A violin is a cheap instrument? Nooooooo
There’s a first-year run Fender Stratocaster at the Guitar Center in NYC selling for $75,000. Violins have been around much longer and probably could go for as much as a few hundred thousand.
Rush plays Obama like a violin. Violin=Obama. Obama=cheap instrument.
Thanks for the heads-up on the Strat. I'm a “Pre-BS” Tele and Blackface Deluxe man myself (bought new by myself way back when they were stock instruments, not the reissues of late). No effects. Just guitar, cable, and pure tube tone browness bliss. Not a Guitar Center customer. I have enjoyed a working relationship with Stan Jay (Mandolin Bros.) out on Staten Island for many decades.
Yes, violins have been around since someone figured out that he could make people dance by “dragging the tail of a horse across the entrails of a cat,” and yes, I know that catgut is not the same as cat's guts. For every fiddle that goes for a few hundred thousand there are hundreds of thousands that go for a few—and for good reason.
As for those who've gone Ricky Riccardo on my sorry self; i.e., "[SP,] you've got some 'splainin' to do!": POINT:
Rush is a virtuoso. A Principal Violinist's Principal Violinist. The man CAN PLAY this score better than anyone, and “playing [the 0ne] like a fiddle” he certainly is.
That makes the 0ne Rush's instrument—FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING—and THAT INSTRUMENT is one cheap fiddle—FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING. Yes, “The Red Violin” the 0 most certainly is not.
(WY, should you want to talk vintage Gibson mandolins and archtops, FRmail me. I think this would be a splendid time for me to go pour a B&B and spend some quality time with a certain F4 from 1924. And so it shall be.)
I quit. Quite literally.