Friday – 06 August 2010
It’s a bright and sunny 9/80 “off” Friday.
Amen.
In a little while, I’ll be going with my father-in-law and to check out the model railroad gear at a hobby shop in Orem. I consider that a good way to start a day off.

Let’s go ahead and get this out of the way now: I had a great time at the Rush “Time Machine” concert last night.

I went with , his brother and sister-in-law and a friend of the family.  Despite ridiculous post-rush hour traffic, we made it to the amphitheatre with plenty of time to spare.  I also ran into my coworker, Drew and his wife, Cheri. (I just found out this morning that my friend, Peggy, was there, too… and only two sections away from where we sat.) The weather looked… ominous, but there was no rain. There were, however, some amazing lightning flashes in the center-to-eastern parts of the valley that made for nice offsets to 2112 and Far Cry.  This tour’s set design had a heavy retro/steampunk look and feel about it, including the amps behind Alex and Neil’s drum kit:

From the tourbook’s liner notes:

I told the guys about an idea for a fictional world that had interested me lately, thinking it would make a great setting, maybe for a suite of songs that told a story. A genre of science fiction pioneered by certain authors (including my friend Kevin J. Anderson) had come to be called “steampunk,” seen as a reaction against the “cyberpunk” futurists, with their scenarios of dehumanized, alienated, dystopian societies. Our own previous excursions into the future, 2112 and “Red Barchetta,” had been set in that darker kind of imagining, for dramatic and allegorical effect, but I was thinking of steampunk’s definition as “The future as it ought to have been,” or “The future as seen from the past”-as imagined by Jules Verne, for example, in 1866, when he was writing 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

When I was nine or ten, my dad took my brother and sister and me to see that movie at a Saturday matinee, and images from it had always stuck with me. The fearsome destructiveness of the Nautilus had a kind of monstrous beauty, contrasted with the cultured opulence of Captain Nemo’s quarters, and the massive pipe organ on which, he played with mad rapture. The captain may have been insane, but it was a romantic, idealistic bind of madness-his mission was only to destroy ships of war, because his beloved family had been killed in wartime.

The guys seemed intrigued by the concept, and at home in Southern California, I started working on a story and some lyrics along those lines, set in a world driven by steam, intricate clockworks, and alchemy-“a world lit only by fire” (title of a history of medieval times by William Manchester).

…and…

While I put together some ideas for cover art with Hugh Syme, for the song releases and the tour, Geddy was working with his film collaborators Dale and Allan on the rear-screen movies, recruiting Alex and me as comedic “actors”-to pursue our long-term goal in live performance: “More Comedy, Less Music.”

While we never seem to get away with “less music,” it’s true that as the years go by we do have more laughs.

The concert was roughly three (3) hours long and the band played the entirety of Moving Pictures in the second set. They also played Caravan and BU2B, from the upcoming Clockwork Angels release. There were also some fan favorites and a few pieces that I don’t believe I’ve heard in previous concerts.

All-in-all, it was a great way to kick off my three-day weekend.

And, for today’s musical fare, I’m going with Far Cry, from the Snakes & Arrows CD:

Tonight, we’re heading to the Deer Valley Music Festival to hear the Utah Symphony perform Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture…. complete with live cannons.  (Tickets may still be available.)  Because, how often do you get to hear symphonic music – in a great venue – performed with real cannons?! Why aren’t you calling the ticket office already?!  Did I mention “cannons?!”  Go!  Dial!  Now!

Workout
Thursday’s step count: 4,999

Stray Toasters

Time to finish getting ready.

Namaste.