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Rush still roars with rugged appeal
By DAVE TIANEN
dtianen@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Sept. 7, 2007
 
Like Ultimate Fighting and chewing tobacco, Rush is a guy thing. But it's a very big guy thing.
 
The crowd Thursday night at the Marcus Amphitheater was probably 80% male, but it was also almost big enough to fill the 23,000-seat house. For guys about 30 to 55, Rush seems to be a Boys Club that never goes away.
 
The odd thing is that Rush has almost none of the usual macho attributes that mark rock 'n' roll male bonding.
 
This is a band that's almost utterly devoid of aggression or sexual swagger. Indeed, frontman Geddy Lee is a sharp-featured, physically slight fellow with a high thin voice. He appears to be neither a lady-killer nor even a reliable ally in a bar fight.
 
No matter, the charismatic heart of Rush is clearly drummer Neil Peart. He may not sing or even speak on stage, but Peart is clearly the man, the lyricist and virtuoso heart of the band.
 
Rush opened with "Limelight." Despite very simple staging, the concert had an array of five large projection screens, and during "Limelight," three of the five screens were focused on Peart. There were times during the show when Peart was filmed from three or four different angles.
 
Even in his 50s, with close-cut hair beneath a skullcap, Peart radiates thumping masculinity. He is also the musical embodiment of the male conviction that size matters. Peart packs the largest drum kit in captivity, sitting barricaded behind a virtual wall of drums on all sides.
 
His mandatory drum solo came midway in the band's second set. To be honest, I tend to find marathon drum solos more exhausting than exhilarating.
 
That said, this was better than most, partly because Peart added what looked like an electronic xylophone and a horn track to add melody.
 
Part of what makes Rush so resonant with guys must be the sense of the epic that marks its music. The songs tend to be longish, dense affairs written around grand themes. Rush does not work in the My-Baby-Done-Left-Me school of rock.
 
"The Larger Bowl" is about the gulf between rich and poor. "The Way the Wind Blows" laments the power of religious zealotry in both the Middle East and the American heartland. "Armor and Sword" is about the struggle for redemption within each human life.
 
Those are all songs from the new "Snakes and Arrows" album, but near the end of the first set, Rush went back to '78 to play "Circumstances."
 
The striking thing about that song was how easily it fit alongside the stuff written nearly 30 years later. Rush obviously found its sound as a power trio early on and has stayed the course ever since.
 
One of the downsides of the music is that it's fairly humorless.
 
Wisely, the band sidestepped that problem by using video to inject some levity. "Tom Sawyer" opened with the kids from "South Park" arguing over the lyrics, the McKenzie Brothers introduced "Larger Bowl," and the instrumental "The Main Monkey Business" was illustrated with vintage video of performing chimps.