Post Rush

Take a look at the picture above. Take a good look. Take a good, long look.

It makes my eyes tear up.

You see, before August 1st 2015, Neil Peart never ever joined Alex and Geddy at front of stage to acknowledge the fans and say farewell at the end of a show. As soon as the encore was done he would run like the wind to his tour bus or his motorbike or some form of transport and would be out of the venue before his bandmates had left the stage. It was the way he was. He hated the adulation. Just couldn’t deal with it. But at the end of the last show Rush ever performed, he broke that habit and this was the only time the three of them were together like this, on stage, right at the end.

And it really was the end. With his new family Neil yearned to just be a husband and a dad, roles he missed out on for large periods with his first family (his only child lost to a freak car accident and his first wife lost to cancer eleven months later) due to his commitment to the band. He would never take up the sticks in earnest again, and on January 7th, 2020 he was lost to us all. Carrying on with a different drummer, as Rush, is out of the question for both Alex and Geddy as well as most fans.

Yet the story isn’t over! There are some phenomenal artists out there who have been heavily inspired by Rush, and carry the same work ethic and approach to creativity. They are as varied and as talented as Rush have been throughout their illustrious career and I shall list the few I have discovered here, adding to the list as I discover more and more acts. Please feel free to comment on the Elite Dangerous Rushfleet posts on social media or here on WordPress to tell me of other artists I should also consider.

Now, I can only be subjective in describing an artist’s music. so please bear that in mind when I express how I perceive their music. I can also be a little over enthusiastic. This is because I become very excited when I hear original music from bands that are highly influenced by Rush. Many of these bands also regularly perform covers of Rush songs and it just makes my heart sing when these “tribute” bands, so to speak, turn their hands to writing original material.

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Imagine an alternate reality. Imagine if all the Rush albums from Grace Under Pressure had never existed. Imagine if Rush had, instead, decided not to rely on keyboards and stuck with a mixture of styles from their first nine albums. For many Rush fans, that would be a universe they would love to have lived in. And for many more, a universe well worth visiting now and again.

Well, imagine no longer. We already have a band that thrives with writing this exact kind of heavy progressive rock. And that band…is YYNOT.

Comprising of Guitarist Billy Alexander (who also writes and produces their music), Tim Starace on bass and keyboards, Adi Argelazi on vocals and Mike Hetzel on drums they can recreate the Rush catalogue with alarming precision, but it’s their original material that shines the brightest. It’s tight yet free-flowing, complex yet catchy, delicate yet powerful. Give them a listen today, and buy their music. You’ll thank me later!

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Take Alex Lifeson, add a generous portion of Steve Hackett (Genesis), another generous portion of Steve Rothery (Marillion), dust it all off with some David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) and you get the driving force behind the Brazilian duo, Fleesh.

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Leoni has been a trailblazer musician for most of her life. In 2018 she was granted the “Freddy Mercury” scholarship allowing her to study at the Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford graduating with a 1st class honours! Her dissertation was a study of one of the musicians that has influenced and affected her the most deeply – Neil Peart.

Now, when I return to listen to Rush performing those songs it’s as if I’ve been listening to them for the first time all over again. That kind of talent is rare. Leoni is so special!

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More or less the almost accidental “let’s see how this works out” project of Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson and bassist Andy Curran of the band Coney Hatch, Later joined by guitarist Alfio Annibalini and then introducing vocalist, musician and songwriter extraordinaire Maiah Wynne to sing and write lyrics for the ten tracks that Alex had already bedded down. This is one absolute corker of a supergroup!

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, though. It is very, very different. They have put out an EP since the debut album and a new single – Not Dead Yet.. Definitely worth checking out if you’ve never heard them yet.

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I remember all the way back to 1988, February 26th. It was a Friday, my parents had gone to bed and I was using headphones to listen to the Friday Rock Show on BBC Radio 1 after 10pm. There was a section Tommy Vance would do most weeks called “Lay Back and Enjoy It!” where a listener would send in four tracks and they would be played back to back with no interruption and then Vance would announce the artist and song titles afterwards. On that evening, one of the tracks was Limelight by Rush.

I remember how it made me feel, like it was yesterday. The synapses in my brain felt like they were firing constantly, my pupils dilated, my jaw fell open. What was I listening to? Who were these musicians? It sounded incredible! It was like an intense natural high, I needed to find out who this band were immediately and devour everything I could about them.

It’s been a long time since then, and I had yet to find a single piece of music that would affect me like that. When I first posted this piece there were only the first three bands included and I had asked for suggestions on more, and almost overwhelmingly the suggestion came back – “Crown Lands“.

Crown Lands are part of an emerging movement of young musicians playing music that are heavily inspired by the blues, prog and pomp rock acts of the late 60’s and 70’s. Bands such as Greta Van Fleet are more in the Led Zeppelin area of performance whilst Crown Lands’ music is fundamentally infused with Rush.

There are a great many small parts in their songs (and some songs are as long as eighteen odd minutes) that remind you of small parts from Rush songs. But they have been done differently, or given a different sound or tempo. Crown Lands wear their Rush devotion on their sleeves, and although much of the similarity is probably put there subconsciously (in the same way that Rush did with nods toward Led Zeppelin, amongst others, in their first album) some of them must be deliberate but are more of a tribute than actual plagiarism, an admission of their deep respect for the band rather than a blatant rip-off. And it’s all done so beautifully.

And it is all done with just two people! TWO!! Cody Bowles (drums/vocals/flute) and Kevin Comeau (gutars/bass/keyboards/torus pedals) manage to make all of this incredible proggy-pomp-bluesey rock with just the pair of them.

And that’s not all! In his interview with the Prog Report Kevin relates that the majority of the attendees of their concerts are young. Not old, greying prog fans like me and the majority of Rush fans, but teenagers and twenty somethings. If music of this calibre is being made by the young and consumed by the young, then that gives us all great hope for the future of music!