Wow. I just got back from the first night of the UK leg of Rush’s Clockwork Angels Tour, and it was bloody brilliant! A great crowd at Manchester’s MEN Arena, and I couldn’t see an empty seat in the entire place. Here’s my review of the concert (gig).
As well as playing at least half of the songs from Clockwork Angels (I love Wish Them Well, and The Garden), they also covered some of the older stuff that I haven’t heard live before (or not for a long time, anyway), such as The Pass, Dreamtime, and Territories. Spirit Of Radio was in there – they can’t EVER not play that – and they encored with Tom Sawyer and parts of 2112. The full set list was as follows:
Part 1
- Subdivisions
- Big Money
- Force Ten
- Grand Designs
- Middletown Dreams
- Territories
- The Analog Kid
- The Pass
- Where’s My Thing?
- Far Cry
Part 2
- Caravan
- Clockwork Angels
- The Anarchist
- Carnies
- The Wreckers
- Headlong Flight
- Halo Effect
- Wish Them Well
- The Garden
- Dreamline
- Drum Solo
- Red Sector A
- YYZ
- The Spirit of Radio
Encore
- Tom Sawyer
- 2112 Part I: Overture
- 2112 Part II: The Temples of Syrinx
- 2112 Part VII: Grand Finale
There was a 15 minute break between Part 1 and Part 2, and the strings section joined for virtually all of Part 2. I tried out my new camera – the Panasonic Lumix FZ200 – for the first time at a gig, and the results are unbelievable. Judge for yourselves.
You see what I mean? This time, I even got a bunch of fantastic pictures of Neil Peart. I’ve reduced these in size for the blog, but on the originals you can literally see the threads on the shirts the guys are wearing! I got nearly 550 shots, and 90% of them have no blur whatsoever!
I was six rows back and had an excellent view – my ticket guy had come up trumps again.
There was a fantastic lightshow, and plenty of pyrotechnics. And the band used a strings section to provide extra depth for about half of the show. The films played to accompany each song on the rear screen were easily the best I’ve ever seen. Oh, and Neil did three drum solos this time (even though the set list doesn’t mention this).
The only hiccup in the whole evening was the female Hitler – so that would be a Hitlerette – who told me I wasn’t allowed to use “one of those cameras” about half way through. But I went up to one of the stewards (who’d seen her do it) and explained that it was a fixed-lens camera, and he said to carry on. Which I did.
Next stop, London’s O2 Friday. It seems I’m not the only one doing the Grand Tour of all UK shows again. I met up with someone I’d first met on the Time Machine Tour a couple of years ago, and he’s doing the same thing this time. And it turned out the couple in front of us were also doing it.
NOTE: The O2 review is here.