Rush News

Pop Culture References Update - December 2014

Time for the latest Rush References in Pop Culture update. There haven't been too many since my last update, but there have been a few:
  • Starting with today, December 12th, the Scary Gary comic strip by Mark Buford includes two Rush references: when Scary Gary goes down to his "man cave", the clock reads approximately 9:12 (21:12 in military time) and a Rush bumper sticker is seen on his refrigerator.
  • During the November 23rd episode of CSI: Las Vegas, two CSI techs discuss an impression of a championship football ring left in wax at a crime scene, for a game whose final score was 21-12.
  • Not sure if this qualifies as pop-culture, but Rush fans are everywhere as demonstrated by this YouTube product review for a carpentry vise by "Half-Inch Shy", where he is wearing a t-shirt which reads "Keep Calm and Listen to YYZ".
  • As previously posted, the book Finding Jesus by Winston Rowantree was published on October 28.  Essentially a book of "Where's Waldo"-esqe illustrations but with amusing cultural references, one of the illustrations is "A Woman at a Prog Rock Show" which features a Rush show, complete with dozens of Rush references
  • And finally, during the Seinfeld episode "The Old Man" which aired February 18, 1993, while leaving the Taxi cab with Kramer, Newman is holding a stack of albums which includes All The World's A Stage.
Thanks to Gray Vinson, James Clark, Scott Sheppard, Steve Jarvis,  Agustin Brizuela and G-man for the headsup!  If you've seen something else where that I may have missed, please feel free to email any suggestions.

Rock Cellar Magazine December 2014 Cover Feature - Neil Peart: The World’s Audience

Neil Peart is featured on the cover of the December issue of Rock Cellar magazine.  Yesterday RockCellarMagazine.com posted an exclusive interview with Neil where he talks about his latest book, Far And Near: On Days Like These which you can pickup here.

Rush to reissue all 14 Mercury Albums On Vinyl, plus 3 5.1 Blu-Ray Editions, in 2015

Today Rush.com has announced that in addition to the recent vinyl reissue of the debut album, beginning in January all 14 of Rush's Mercury era albums (studio and live albums through A Show of Hands) will be reissued on vinyl in chronological order in 2015. This is great news to audiophiles and collectors. All vinyl reissues will also include a code for a 320kbps MP4 vinyl ripped Digital Audio album download.

In addition, three of those albums, Fly By Night, A Farewell to Kings, and Signals, will also be released as a standalone Blu-Ray Pure Audio version with 96kHz / 24-bit 5.1 surround sound and stereo. Previously, these three albums were only available with their 5.1 surround sound mix as part of the Sectors boxed sets released in late 2011.

Fly By Night Coming to Blu-ray-Audio

Musictap.net is reporting that Rush's 1975 album Fly By Night will be released as a "blu-ray-audio remaster" as well as vinyl on January 27th.  Preorder links coming soon...

This will be the second such high resolution release of Fly By Night in just over three years; it was released as a 5.1 surround sound DVD as part of the Sectors 1 boxed set in late 2011.

- Thanks to Ed at RushIsABand for the headsup!

Neil Peart's "News Weather and Sports" - December (July) 2014

Neil Peart has just updated his website with the latest issue of "News Weather & Sports." From July but apparently not published until now, this issue is titled "Bamm Bamm and the Lemon Slug".  Neil tells of his competing in the "24 Hours of LeMons", an endurance racing series for low-budget enthusiasts such as Neil.  You can check it out here.