THE LIGHTER SIDE OF RUSH

On a recent Sunday at Madison Square Garden, the Holy Triumvirate that is Rush effortlessly plied their trade to a sold-out crowd, plowing through song after song—jubilantly bouncing, bopping and having a helluva time. Now pushing 60, the guys in Rush have still got it.

As one of the more delightful elements of the Steampunk-inspired sausage-making apparatuses that comprise the current tour’s stage design suggests, Rush has boldly embraced—and transcended—their once goofy and ignominious reputation: being the inspiration for millions and millions of nerdy adolescent young men seeking refuge in the epic and intrinsically complex progressive rock ‘n’ roll that defined not only a genre but generations of fans.

The Time Machine Tour carries the band onward with three relentless hours of loud, brash, time-spanning dorkish goodness courtesy of these gents’ hard-working, hard-rocking ways. The setlist is a deliberate mix of old and very new: the highlight being glimpses of the band’s forthcoming album, Clockwork Angels—its new single “Caravan” and the B-side “BU2B (Brought Up to Believe)”—interwoven with various other B-sides and long-forgotten A-sides spanning their entire catalog.

The band’s seminal album Moving Pictures was performed in its entirety, from start to finish. And yes, when the band came back from intermission and dove right into the classic “Tom Sawyer”—after yet another goofy video of the band spoofing themselves, dressing up as wizards and Bavarian polka musicians—the crowd surged to life, becoming a unified sea of cameras and smartphones, rocking in rhythm to the sonic waves.

But it was a few songs into the set that the audience showed their true colors. After a very pensive green-backlit intro, the band pounced into the album’s centerpiece, “The Camera Eye,” a seldom-played 10-minute epic. In part an ode to the wonders of New York City (balanced with equal parts London), the performance featured a fast-paced video backdrop pulsing through the many sights of the Capital of the World. With his ‘voice of an angel’, Geddy crooned to the “angular mass of New Yorkers” splayed out in front of him. The crowd howled with appreciation and native pride. Neither grim-faced nor forbidding, these concertgoers, all 20,000 of them, bathed in the glow. One fan in the front row was enjoying himself so much, in fact, that he knocked himself sideways in his wheelchair and needed the half-dozen people around him to help place him back upright.

As they near their fourth decade, Rush breaches a new kind of popularity, thanks in no small part to gestures in recent culture like the film I Love You, Man, which not only made it (more) fun to like Rush, but more, like, acceptable too. The closing video for the show features Paul Rudd and Jason Segel reprising their roles from the flick, sneaking backstage only to encounter the boys in the band ruminating on the record-setting female turnout in attendance that night—by Neil’s count, seven. Rudd was rumored to have been slapping his own bass in the crowd that night at MSG, by the way.

Neil’s count, of course, is made in jest: What were once sausage fests, Rush concerts have become a rather surprising hotbed of fly honeys. Not only have newer, younger fans been showing up in droves, but people of all ages and shapes are filling the seats. Perhaps because of their refreshed notoriety from the film—and recent appearance on The Colbert Report—the band is experiencing a new awakening and cultural awareness. Once marginalized by MTV and the rest of the mainstream, Rush has steadfastly ignored their detractors, moving ceaselessly into the future.

Embracing their new reality, Rush plans on holding off on their retirement for just a little while longer. The forthcoming album Clockwork Angels, the band’s 19th studio effort, is already half-written and due to be completed and released by this time next year, with a new tour already in the forecast, of course.

The focus is still sharp with Rush’s vision for the future—a vision that is definitely something to see out on the road this year. And even if they are getting a little old, the music is still plenty loud.

RICHARD MEYERS