Updates and other random Rush stuff August 29, 2008
We had a good chunk of Rush news to report this past week as we head into the Labor Day weekend here in the US. The final chapter (presumably) of the Alex Lifeson versus the Ritz Carlton case came to a close last weekwith the parties involved reaching a confidential settlement. We unearthed some old photos of Geddy and Alex in shorts from an 80s tennis charity event, causing a lot of excitement among many of the female RIAB members. There’s yet another Rock Band-like video game called Rock Revolution soon to be released that will feature Rush’s The Spirit of Radio as one of the tracks. Speaking of Rock Band, Tuesday’s planned release of Rush’s Moving Pictures for download for the game was delayed indefinitely as they iron out some technical difficulties. Earlier today I updated you on the upcoming Buddy Rich Memorial Concert and we learned that the event will be taped in High-def for DVD release in 2009 and also streamed live on the Drum Channel. And we got attendance numbers for one more show from the 2008 tour; Toronto’s numbers are in and it was the most-attended and highest grossing show thus far with a sold-out 15,949 tickets sold and gross sales of $900,480.
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Buddy Rich Memorial Concert updates
Back in March we learned that Cathy Rich and Neil Peart were putting together another Buddy Rich Memorial Concert after a 10-year hiatus. The event will take place at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on Saturday, October 18th and feature a number of drum virtuosos including Neil, Nick Rich with the Buddy Rich Band, John Blackwell, Terry Bozio, Chad Smith, Jeff Berlin, Will Lee and Tommy Igoe. A few more details about the event recently came to light via this article at Sabian.com:
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Tour attendance and sales figures update: Toronto August 28, 2008
The official Billboard Boxscore attendance and sales figures for the July 9th Toronto show were released yesterday. And for this show they sold a LOT of tickets - nearly 16,000, grossing over $900,000 and selling out! That makes the Toronto show by far the most-attended show on the tour and also the highest grossing. The least-attended show for the tour remains the Atlantic City date with only 4,327 tickets sold. With the Toronto numbers, the average attendance for reported dates rises a bit to 8,222 tickets sold out of 10,424 available and the average gross sales rises to $536,046. We are still missing data from the 4 late-May Canadian dates, the Milwaukee date, the Atlanta show and Indianapolis, but otherwise the data from all dates on the 2008 leg has been reported. Hopefully those will be forthcoming soon so we can do a final analysis. Many thanks to Mark S for providing the numbers. I’ve added the Toronto figure to the tour section, the Toronto open thread and also repeated it below.
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Happy Birthday Alex! August 27, 2008
On this day back in 1953, our favorite guitarist - Alexandar Zivojinovich (aka Alex Lifeson) - was born in Fernie, British Columbia. Alex is the baby of Rush - he was the last one to turn 55! Happy birthday Lerxst! May you have many more. Next up is Neil, who’ll turn 56 on September 12th.
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Moving Pictures download release for Rock Band delayed August 26, 2008
Today Harmonix Music Systems released Rush”s Moving Pictures album for download for the Rock Band video game … or … it was supposed to have released it for download today. Apparently there are some technical difficulties having to do with the vocal track on YYZ … the problem being that there is no vocal track on YYZ. 
YYZ happens to be the first instrumental track to be released for Rock Band. As of this post there still is no word on when the issue will be resolved. Last week Harmonix announced that Moving Pictures would be the 4th full album to be released as downloadable content for the popular game. All tracks are original master track recordings. The plan was to release the album for the XBox today and PlayStation on Thursday. Hopefully they”ll work things out soon. Thanks to Justin for the heads up.
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The Spirit of Radio to be included on Rock Revolution video game August 25, 2008
Rock Revolution is an upcoming video game from Konami which falls into the same category as the very popular Guitar Hero and Rock Band video games from Harmonix Music Systems; the player plays along with the music on specialized controllers directed by on-screen instructions. The track list for the game was recently leaked and one of the featured tracks will be Rush’s The Spirit of Radio. You can see the complete leaked tracklist at this location. One of the featured tracks on Guitar Hero 2 was YYZ and Tom Sawyer was featured on the original Rock Band. Since then, Rush songs have become a favorite among players of the game and Harmonix has since released several tracks for download including Limelight, Working Man, Closer to the Heart and will be releasing the entire Moving Pictures album for download this week. Rock Revolution is slated for release this coming October 14th for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 with releases for the Nintendo DS and Wii planned at a later date. Thanks to B-Man for the heads up.
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Vintage Geddy and Alex pics from Celebrity Tennis Charity Event August 24, 2008
Reader Domenic N recently sent me some vintage pictures of Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee from a Wayne Gretsky Celebrity Tennis Charity Event that took place in 1986 and 1987 in Brantford, Ontario. All the money raised at these events were donated to charity. Other celebrities in attendance were Rob Lowe, Platinum Blonde, David Foster, Frank Bonner (Herb Tarlek from WKRP in Cincinnati), Shannon Tweed, Mike Reno from Loverboy, Alan Thick and many NHL Hockey stars. You can view a slideshow of the images using the player below.
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Alex Lifeson vs. the Ritz-Carlton: settlement reached August 23, 2008
Ritz-Carlton settles lawsuit with Rush guitarist’s son
Most Rush fans are already aware that Alex Lifeson and his son Justin were arrested in Naples, FL on New Year’s eve 2004 at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Naples, Florida. After a lengthy court battle, the multiple felonies the two were charged with were eventually reduced to misdemeanors and Alex and his son filed a counter suit which proved to be unsuccessful at first. However, earlier this year a federal appeals court overruled the lower court saying it was wrong to dismiss one of the negligence claim made by Justin in the countersuit. In the latest development - and hopefully the final one - Justin and the Ritz-Carlton have agreed to a confidential settlement. From the Naply Daily News:
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Updates and other random Rush stuff August 22, 2008
This week the Rush news covered a wide range of subjects including YYZ covers (both a death metal version and a toy instrument version), comic books, farm equipment and video games.
Saturday we learned that progressive death metal pioneers Atheist will include a cover of Rush’s YYZ on their upcoming album. Also in the YYZ cover department, internet tribute band Plastica posted a hilarious video to YouTube of 3 of the members performing YYZ on toy instruments along with plenty of empty beer bottles and funny hats. Check it out here.
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Rush and Rock Band update; Moving Pictures released next week, The Trees vault edition for Rock Band 2 August 21, 2008
A couple of months ago I”d mentioned that the next full album to be made available for download for the Rock Band video game would be Rush”s Moving Pictures. It had only been reported as a rumor in Game Informer magazine and no release date was given. However, according to a commercial that was aired today on VH1 Classic, the album will be released next week for both the XBox and PlayStation. Here”s a transcript of the commercial followed by a grainy, no-audio video:
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