What does Geddy have sitting on his keyboards in the _A Show Of Hands_
video?
According to Dan Dickerman
<dickermn@hpcugsya.cup.hp.com>:
I have yet to find a clear shot of the dolls, but from what I
can
decipher it seems he has 6 dolls and a brandy snifter (with cash, of
course)
distributed onto 2 keyboards: nearest the snifter is Boris
Badenov
(Bullwinkle fame) and further to our left is a group of 3
consisting
of Rocky the Flying Squirrel (Bullwinkle), a toy robot, and
something
that looks vaguely like a cowboy drawing both pistols (knees
bent, etc).
[ I think this last one might be Roger (?) Kneebend, one of
Julian's old
toys, which the group sort of adopted as a mascot during the
recording
sessions. I'll try to find the reference to him ... :rush-mgr
]
On the other keyboard (facing the front of the stage) is a
thinner toy
robot and (this one's really a ballpark guess) a cartoon dog
(though
none that I recognize) that is acting the part of the gracious
waiter.
What is the round thing on Alex's guitar in the _A Show Of Hands_
video?
Here's what rjf@maxwell.physics.purdue.edu says it is:
That circular "thing" on Alex's guitar is a patrol patch used by
some Boy Scouts. That particular one is the "panther" patrol
patch.
What is happening during the "censored" section of the _A Show Of
Hands_
video?
"That's kind of a joke, but it doesn't seem like many people are
getting that joke. Actually, Alex, at certain parts of that song,
would just start rambling into the microphone - all kinds of
various
nonsense, and it actually never got recorded anywhere. So no one
had
any idea, including him, what he had actually said. But we loved
the
shot of him just ranting into this microphone, so we decided we
would
put up this bogus 'radioactive' warning about the fact that we had
'censored' what he had said, and we thought we did it in kind of
an
obvious way - it looked like it was phony, because we put the
radioactivity symbols right on the screen, but nobody seems to be
getting that." - Geddy Lee, in the 12/4/89 "Rockline"
interview
Alex laughs. "I'm not singing, it's more spontaneous babbling! You
get
kinda goofy at the end of a show, especially near the end of a
lengthy
tour. That was just crazy rambling, verbal farting. It was Geddy's
idea to put it on the video." - Alex Lifeson, in the April 1992
_Kerrang_ interview
In the _A Show Of Hands_ video, does Geddy really say "Catch the
fish?"
Yes, he does. It has to do with a prank the crew was playing on Neil
at the time
In the _A Show Of Hands_ video, has anybody noticed that Alex's
guitar
keeps changing?
Yes. This has been discussed several times in TNMS. The _A
Show Of Hands_ video was filmed during a 3-night concert series at
the
National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, England. Test footage
was
shot the first night. The majority of the video comes from the
second
night, but several shots were used from the third night's
performance.
In some cases, this was because the shots taken on the second
night
weren't quite right, but in a few places, like the beginning of
_2112_,
it was Geddy having fun in the editing stage.
Yes, Alex does break a string at the end of "Tom Sawyer," but the
guitar changes more than once, so it isn't just Alex swapping in a
new guitar.
Questions about _Presto_
What are the hands in the "Presto" liner doing?
They are making scissors, paper, and stone, like in the children's
game. There is a discussion of the scissors/paper/stone
symbols in the Presto tour book. This is paraphrased in TNMS
#212.
What is "Chain Lightning" about?
"I'm a weather fanatic - I really love weather, and I watch the
weather and look for a good weatherman. And, one night I was
watching
it, and there are two incidents in that song that are synchronicity
to
one weather report, where the weatherman showed a picture of sun
dogs,
and described them, and they are just two little points of light
that
appear at sunset, often in the winter when the sky is clear and
crystalline, and they are like little prisms, and they sit about
ten
degrees north and south of the setting sun, and they are just
beautiful little diamonds of light, and often times there's a
circle
of light - one line, that connects them. So they are a really
beautiful natural phenomenon, and I love the name too. 'Sun dogs'
just has a great sound to it. And in that same weather forecast,
the
weatherman announced a meteor shower that night, and so my
daughter
and I went out on the lake in the middle of the night and watched
this
meteor shower. So the whole idea of the song was response and how
people respond to things, and it's a thing I've found a lot in
traveling around the world, too. It's not enough just to travel
and
see things. You have to respond to them - you have to feel them,
and
a lot of the thrust of that song is how things are transferred,
like
chain lightning or enthusiasm or energy or love are things that
are
contagious, and if someone feels them, they are easily
transferrable
to another person, or in the case of watching a meteor shower,
it's
made more special if there is someone else there. 'Reflected in
another pair of eyes' is the idea that it's a wonderful thing
already,
just you and the meteor shower, but if there's someone else there
with you to share it, then it multiplies, you know, it becomes
exponentially a bigger experience, so response is a theme that
recurs
in several of the songs and was one of my probably dominant
sub-themes
in the writing." - Neil Peart, on the _Rush - Profiled!_ CD
What is "The Pass" about?
