Rush instrumentals
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| “La Villa Strangiato” | ||||||||||||||
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| Song by Rush | ||||||||||||||
| Album | Hemispheres | |||||||||||||
| Released | October 28, 1978 | |||||||||||||
| Genre | Progressive Rock | |||||||||||||
| Length | 9:34 | |||||||||||||
| Label | Anthem Records (Canada) Mercury Records |
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| Producer | Rush & Terry Brown | |||||||||||||
| Hemispheres track listing | ||||||||||||||
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| “Where's My Thing? (Part IV, "Gangster of Boats" Trilogy)” | |||||
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| Song by Rush | |||||
| Album | Roll the Bones | ||||
| Released | September 3 1991 | ||||
| Recorded | 1991 | ||||
| Genre | Pop Rock | ||||
| Length | 3:49 | ||||
| Label | Anthem Records (Canada)
Anthem/Atlantic |
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| Producer | Rupert Hine and Rush | ||||
| Roll the Bones track listing | |||||
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| “Leave That Thing Alone” | |||||
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| Song by Rush | |||||
| Album | Counterparts | ||||
| Released | October 19 1993 | ||||
| Recorded | 1993 | ||||
| Genre | Progressive Rock | ||||
| Length | 4:06 | ||||
| Label | Anthem Records (Canada) Mercury Records |
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| Producer | Peter Collins and Rush | ||||
| Counterparts track listing | |||||
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| “Limbo” | |||||
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| Song by Rush | |||||
| Album | Test for Echo | ||||
| Released | September 10, 1996 | ||||
| Recorded | 1996 | ||||
| Genre | Progressive Rock | ||||
| Length | 5:28 | ||||
| Label | Anthem Records (Canada) Mercury Records |
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| Producer | Peter Collins and Rush | ||||
| Test for Echo track listing | |||||
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| “Broon's Bane” | |||||
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| Song by Rush | |||||
| Album | Exit...Stage Left | ||||
| Released | October 1981 | ||||
| Genre | Classical Guitar | ||||
| Length | 1:37 | ||||
| Label | Anthem Records (Canada) Mercury Records |
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| Producer | Terry Brown | ||||
| Exit...Stage Left track listing | |||||
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| “R30 Overture” | |||||
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| Song by Rush | |||||
| Album | R30: 30th Anniversary World Tour | ||||
| Released | November 22, 2005 (Canada & US) November 28, 2005 (Europe and UK) |
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| Recorded | September 24, 2004 | ||||
| Genre | Progressive Rock, Hard Rock | ||||
| Length | 6:42 | ||||
| Label | Anthem Records (Canada) Mercury Records |
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| Producer | Peter Collins and Rush | ||||
| R30: 30th Anniversary World Tour track listing | |||||
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The Canadian Progressive rock trio Rush has written, recorded, and performed several instrumentals throughout its career. This article includes information about each of them.
Contents |
[edit] Studio Recordings
[edit] 2112
From the 2112 album.
[edit] Overture
"Overture" opens up one of Rush's concept suites. Geddy Lee's voice is recorded as an instrument in the early parts of the song, as he sings no words. However, there is, despite the Overture's overall instrumental nature, only one line sung at the end, as the piece transitions to "The Temples of Syrinx": "And the meek shall inherit the earth." Like some overtures, music from the 2112 overture is repeated or built upon in other places in the suite such as "The Temples of Syrinx" and "Oracle: The Dream". At 4:07 in song, a key phrase from Tchaikovsky's famous piece, the "1812 Overture", can be heard. The album was inspired by the works of Ayn Rand.
[edit] Grand Finale
Like "Overture", this section of the suite includes some spoken (not sung) lines at the end, with each phrase repeated three times: "Attention all planets of the Solar Federation: We have assumed control."
[edit] La Villa Strangiato
Found on the Hemispheres album, this was Rush's first entirely instrumental piece, clocking in at nearly ten minutes (9:37). The instrumental's subtitle is "An exercise in Self-Indulgence". The multi-part song was inspired by a dream guitarist Alex Lifeson had, and the music in these sections correspond to the occurrences in his dream. The opening segment was played on a nylon-string classical guitar, while the live versions were played on an electric guitar. This segment is basically a Spanish-flavored scale based on E Phrygian. The next segment introduces the main theme of La Villa, the Strangiato theme. The song progresses to include an increasingly complex guitar solo backed by string synthesizer, followed closely by bass and drum fills. The Strangiato theme is then revisited before the song ends abruptly with phased bass and drums. The song is divided as follows:
- I: "Buenos Nochas, Mein Froinds!" - (0:00)
- II: "To sleep, perchance to dream..." - (0:27)
- III: "Strangiato theme" - (2:00)
- IV: "A Lerxst in Wonderland" - (3:16)
- V: "Monsters!" - (5:49)
- VI: "The Ghost of the Aragon" - (6:10)
- VII: "Danforth and Pape" - (6:45)
- VIII: "The Waltz of the Shreves" - (7:26)
- IX: "Never turn your back on a Monster!" - (7:52)
- X: "Monsters! (Reprise)" - (8:03)
- XI: "Strangiato theme (Reprise)" - (8:17)
- XII: "A Farewell to Things" - (9:20)
"Monsters" contains segments of the song "Powerhouse" by Raymond Scott.
