Posted on 01/14/2020 3:13:58 PM PST by DoodleBob
Neil Peart, the longtime drummer for the Canadian band Rush, died last week of brain cancer, leaving behind a legacy as one of rock's most technically accomplished percussionists and perhaps its most articulate libertarian lyricist. The 67-year-old songwriter regularly championed individualism, choice, and freedom over soul-crushing conformity.
Early Rush songs are saturated with such messages. The song "Freewill," released on 1980's Permanent Waves album, puts self-determination at the root of the human experience: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
In "The Trees," released two years earlier, Peart tells a fable about a forest where the maple trees demand to be made equal with the taller oaks. It doesn't go well:
So the maples formed a union
and demanded equal rights.
"The oaks are just too greedy.
We will make them give us light."
Now there's no more oak oppression
for they passed a noble law.
And the trees are all kept equal
by hatchet, axe, and saw.
Sometimes Peart's individualism could be compressed into a single line, as in Rush's 1981 hit "Tom Sawyer": "No, his mind is not for rent/to any god or government."
Rush's 1976 album 2112, which Peart dedicated to the "genius of Ayn Rand," tells the story of a futuristic theocracy that outlaws individualism and creativity, including the electric guitar. Rand's novel The Fountainhead had a particularly heavy influence on Peart, who described the affinity he felt for the book's protagonist in a 1997 interview with Scott Bullock for Liberty magazine:
Howard Roark stood as a role model for me—as exactly the way I already was living. Even at that tender age [18] I already felt that.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
Is Rush a Christian band? Not at all. Would people turn away from God because of the influence of their lyrics? Maybe a few people. May some people see the Hand of the Lord in Rush's technically proficiency and (dare I say) bitchin' music? Probably more people than those who'd turn away from God due to the lyrics.
Greatest drummer EVER.
Rest in Peace, Neil.
Great drummer, but greatest ever? I think I would still put Steve Gadd ahead of him, just for "Aja" alone.
“Red Barchetta” aptly spoke to today’s leftist tyrants who want to ban private vehicles and force us all into mass transit...while they use private jets.
My uncle has a country place
That no one knows about
He says it used to be a farm
Before the Motor Law
And on Sundays I elude the eyes
And hop the Turbine Freight
To far outside the Wire
Where my white-haired uncle waits
Jump to the ground
As the Turbo slows to cross the borderline
Run like the wind
As excitement shivers up and down my spine
Down in his barn
My uncle preserved for me an old machine
For fifty odd years
To keep it as new has been his dearest dream
I strip away the old debris
That hides a shining car
A brilliant red Barchetta
From a better vanished time
I fire up the willing engine
Responding with a roar
Tires spitting gravel
I commit my weekly crime
Don’t leave out original Steely drummer Chevy Chase
He was an unrepetant atheist, and while I have a lot of problems with organized religion, it’s hard to understand how somebody could possibly believe that we’re all here just ‘cause.
I’m still reeling from this news.
Amazing man, amazing musician. Someone who contributed so much happiness to so many.
Now he’s gone, and Hillary is still with us.
No justice at all.
“...He was an unrepetant atheist,...”
Maybe so, but I rather he still be with us, than any of a hundred or so of the leftist trash we have right now.
He didn’t push it on anyone, nor try to pass laws to mess with anyone else’ rights.
I’m right there with him on most everything else. And you’re right in that he wasn’t obnoxious about it like some others are.
Unfortunatelty, as much as I love XTC’s music, I have to point my finger at Andy Partridge there.
The teacher went gaga, and swooned. She told him, and the rest of us, that is was the most beautiful poem one of her students had ever written in all her 35 years of teaching.
We were cracking up (we knew the Rush song of course), and she got angry. "How dare you mock this beautiful poem!"
There is unrest in the forest
There is trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas
The trouble with the maples
And they're quite convinced they're right
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light
But the oaks can't help their feelings
If they like the way they're made
And they wonder why the maples
Can't be happy in their shade?
There is trouble in the forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the maples scream 'oppression!'
And the oaks, just shake their heads
So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
'The oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light'
Now there's no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet,
Axe,
And saw
championed individualism, choice, and freedom over soul-crushing conformity.”””
Well then he couldn’t have been to happy with the Demon creep party...
If she thought an 8th grader wrote that she was/is nuts
Modern drummer Mag agrees with this same order...
https://www.moderndrummer.com/article/march-2014-50-greatest-drummers-time/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZm1_jtY1SQ
BeING an atheist is easy...you don’t have to think about anything that doesn’t serve the big Y-O-U.
I noticed on the early 80s Rush albums, that Peart’s drumming became more like Stewart Copeland’s, he even admitted that The Police were a heavy influence on Rush then.
Crypto liberal claptrap
Oddly, Chevy Chase had two chances at success and I'm glad he chose the latter.
This just in: Chevy Chase’s Career is still dead!
Pardon me, but I do believe that Adam Schiff is here by accident.
The rest of us are here for a reason.
(-;
Oh man... It is as complicated as trying to trace DNA with every artist. We all started at the roots with Jazz like Buddy Rich and adopted more and more complicated licks and styles as we evolved, and as new drummers came out who blew us away with their combinations. I have traced back just a unique cymbal crash sequence back to the first source before, and it was in the 50s yet the particular sequence is still adopted and used by current drummers. All influences amount to the total of ones own individual style. :)
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