Rush in Brum
I thought I'd seen my last Rush concert for a while (if ever) when I left Charleston. After seeing them twice in four years in Charlotte, NC, I figured that was going to have to last me until I got back to their normal North American touring grounds. But wouldn't you know, the old guys surprised me by going off on a world tour in support of their 2007 release, Snakes and Arrows.
Looking over the tour dates, I found that three out of seven of their UK dates were within two hours of Alconbury. After some discussion with a couple of other Rush fans at work, we decided to car pool to the NEC Arena in Birmingham (aka Brum) for the Oct 12 date.
Although scheduled to start at 7:30, the band started a bit late at 7:45. The crowd was in the 7,000-9,000 range which is about on par with the crowds they drew to the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Charlotte. Overall the guys seemed a bit more relaxed than the last couple of concerts. Geddy and Alex played hide and seek behind the commercial Henhouse chicken roasters (which replaced the Maytag dryers from the past few tours) when they first came on stage. They interacted with the audience a bit more too, both during the songs and in-between.
The opening number was Limelight. They played about all the tunes off Snakes and Arrows spread equally between the two parts of the concert. Others songs included Subdivisions, Hold Your Fire, One Little Victory, Dreamline, Tom Sawyer, Circumstances, Distant Early Warning, Spirit of the Radio, Freewill, and Passage to Bangkok. They closed the three song encore with YYZ. The lights went up at 10:51.
The video backups were pretty good. Just before coming out on stage, they played a video of a guy dreaming about snakes and arrows. When he wakes up in a cold sweat he wonders aloud why he was dreaming of those things. At this point, Neil rises up next to him and wonders the same thing at which point they both look at each other and scream. Neil usually such a serious person that it was good seeing him in a more light-hearted fashion.
Some US vs UK Concert Observations:
- Except for the encore, the Brits sat through the entire concert.
- The Brits don't tend to enforce the camera ban in concerts like the US because as soon as the lights went down the place lit up with the glow of 2-inch LCD screens. If I had of known this, I would have brought my camera for some (probably bad) shots.
- Funniest thing I saw was six fans with matching t-shirts; the fronts had their "handles" while the backs read "We ain't leaving until we hear The Trees".
- Surprisingly, the beer was a better value here than in Charlotte. I got 4 15-oz Carlsbergs for $20. That beats the $8 each for the Buds when I went to the R30 concert.
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