Live versions of "La Villa Strangiato" have often featured certain alterations. For instance, on Exit...Stage Left, Geddy Lee sings nursery rhyme lyrics over "Danforth and Pape," then plays part of "Monsters! (Reprise)" as a bass solo. During more recent tours, as documented on Rush in Rio, a drum/bass vamp is inserted before "Strangiato Theme (Reprise)," over which Alex Lifeson makes a stream-of-consciousness rant. The classical guitar introduction is frequently cut out of these performances.
According to Geddy Lee, "We spent more time recording 'Strangiato' than the entire Fly By Night album. It's recorded in one take but it took 40 takes to get it right! It was our first piece without any vocals at all. So each section had to stand up with a theme and musical structure of its own."[1]
"La Villa Strangiato" translates roughly to "Strange Village" or "Weird City".[1]
[edit] YYZ
From the Moving Pictures album. "YYZ" (natively pronounced why-why-zed) is the airport code for the Toronto International Airport, and the instrumental opens with a rhythm in 5/4 that is Morse code for "YYZ" (-.-- -.-- --..). The piece evolved into a drum/bass solo during the 1980's. "YYZ" was the first of five Rush songs (over three decades) to be nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Rock Instrumental Performance. It was nominated in 1981, losing to The Police's "Behind My Camel". It was also named by Modern Drummer Magazine as the best drum performance of the 1980's.
[edit] Where's My Thing?
From the Roll the Bones album. The subtitle for this instrumental is "Part IV, 'Gangster of Boats' Trilogy." Neil Peart has explained this as a joke — there are only three items in a trilogy, not four. "Gangster of Boats" comes from the persistent threat from Geddy and Alex to title an album Gangster of Boats and never became an actual "concept" the same way that Rush's "Fear" trilogy had. [1] "Where's My Thing?" was the second song nominated for a Grammy, in 1991, losing to Eric Johnson's "Cliffs of Dover". The song is much more pop-like than the rest of Rush's work, featuring an upbeat tempo and a brass-like synthesizer line.
[edit] Leave That Thing Alone
From the Counterparts album. During the Counterparts, Test for Echo, and Vapor Trails tours, and featured on the Rush in Rio live album, "Leave That Thing Alone" preceded Neil Peart's drum solo. The live versions of the song frequently feature more prominent bass when compared to the studio version. "Leave That Thing Alone" was the third song nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 1994, losing to Pink Floyd's "Marooned".
[edit] Limbo
From the Test for Echo album. Like the "2112 Overture", "Limbo" features vocals by Lee, however, his voice is being used as an instrument as he is not singing any words. The song also includes samples from Bobby "Boris" Pickett oldie "The Monster Mash": 'Whatever happened to my Transylvania twist' and 'Ahh, Mash Good!'.
[edit] The Main Monkey Business, Hope and Malignant Narcissism
Rush's album Snakes & Arrows is the first Rush album to feature multiple instrumental tracks: The Main Monkey Business, Hope, and Malignant Narcissism. The first, "The Main Monkey Business", is slightly over six minutes long. As with "Limbo" and "2112 Overture", Lee's voice is being used as an instrument as no words are being sung. The other two songs, "Hope" and "Malignant Narcissism", are the two shortest songs ever recorded by Rush at just over two minutes long. This was a distinction previously held (excluding the short sections of the multi-parted songs like "2112" and "La Villa Strangiato") by the short track "Need Some Love" on the album Rush. "Hope" is a solo guitar piece written by Alex Lifeson. "Malignant Narcissism" features Geddy Lee on a fretless bass and Peart on a four-piece drum kit.[2] "Malignant Narcissism" contains dialog of a woman's voice, "Usually a case of malignant narcissism brought on during childhood." The last word in the phrase is repeated, each time lower than the last. The phrase is an audio clip from the movie Team America: World Police.[citation needed]. "Malignant Narcissism" became the fifth instrumental to be nominated for a Grammy under the category of Best Rock Instrumental Performance, in 2008, losing to Bruce Springsteen's "Once Upon A Time In The West."[3]
[edit] Live Performances & Recordings
[edit] Broon's Bane
Found on the Exit...Stage Left live album, "Broon's Bane" is a short classical guitar arrangement performed by Alex Lifeson as an extended intro to "The Trees". The song is named after Terry Brown (Brown is also referred to as "T.C. Broonsie" during the intro to Jacob's Ladder) who produced Exit...Stage Left and ten other Rush albums. It is not featured on any other live or studio recording by Rush. The song repeats and builds upon the same three-beat line, coming to a climax about one minute into the piece before segueing into "The Trees".
