Geddy Lee interviewed in "Ringers: Lord Of The Fans"

Ringers: Lord Of The Fans, a documentary celebrating fans of Lord Of The Rings, is now available. Having demonstrated he is a Ringer in the song "Rivendell", the documentary includes an interview with Geddy Lee and a brief glimpse of Geddy live on stage is seen during the trailer.

"Geddy Lee, bassist and lead singer for the seminal rock group Rush, has granted an exclusive interview to the producers of the feature documentary, Ringers: Lord Of The Fans. His heartfelt comments on the power of J.R.R. Tolkien's stories make it easy to understand how the world of Rock & Roll was forever changed by The Lord of the Rings. The fine connections between these two art forms is sharply drawn by Mr. Lee, as he explains the wonderful influence of Middle-earth on his early songwriting..." - TheOneRing.net - Sep. 29, 2004

"As the scope of the film broadened to include the worlds of music and fantasy literature, efforts to secure interviews with the best and brightest of those worlds were met with 'Yes, I'd love to!' from all quarters...Rock legends Geddy Lee (RUSH) and Lemmy Kilmister (Motörhead) quickly came on board, explaining first-hand how the Rock scene shifted under the weight of Tolkien's high-fantasy influence....The heartbeat of RINGERS is in its Rock soundtrack, and the director wanted nothing less than wall-to-wall music. [Editor Arnaud Gerardy] carefully edited to the rhythm of Led Zeppelin's 'Ramble On' and RUSH's 'Rivendell'..." - TheOneRing.net, Jan. 10, 2005

Canada for Asia

All three members of Rush, along with Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies and Mike Smith of the Trailer Park Boys, performed "Closer To The Heart" for the charity television telethon "Canada For Asia". Airing Janurary 13th, 2005, the event raised money for the Dec. 26th, 2004 Tsunami Disaster Fund. "The Rush performance on the CBC Tsunami benefit will be posted on Rush.com on Feb 1st 2005. This is an exclusive to Rush.com and will only be available for viewing until March 2nd 2005...The performance will not be available for download." Click here for more information.

P.E.A.R.T., the Robotic Drum Machine

"P.E.A.R.T., which stands for Pneumatic and Electronic Actuated RoboT, is a robot that is made to be set up in front of any drum set and play the drums with any MIDI file as the input. It is capable of running 16 separate drum channels, with each drum capable of being hit up to 19 times per second...P.E.A.R.T. was a senior design project at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. For more information click here.

Chamber Made: Baroque Tribute to Rush

Chamber Made: The Baroque Tribute to Rush is now available.

"Rush’s music is a mixture of hard rock and melodic rhythms and is bound together by themes of science fiction and fantasy. It is only fitting that Rush’s grand, opus-like concept pieces be recreated in the baroque fashion. The Baroque Tribute to Rush revives the strength and unity that was produced in some of the Bands best work such as 'Madrigal' and 'Time Stands Still'. The enigmatic atmosphere of this album will haunt listeners in the true Rush fashion." - Chamber Made linernotes

Neil Peart's "Traveling Music: Playing Back the Soundtrack to My Life and Times"

Travelling Music: Neil Peart's third publicly published book, Traveling Music: Playing Back the Soundtrack to My Life and Times, is now available in both paperback and hardback editions.

Neil Peart decided to drive his BMW Z-8 automobile from L.A. to Big Bend National Park, in Southwest Texas. As he sped along "between the gas-gulping SUVs and asthmatic Japanese compacts clumping in the left lane, and the roaring, straining semis in the right," he acted as his own DJ, lining up the CDs chronologically and according to his possible moods.

"Not only did the music I listened to accompany my journey, but it also took me on sidetrips, through memory and fractals of associations, threads reaching back through my whole life in ways I had forgotten, or had never suspected...Sifting through those decades and those memories, I realized that I wasn’t interested in recounting the facts of my life in purely autobiographical terms, but rather...in trying to unweave the fabric of my life and times. As one who was never much interested in looking back, because always too busy moving forward, I found that once I opened those doors to the past, I became fascinated with the times and their effect on me. The songs and the stories I had taken for granted suddenly had a resonance that had clearly echoed down the corridors of my entire life, and I felt a thrill of recognition, and the sense of a kind of adventure. A travel story, but not so much about places, but about music and memories."

Contents Under Pressure

Contents Under Pressure, the new retrospective book covering the complete 30 year history of RUSH is now available.  Written by Martin Popoff, the 236 page book is full color with 270 photos. - Aug. 9th, 2004

"Contents Under Pressure celebrates the 30th anniversary of Canada's beloved Rush, the hard-hitting, progressive rock band known for such classics as "Working Man," "Closer to the Heart," "The Spirit of Radio," "Tom Sawyer," "New World Man," "Roll the Bones" and "Ghost Rider." In original interviews with Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart, author Martin Popoff considers each of Rush's albums and tours. He elicits fresh insights on the writing and recording process, as well as musings on the grinds and glories of touring. Along the way, Popoff examines, with the band, nearly every song in the band's vast catalogue. This book also features 270 photos by official band photographer Andrew MacNaughtan and others - candid, rare, and of utmost quality, they help make Contents Under Pressure an essential piece of Rush history."

Feedback

Feedback, Rush's EP containing eight cover songs from the 60's, was released June 29th. For additional information including comments from the band regarding the release, click here.

"We always talked about throwing a cover or two into the encore just for fun. When we put this 30th anniversary tour together, we realized that we didn't have enough time to do a proper studio album. A friend of mine suggested, 'Well, maybe you guys should dip into your past. Play some songs you used to play when you were in your formative years. Just record them quickly for fun, not overthink it, and just put out a little EP to celebrate where you were as opposed to where you are.' We thought it might be a way to juice us before the tour, so that's what we did. We tried not to get too trendy with it and really go back and play songs that we really did play in early versions of our band. We recorded about eight of them and did them live off the floor in a very short period of time for us - three weeks. It was really a lot of fun." - Geddy Lee, The Columbus Dispatch, June 2, 2004

"We talked about maybe doing a couple cover songs making them available on our website but once we got into it, we fell in love with the idea. We were having so much fun that we expanded it to 8 songs and if we'd had the time, we could easily have done 12 or 13 songs and made a full album." - Alex Lifeson, Epiphone.com, July 29, 2004

Toronto Rocks DVD

Rush performed for approximately 450,000 people as part of the "Molson Canadian Rocks For Toronto" concert, a benefit for Toronto's SARS-depressed economy held on July 30th, 2003, in Toronto's Downsview Park. Three songs from Rush's set are included on the Toronto Rocks DVD, released June 29th, 2004. The all day concert was cut to 2:40 for DVD which contains six songs by the Stones, and between one to three songs from the remaining performers. Each performer was sent a tape of their performance, and allowed to choose their favorites: Rush chose "Limelight", "Freewill" and "The Spirit of Radio" (with an instrumental intro of The Stones' "Paint It, Black"). Included in the bonus footage is Peart's meeting the Stones' Charlie Watts and discussing drums. A two disk set in Canada, the DVD will be released as a single disk elsewhere by cutting out some of the lesser known Canadian talent. All artists agreed to dontate all DVD sales revenue to several charities, especially those related to the SARS outbreak (benefitting hospitality and health workers). For additional information click here. - June 29, 2004