"There was a lot I wanted to address in that song, and it's
probably one of the hardest ones I've ever written. I spent
a lot of time on it, refining it, and even more doing research.
There was one song previously, called 'Manhattan
Project' where I wanted to write about the birth of the nuclear
age. Well, easier said than done, especially when
[writing] lyrics, you've got a couple of hundred words to say
what you want to say. So each word counts, and each word had
better be accurate, and so I found in the case of the
Manhattan Project, I was having to go back and read histories
of the time, histories of the place, biographies of all the
people involved, and that's not without its own rewards, but
it's a lot of work to go to to write a song - having to read
a dozen books and collate all your knowledge and experience
just so you can write, you know, if it says the scientists
were in the desert sands, well, make sure they were and why,
and all that. So with this song it was the same. I felt
concerned about it, but, at the same time, I didn't want the
classic thing of 'Oh, life's not so bad, you know, it's worth
living' and all that. I didn't want one of those pat, kind
of cliched, patronizing statements, so I really worked hard
to find out true stories, and among the people that I write
to are people who are going to universities, to MIT, and
collecting
stories from them about people they had known and
what they felt, and why the people had taken this desperate
step and all of that and trying really hard to understand
something that, fundamentally, to me is totally un-understandable.
I just can't relate to it at all, but I wanted to
write about it. And the facet that I most wanted to write
about was to de-mythologize it - the same as with 'Manhattan
Project' - it de-mythologized the nuclear age, and it's the
same thing with this facet - of taking the nobility out of it
and saying that yes, it's sad, it's a horrible, tragic thing
if someone takes their own life, but let's not pretend it's a
hero's end. It's not a triumph. It's not a heroic epic.
It's a tragedy, and it's a personal tragedy for them, but
much more so for the people left behind, and I really started
to get offended by the samurai kind of values that were attached
to it, like here's a warrior that felt it was better
to die with honor, and all of that kind of offended me. I
can understand someone making the choice; it's their choice
to make. I can't relate to it, and I could never imagine it,
for myself, but still I thought it's a really important thing
to try to get down." - Neil Peart, on the _Rush - Profiled!_
CD
What is "Scars" about?
"I think it's part of everyone's experience that a certain
record reflects a certain period of their life, and that's a
pleasurable scar, you know, there's a mark left on you, a
psychological fingerprint left by a very positive experience.
And music is an easy one, but it translates to so many other
parts of life where it's a given that, for instance, the
sense of smell is one of the strongest forces in your memory,
where a given smell will suddenly conjure up a whole time of
your life, and again, it triggers another scar, it triggers
another psychological imprint that was left by a pleasurable
thing. So it was just, again, the metaphor of scars and
using it to say that, as the song does, that these are positive
and negative aspects of life that have both left their
mark. Trying to make it universal, it's not autobiographical,
and I took a whole autobiographical story of my own and
made it one line, basically, but there are other things in
there, parts of life that I've responded to in a sense of
joy, and in a sense of compassion, and there's the exaltation
of walking down a city street and feeling like you're above
the pavement, and Christmas in New York is the perfect time
to feel that, really, where you just get charged up by the
whole energy and the positive feelings of it all."
- Neil Peart, on the _Rush - Profiled!_ CD
What is the song "Anagram (for Mongo)" about?
"It doesn't really say one thing; it says a bunch of little things,
and
I think that's OK as long as it sounds good. You know, as long as
it
rolls off the tongue kind of thing? So I think different songs
are
different exercises, to a degree, and I think that if they feel
like
exercises, then there's something wrong with the song. But if
they
can slip by in a kind of cohesive and fluid way, or if the effect
is
to be disjoint, and sometimes that's what you're after. Sometimes
you
want it to be jarring and disjointed and nonsensical. I think it
depends on what you're trying to do, and whether you've achieved it
in
your mind, and whether it actually worked, and 'Anagram,' I think,
did work, even though it's a game - the whole song is a game. The
choruses are quite smooth and quite interesting, and they have a
nice
sound to them and they kind of mock the whole song itself, so I
think
it was effective there." - Geddy Lee, on the _Rush - Profiled!_
CD
Has anybody noticed that "Anagram (for Mongo)" contains lots of
anagrams?