[edit] Cygnus X-1 (Live Recordings)
On the live album Rush in Rio, an abridged version of Book One of the thirty minute epic is performed as an instrumental. The piece contains the themes from 1:26 to 4:59 in the studio recording of the piece, shortened slightly by about twenty seconds. In other words, it includes the Prologue part without the spoken words. Also, the keyboard synthesizer heard in the studio recording is replaced with a more "spacey" synthesized voice played by Geddy Lee with foot pedals. This is the same excerpt of the piece played as part of the R30 Overture.
[edit] R30 Overture
The opening song of Rush's 2004 tour dates featured an instrumental combining sections of one song from each of the band's first six albums.
The songs featured in the medley were:
- "Finding My Way'" (Rush)
- "Anthem" (Fly by Night)
- "Bastille Day" (Caress of Steel)
- "A Passage to Bangkok" (2112)
- "Cygnus X-1 Prologue" (A Farewell to Kings)
- "Hemispheres Prelude" (Hemispheres)
[edit] Neil Peart's drum solos
A staple and highlight of Rush's concerts is a drum solo by Neil Peart. These solos have been featured on every live album released by the band. On the early live albums (All the World's a Stage and Exit...Stage Left), the drum solo was included as part of a song ("Working Man/Finding My Way" and "YYZ", respectively). On all subsequent live albums, the drum solo has been included on a separate track. On A Show of Hands and Different Stages, the drum solos were titled "The Rhythm Method" (a pun on the form of birth control); on Rush in Rio, it was entitled "O Baterista"; on R30 Live In Frankfurt it was titled "Der Trommler" (the last two titles are nods to the native language of the country in which the album was recorded - Portuguese and German, respectively, and translate to "The Drummer"; though actually, the idiomatic German word for a drummer playing a drumkit ("Schlagzeug") is "ein Schlagzeuger", not "ein Trommler" --- the latter is somebody who plays a single drum in, e.g., a marching band.) On Rush's most recent live album, Snakes & Arrows Live, it is titled "De Slagwerker", and is coupled with "Malignant Narcissism" on the tracklist. "O Baterista" was the fourth song nominated for a Grammy, in 2004, losing to Brian Wilson's "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow".
All of Peart's drum solos include a basic framework of routines connected by sections of improvisation, leaving each performance unique.[4] Each successive tour sees the solo more advanced, with some routines dropped in favor of newer, more complex ones. Since the mid-late 1980s Peart has utilized MIDI trigger pads to trigger sounds sampled from various pieces of acoustic percussion that would otherwise consume far too much stage area, such as a marimba, harp, temple blocks, triangles, glockenspiel, orchestra bells, tubular bells, and vibra-slap as well as other, more esoteric percussion. Some purely electronic, description-defying sounds are also used. All are incorporated into each drum solo.
Peart has utilized the marimba section of one of his solo tracks titled "Pieces of Eight" (which first appeared as a flexidisc record found in the May 1987 issue of Modern Drummer magazine) in every solo since 1987-88. Tours since the 1989 studio release of Presto have included a complex pattern from the song "Scars" as part of the solo. Another of Peart's marimba-based solo tracks, titled "Momo's Dance Party", has been used as part of the solo since the 1996 tour in support of Test for Echo. Since the Vapor Trails tour, each solo has been concluded with a section of the Count Basie standard "One O'Clock Jump", which Peart recorded while producing Burning For Buddy, a two-volume tribute album to legendary big band drummer and bandleader, Buddy Rich. For the 2007 Snakes And Arrows Tour, Peart replaced the finale with an excerpt from "Cotton Tail", which he recorded with the Buddy Rich Band in the mid 90's.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Banasiewicz, Bill; Rush: Visions: The Official Biography, Chapter 7, Omnibus Press, 1988
- ^ Peart, Neil: The Game of Snakes and Arrows
- ^ GRAMMY.com
- ^ Peart, Neil: Anatomy of a Drum Solo, Hudson Music, 2005, DVD
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