Looking around, you can see we’re in the age of tribute bands. A few weeks ago we went to a show at First Avenue, a benefit for the Humane Society called Rock for Pussy (it’s about cats, mom), that was a series of David Bowie covers. The place rocked, a giant sweaty glam pit of glitter and tremulous operatic bombast. They were backed up mainly by a group best known as EL-No, a tribute band for Electric Light Orchestra. There are at least three Beatles tribute bands covering the metro area, Zed Leppelin (the Led Zepplin band, duh), and all the other cover bands of various stripes I can’t think of right now.
And so Exit Stage Right, and I shouldn’t be surprised they’re not even the only Rush tribute band in the Twin Cities. There’s actually over 200 of them in the country, which is amazing, really. Consider all that talent out there cranking through "Limelight" and "Closer to the Heart" night after night. Think of all the hand-cramps kids have gotten trying to work through Alex Lifeson’s bizarre arpeggiated ramblings, the constant key changes, the mastery of pedals and electronics. Rush is a nasty band to cover, with a rabid and I would assume discriminating fan base – they were always the favorite band of rebellious, detail-oriented nerds – and there’s about 600 folk our there who got it together enough to get onstage and do the Rush thing. Doing the math on how many people live in this country, 600 seems about the right number of people talented, dedicated and just off-center enough for Rush.
Onstage, Exit Stage Right thrashes away at "Tom Sawyer." The drummer is dead-on, his hands a frenzy as he replicates Neil Peart’s staccato hammering. This guy’s got about a third of Peart’s gear fetish – there’s about ten toms, a dozen cymbals, a few cowbells – and he makes the most of it. He has the same fear of silence and traditional sound, pulsing out Peart’s re-invention of the standard rock beat, the way he did his best to turn drumming into a melodic enterprise. The guitarist, all 400 pounds of him, scrambles his fingers all over the fretboard, daintily jumping through the arpeggios and never missing a note of the riffs and solos of this classic of ADHD rock.
After "Tom Sawyer" they pretend to be done, but talk the crowd into talking them into an encore. It’s an instrumental I don’t recognize, so I don’t get to hear the bass player put a stress fracture in his throat trying to imitate Geddy Lee’s signature croak. It goes on and on, and then they are done. Afterwards, I talk to the keyboard guy (Rush has no keyboardist, so I don’t know what this guy does, really, and didn’t want to get into it by asking). He says they know over three hours of Rush material, and are doing an all night show in Hopkins on the 12th of June.
Like a few other guys in tribute bands I’ve met, he’s a bit sheepish about his work – they love the songs and the fans but know there’s something a bit inauthentic about it, like when you have a schoolboy crush but think you might be at risk for stalking. I mean, if you're talented enough to play Rush note-for-note, shouldn't you be talented enough to make it with your own material? These are questions you don't ask.
Instead, I tell him, Three hours – that’s probably more Rush than Rush knows. He laughs and smiles, and says that’s fine with him.
No comments:
Post a Comment