Hi.

Sorry to hear about the Asylum auction last night. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.

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So…weekend music.

Kind of spur of the moment: we were looking for something to do on Saturday night, and happened upon ads for the first Worcester Irish Festival, down at the Hibernian Society/Fiddler’s Green Pub on Temple Street. Turned out that a_solitaryman was coming up to see the headliner, Black 47 from NYC, and we joined forces. I’d heard bits of Black 47 over the years, of course, but wasn’t overly familiar with them. So glad we went!

Great band of no-nonsense political traditional Irish folk-ska-punks, with sort of a lighter hearted Pogues vibe, who got a wide range of folks jumping as the night went on — almost none of the local punks were there, but it was a treat to see a crowd of grandmothers and kids pogoing on stage with Irish step dancers and assorted drunken revelers of all types as the band sang about Bagdhad and Bush and all sorts of fun stuff.

Encore: “I Got Laid On James Joyce’s Grave/Gloria/I Fought The Law.” Can’t beat that.

Also caught a bit of the act before them, a Celtic rock act from Vancouver called The Town Pants. Cool stuff, and very funny. If this is a harbinger of the future booking policies for the festival in the coming years, this is gonna be one fun event.

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From the ragtag fun of community-based revelry to the modern stadium spectacle…Sunday night was RUSH at the Tweeter Center, now the Comcast Center.

I’d never seen them and had an admittedly snobby attitude toward the band in years past, so while I was looking forward to it, I had some teensy reservations.

No more. This was a great concert, with all the trappings: lasers, fog, lights, videos, big screens, etc., etc. All of which would be pointless and cheesy if not for the music, and sweet Jesus, these guys were good — tight, amazingly loud but precise sound, rocking, ferocious guitar from Alex Lifeson, and complex arrangements with amazing musicianship from all three, but especially from Geddy Lee on bass and most especially from Neil Peart, the heart of the band.

My God, can that man play the motherfucking drums.

I mean, I’ve seen great drummers of all stripes over the years, including Max Roach and Keith Moon way back in my misty youth…but Peart was amazing. Two complete kits, one focused on the standard stuff and one on more esoteric pieces and electronic triggers. He did a solo at one point where the kits rotated and he switched thrones to play the “weird kit,” triggering all sorts of stuff that turned into a big band soundtrack — which he then played along with on the standard kit, swinging hard and free while videos of Krupa and Rich played behind him.

If this all sounds a little contrived…trust me, it wasn’t. I have a pretty sharp radar for spectacle that’s being used for its own pretentious sake, and this worked, and worked the way it is supposed to — in service to a larger aim. It was really great.

Funny — I’m not a big fan of the studio stuff, even after hearing some of it live last night (a lot of it, since it was a three hour show). I listened to some last night and it’s just not the same. I’m not a fan in the sense that I want to go out and buy a bunch of their stuff now.

But I will gladly go see them again, because this was a great live show.

(By the way….they know how to poke fun at themselves too. Lifeson’s set up was a row of four Marshall full stacks set up behind him. Lee’s amps weren’t visible on stage; behind him, instead of amps, was a giant case of rotissierie chickens that was the same size as Lifeson’s rig, all the birds merrily turning on their spits, with the word “HENHOUSE” emblazoned on the glass doors in the same script as the Marshall logo. Every once in a while, a guy dressed as a chef came out and basted them…and no one in the band made a single reference to it at any point during the show.)