Yes. {I resisted putting this into the FAQ for a long time, since
this seems to be about as shocking as pointing out that
"The Big Money" is about, of all things, money, or that
"Countdown" is about a launch. But it shows up in TNMS
every once in a while. Dan}
It has been pointed out to me that, according to the Oxford
definition
of an anagram, this song contains very few anagrams. To form a
true
anagram, you have to use all of the letters in one word to make
another.
What does (for Mongo) after "Anagram" on the "Presto" album
mean?
It's a joke from the movie _Blazing Saddles_, referring to the
"Candygram for Mongo" scene, according to Geddy on "Rockline"
12/4/89.
What is "Red Tide" about?
"It's a bit of a selfish concern, really. I really love
wildlife, and I spend a lot of my time in the outdoors when
I'm not working, so that's important to me. One of my main
hobbies is cycling, so air quality kind of becomes of critical
importance. So it is a selfish thing, and it's something
I've written about before, on the previous album - the song
'Second Nature'. So, again, you want to say things in a way
that is not only not preachy, but also not boring. So finding
the images like 'Second Nature' - I was really fond of
that analogy of saying 'we want our homes to be a second
nature', you know. That was, again, taking a common phrase
and being able to twist it to say what you want it to say.
So, with 'Red Tide' it was a little more adamant, because I
think the time is a little more critical, and I had to be
firmer about it, but still there are ways of getting at it,
and to me there are jokes in there, too, that probably no one
in the world will ever get, but in the first verse, when I'm
talking about 'Nature's new plague' and then 'Lovers pausing
at the bedroom door to find an open store' and all that, to
me that was obviously referring to AIDS, but it was the irony
of modern life, you know, where spontaneous love still certainly
does occur, but here are two lovers who have just met
in the middle of the night, and they have to go find a store
before they can consummate their new relationship, you know,
and to me, when I put those things down, I have a smile, but
I know that it's one that will never be shared."
- Neil Peart, on the _Rush-Profiled!_ CD
Questions about _Roll The Bones_
Who does the RTB spoken "rap" section?
Geddy Lee, according to Neil on the 12/2/1991 "Rockline".
Who is the boy in the RTB video and on the RTB cover?
According to "The New Music Magazine" 11/11/91, his name is Michael
Vander Veldt.
Is there a "Gangster of Boats" trilogy?
No songs other than "Where's My Thing?" are labeled as being part
of
this trilogy.
But why is "Where's My Thing" labeled as Part IV of the
trilogy?
"Strictly an inside joke, in the sense that the other two guys
keep threatening that if I don't come up with an album title in
time, they're gonna call it 'Gangster of Boats,' for reasons best
known to them. And then the joke in that, of course, is it's
'Part IV of a trilogy', so we thought that was apropos." - Neil
Peart, "Rockline," 12/2/91
Is there a reason for the arrangement of the numbers on the dice on
the RTB
cover?
I doubt it. And if there is a reason, I doubt that it will be
made public (much like the significance of the HYF cover).
Please don't send me mail saying that "it just has to mean
something."
Lots of people have theories about that. But I haven't heard any
"official" word on the subject yet. If you have a theory about
this and have to share it, post it to TNMS or alt.music.rush and
see if anybody is interested in discussing it. Don't send me
mail.
I won't add it to the FAQ without support from a band member.
Has anybody noticed that the "Gangster of Boats" is mentioned in the
HYF
liner notes?
Yes.
What does the pattern of skulls and bones at the bottom of the
inside
front cover of the RTB tourbook mean? Is there a pattern to
it?
It's Morse code for "Remember Death."
Questions about _Counterparts_
Is there any connection between "Where's My Thing" and "Leave That
Thing
Alone?"
Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson discussed this during the
"Counterparts"
World premiere:
GL: Only that the fact that they both have "things" in the title.
AL: Yeah, and they're on our records.
GL: The "things" are different are different things.
AL: It's not the same thing.
GL: It's not the same thing. Really, you have to say, "It's just not
the
same thing."
AL: No, no... it's just a... thing.
GL: It's a different thing.
AL: A totally different thing
GL: Yeah.