GOT ‘EM!!!

Section 303, row J, seats 12-14. My brother and I are going, and either my wife or an old friend. August 5th cannot get here fast enough!!! WHOO!!!

For those of you who don’t know me (read: pretty much anyone), I came on board late with the whole “Rush” thing. I actually had Presto as a Columbia House SOTM at some point in 1989, but I shelved it because I didn’t “get it.” “Yah … what’s the big deal? These guys aren’t Van Halen. Screw ’em.” And I walked away.

About a year later, the guy across the hall from me kept playing this amazing music. “What is that?”

“You’re kidding. Right? ‘Who is this?’?!”

“Dude … it’s just a question. Don’t answer it then.”

“It’s *RUSH*. How do you not know who Rush is?!”

So then he shows me his tape collection, which was expansive. He let me borrow and copy all of it (poor college kids … what can you expect?). Between those tapes, I don’t think I swapped out anything else the rest of the semester. I drank it all in as often as I could, which, since I couldn’t have had a much worse GPA for the year, must have been pretty often.

I left for home at the end of the year, wondering if there was anything else out there of theirs. Keep in mind that this was before the advent of the people-friendly internet: I had to scour used record stores for anything I wanted. No surfing to find a complete discography on the band’s official or otherwise page. No wiki. No nothin’. Just me, car keys, and a lot of driving to various used music shops.

By the end of that summer, I had collected pretty much everything of theirs. Oh, what a music feast it was. I haven’t looked back.

Other bands have come and gone. I’ve had my dabblings with just about every genre of music with the exception of rap. My CD collection is rapidly expanding. My mp3 collection is on the verge of requiring a new hard drive. 4000+ “CDs” in mp3 format. Close to 700 in actual hard-copy. Amongst it all, there is none that is quite so timeless as Rush’s 19 studio albums and myriad live CDs.

Yesterday, I ordered R30 and their Snakes and Arrows tour videos on blu-ray. I can’t wait to show those to my girls. They’re already in love with Muse (another timeless band that will almost certainly have their place in music history). Now it’s time to step it up and get them some serious me