, including heavy rock and even glam (but not “pop”). They were extremely loud, but the music was excellent – you can hear some of it on their mySpace page. They are absolutely a band to watch out for, and one I’d happily go and see again.
The second support act was a six-piece band called Foxy Shazam, from Ohio. From the moment they came on stage, you knew they were different. The lead singer, Eric Nally, is the spitting image of Freddie Mercury, but that’s where any similarity ends. As Eric says on their website, their music doesn’t fit into any genre, but last night it was powerful rock and showmanship.
Nally rolls around the stage (literally), climbs on the drums, races around, and does juggling acts with the microphone and stand that Roger Daltrey could only dream of. He has a powerful voice and a great personality.
The keyboard player is a strange character right from the off. He’s bald, but has a huge and very long beard. 
He’s from the school of musicianship that treats the keyboards as a piece of gym equipment – he uses his feet, elbows, everything to play them. He stands on them, and at one point he even brought them out into the crowd where he and his keyboard were supported by the audience as he played away.
Of course, something you have to put up with when you go to these shows is the Resident Prick – he might be the one who throws things on stage, or who leaps around oblivious to everyone else. Or - as in this case – he might be a heckler.
This one just kept shouting out “The Darkness” right in the middle of Foxy Shazam’s set, and Nally understandably got pissed off with it. He got the idiot up on stage, and you could see the light dawn in his piggy little eyes when he realised that he wasn’t the Superhero he’d imagined himself to be, and had attracted the universal derision of the audience.
If anyone knows this dickhead’s name, please let me know and I’ll put it alongside his photo.
Anyway, knowing the sort of performance The Darkness puts on, you could easily see why these two bands were supporting them. They were lively and immensely entertaining.
Now it was time for The Darkness’ performance. By now, Rock City was packed to the rafters – I can never understand why people leave it until the last minute to come in and don’t watch the support, but they do. And then they piss me off by trying to get right to the front, after I’d staked my claim for floor space two hours earlier!
As best as I could tell (and with a bit of Googling), The Darkness’ set list was as follows:
Then for the encore they did:
The crowd were leaping all over the place, and ordinarily I’d have been furious at the crushing and jostling (used as an attempt to move forward by some of the late arrivals), but the support bands had put me in a good mood, and I was transported back to a time when I used to act like a prat without any encouragement whatsoever, so I joined in. It was great fun, and the music was superb.
The light show was good for a venue this size, and from what Justin said, they will have a new album out next year, and they’ll be touring to support it – with Nottingham likely to be on the schedule again. I’ll be there.
The night was rounded off with a good curry in the Mogal-E-Azam.
I mentioned in August that I’d been waiting for The Pretty Reckless to tour, and when I got an email alert and went to book the tickets, I discovered that they were supporting Evanescence ! Well, last night I travelled up to Leeds for the gig.
One minor gripe was that I was expecting a 2nd support band from Texas called Fair to Midland – described variously as rock, progressive, metal, alternative, and so on. As it turned out, the 2nd support was a band called Me . They weren’t bad, but… well, you know. I don’t know what happened – Fair to Midland is still listed as the support on the European leg – but it was not the band I was expecting!
The Pretty Reckless were good. There was a sell-out crowd anyway, and it was unusual to see 90% of the crowd in place for the support band(s) ahead of the main act – though this could have been partly due to the O2’s silly policy of making sure Wednesday and Saturday gigs finish by 9.30pm (yes, you read that right) because it is “club night”.
Anyway, they kicked off with Since You’re Gone, and played a total of 10 songs – including a very good cover of The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army. Make Me Wanna Die – the song that first made me take notice of them – came in near the end.
The Leeds O2 Academy is not a large venue, and the stage set up appeared to be that all Evanescence’s gear was set up, The Pretty Reckless’ stuff was in front of all that, and the first support was in front of – and to the side – of that! Technical glitches seemed to be the order of the day, though I must admit that the overall sound wasn’t bad for the support acts. Lighting though was quite basic, and it wasn’t easy to get good pictures of The Pretty Reckless, except for Taylor Momsen, who is obviously the focal point anyway.
Most of the crowd were there to see Evanescence. It was a young crowd – gauged partly by the fact that they were all trying to take their own pictures on their iPhones to show at school on Monday or to post on Facebook, and partly by the number of them who had forced their way to the middle front stage, and then kept going in and out all night.
The lighting for Evanescence’s set was much better, and much more elaborate than you’d expect for a place the size of the O2 Academy.
They kicked off with What You Want, followed by Going Under. Bring Me To Life made its appearance as the last song of the main set. The encore closed with My Immortal.
There’s no doubting Amy Lee’s musical abilities, and she has a very powerful voice – although the way she uses it in Evanescence is something of an acquired taste (but it does grow on you – hell, I like Rush, and unusual chord structures are their trademark). But if I thought it was hard to get a decent snap of The Pretty Reckless, getting one of Amy Lee was a hundred times more difficult – she must burn off in excess of 5,000 kcal every show with the amount of moving around she does. Trying to get a blur-free picture (or even keep her in frame) was a challenge and a half.
Just to mention that the O2 Academy still has a floor that you can lose your shoes on if you stand still too long (all those alcopops from “club night” no doubt). To their credit, they do seem to have addressed the problem of people smoking in there as though it were still legal.
A very enjoyable night, rounded off with a reasonable curry somewhere in Leeds – and since I was driving, including two pints of mango lassi instead of beer.
I heard on the news this morning that Rush’s eagerly awaited new album, Clockwork Angels, is set for release next spring.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Geddy said that if all goes to plan then that is when it is likely – though they’re still writing and recording it at the moment. That’s expected to be done by Christmas.
Here’s the best part: the band will be touring once the album is released!
That means I’ve got to start saving again! My guess is late 2012 or early 2013 for them to come to Europe (assuming that they do, of course). Rush hasn’t always covered Europe when it has supported an album release with a tour, and they were only here 5 months ago.
Still… fingers crossed!
I strongly suggest reading the full Rolling Stone article – some good stuff in there.
There’s a “new” Rush CD available: RUSH – ABC 1974. Mine came this week.
It was recorded at the Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, Ohio in 1974 just a few weeks after Neil Peart joined them. It marks the point where WMMS FM broadcast the whole show, and the rest – as they say – is history.
There are two previously unreleased Rush tracks – Fancy Dancer and Garden Road – tracks from their first album and the then-unreleased Fly By Night, and a cover of Bad Boy (by Larry Williams).
There are also three bonus Fly By Night tracks from a 1975 set, also broadcast by WMMS.
The CD comes in a traditional plastic jewel case with a cardboard sleeve, and includes a foldout CD insert with a few details about the gig.
The full track list is as follows:
Most Rush fans will have heard the stuff before, but this is a collectors’ item which marks the first legal/official release of the material.
Well, mine’s on pre-order from Amazon. The DVD (and Blu-ray) of Rush’s Time Machine Tour 2011 filmed at the Cleveland, Ohio gig.
Release has already been delayed once to November, but it will be worth the wait.
I went to all the UK gigs and have reviewed them elsewhere on this blog. I also got some great pictures, which I still haven’t had time to post up in the new Music section of the blog.
The Time Machine Tour was a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the release of Moving Pictures, and the entire album was played.
According to the Amazon blurb, the DVD features an alternative ending to The History of Rush: Part 2 (the running video linking the sections of the show), along with outtakes from the making of those videos, plus various other video goodies. Looks like being an early Christmas present to myself (as if I needed an excuse).
I’ve also got some more audio clips to upload when I get a chance – I posted Closer to the Heart (Live in Sheffield) in this article.