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I received my copy of the new Rush album yesterday from Amazon.com. I wasn’t really sure what to think of this album since it was all cover tunes, the first time Rush has ever done so. It seems I may have been right to question the value of this album.

For the most part the cover tunes are played well. However, if it wasn’t for Geddy Lees voice I’d never have known this was Rush playing. Take away Geddy and it could be any garage band playing. The songs just don’t have any real Rush qualities in them. I guess when I hear that a band like Rush is going to do some cover tunes I expect them to put their own unique spin on them. That just doesn’t happen on ‘Feedback‘. The excitement I usually get with every new Rush album fizzled on this one. It could be that others have felt the same way since there are already 43 used copies available on Amazon.com. This is what it must have felt like when ‘Caress of Steel’ came out.

In the end, being the Rush fan that I am, it was worth getting just to have a complete CD collection, but I doubt it will get very much play. I hope that when the 30th Anniversary tour is over they finally get to work on some new material. I’m starved for new Rush, so starved I bought ‘Feedback‘.

On a positive note, Neil Peart has a new book coming out called ‘Traveling Music: Playing Back The Soundtrack To My Life And Times‘. I have always enjoyed his writing.

I made a very difficult decision this morning: whether or not to purchase tickets to the Rush concert occurring at Darien Lake on August 15th. The hard part wasn’t whether I wanted to go or not, the hard part was the price. Tickets were going for $78.50 each! Ouch!

I checked some of the other shows coming to Darien Lake and sure enough, most of them are somewhere around $75 for the majority of the seats.

Is it me, or have ticket prices for concerts just gotten completely out of hand? I can remember going to past Rush shows in big auditoriums for only $30. Darien Lake is not an arena, so why the hell do they charge so much? And believe me, it’s not the artists causing this problem, it’s the music industry, promoters, and venue owners that are the cause.

I almost said no to this concert, and that’s a shame, because Rush is my favorite band. They are the one band I would pay a lot to see! But $78.50 (plus a $9.95 service charge) is a tough price to swallow. I almost walked away after I couldn’t pull up any tickets worth that price on ticketmaster’s web site. But on the third try I managed to pull up 4th row tickets on the right side of the stage. That was a difficult thing to pass up, so I didn’t. I plunked down a full $181 for two tickets.

This will be the 30th Anniversary tour for Rush. I sure hope they put on a show worth the price.

Well, I filed my claim for the big music CD settlement some time ago, and low and behold, today I received my portion of the settlement. Now I was expecting this to be some pitiful amount under a dollar because I assumed lots of people filed just so they could stick it to the record labels a bit. But to my amazement I received a check for a whopping $13.86! That’s enough to go by another CD.

Everyone seems to be talking about the new Quiznos subs commercial. For those who have not seen it before, check out the original performance: http://www.rathergood.com/moon_song/

In the mean time, I can’t get “They got a pepper bar” out of my head.

Ok, I just have to post this because it is too funny. Anyone who knows me knows that Rush is my favorite band of all time. Well, here’s a little winter advice from Geddy Lee

Thanks for passing this one on to me Doug!