O.A.R. "catches a crab"

O.A.R.--"Get Away (live)" (mp3)
Neil Young--"Heart of Gold (live)" (mp3)

From the Free Dictionary:

(Naut.)
a phrase used of a rower
- McElrath.
when he fails to raise his oar clear of the water
when he misses the water altogether in making a stroke.

O.A.R. is the latest of many, many, many reputable bands to succumb to the desire for a hit single. I was driving to the grocery store this afternoon and listening to the radio station my daughter had left on, and Rick Dees' show was on. When he announced that the next song was O.A.R's "Shattered (Turn The Car Around)," my jaw dropped. And it dropped even farther when I heard a bouncy little song that sounded a lot like the rest of the crappy stuff on the radio.

What? O.A.R.? Aren't they a jam band? Don't they play at places like Bonnaroo? I don't know much about O.A.R. My friend John has put them on a mix or two. But I do know that they were a band with some credibility as recently as last year. Do they still have it? Should they? The official Itunes review says that "this time around they had some help from songwriter Gregg Wattenberg, who penned hits for Chris Daughtry and Five For Fighting." Yeesh! How intentional can you be?

People who know me or who read these pages know that I can be a music snob. And perhaps the thing that chaps me the most is when I think somebody has "sold out." I turned against Carlos Santana, R.E.M., and many others when I thought they had sold out. It's a sliding scale. Here are my perhaps-hard-to-defend criteria:

1. The band or individual doesn't usually have radio-friendly hit songs, but now has them.

2. The band or individual seems to have changed their/his/her basic sound to accomplish #1.

3. The band or individual has to have been pretty good at one time; otherwise, I wouldn't give a crap.

4. Integrity can be regained.

I know, I know, it's a carefully-wrought aesthetic argument I'm crafting here, so there is bound to be some gray area. But if I stick to these four rules, then I can make allowances for those people I like who appear to have "sold out" (Bruce Springsteen on Born In The U.S.A.) and those who have tried and failed (Liz Phair), thereby avoiding my wrath.

My guiding angels in this argument are Ernest Hemingway and Neil Young. Hemingway chided F. Scott Fitzgerald for writing short stories for big money on the side, which then gave Fitzgerald the income and flexibility to pursue his true literary endeavors. Hemingway saw this is a corrupting compromise which, once done, could never be undone. What we don't know, but can surmise, is that Fitzgerald was making a buttload more money than Hemingway was at the time (yes, incredibly, at the time one could get rich publishing short stories in magazines) and that's what drove Hemingway to criticize him. As for Neil Young, he's probably one of the few major rock stars who can legitimately claim that he never sold out, hence his "hit" MTV video, "This Note's For You." His crazy, sporadic career appears to be driven by nothing more than his own artistic muse, which, admittedly, has taken him some strange places, but never to corporate sponsorship or the need for a hit song. Or so the legend goes.

And, as I noted above, I have to disagree with Hemingway somewhat. I can see how serving both money and art would lead to a dangerous compromise, but I'd like to think that it isn't a fatal one. Heck, we all have dark periods when we aren't ourselves and aren't who we want to be, and if there were no chance for redemption, what would be the point of anything?

But for now, I guess I'll just remain my usual smug self, and when I hear that O.A.R. song, I'll think, 'Man, that's some shit. Kinda catchy, though. '

"Get Away" comes from O.A.R.'s first live cd, Any Time Now. Neil Young famously said that he "headed for the ditch" after the surprise top 40 radio success of his album, Harvest. In fact, he refused to play "Heart of Gold" for many years; this live version comes from a Farm Aid concert.

All I Need

All I Need - Bethany Dillon (mp3)
Flowerparts - Bob Schneider (mp3)

You're all I need.

Two teenage girls sang a song with that line in it at church this Sunday. It was a pretty enough song, probably originally by some contemporary Christian band, and the two girls did a fine job with the vocals. Unfortunately, when one is in a particularly cynical and dark place spiritually, then cynical and dark things can bloom from even the harmonics of hopeful teenagers.

They were singing about God. God is all they need.

Part of me wishes to hell that were true. Part of me wishes life could be so simple as narrowing down our needs to God And Nothing Else. Get rid of all the distraction. All the detritus. All the inessentials. And all that would be left is you and the one thing you need: an omnipotent, omnipresent, all-loving deity who cannot be seen, who cannot be touched, who cannot be held.

If all I needed was God, I could have managed an altogether different life. No aching need for that wacky notion known as a "soul mate." No overwhelming yearning to be a father. No longing for the acceptance of peers or even a need for friendship. Altogether different notions of success and mission.

And those two girls. They would be so much better off if all they needed was God. Their bodies would not be their enemy. They wouldn't fight-- and primp -- tooth and nail for the acceptance or approval of drooling boys. Shows like Gossip Girl would never make it past the first three or four episodes, because we'd all be too busy watching preachers and gospel programs.

The other part of me, though... finds the notion of needing nothing but God very unpalatable. I'm admittedly working in extremes here. I guess there are people out there who can say "You're all I need" and mean it only in the good and healthy religious sense. I guess there are people out there who say this and aren't part of some Yellow Deli or People's Temple collective.

Most of the people I know who truly sing this and believe this and try their damnedest to live this are... um... Truth is, they're probably better off. I can say they're clueless, or they're disconnected, or they're naive, or they live in a very unstable glass house of fantasy. And it's mostly true. But none of those things are in and of themselves all that awful if you're bound for Eternal Glory, right? So what if you don't fall in love and have a family or find your passion in things beyond hymns of praise or Holy Scriptures? We're just here for a few minutes in comparison to that afterlife. No big sacrifice if you keep it all in perspective.

Maybe I'm a believer who's too far gone. I need much. I find myself enraptured by the easy brilliance of this scene from The Jerk. Although we don't all need stuff in quite this literal a way, the scene is just one more reminder that all great comedy captures a pearl of truth:

We can't need just one thing.

We're not capable. Sure, we want to believe we can, because if we could just narrow it all down, life would be so much simpler and less messy that the one we're stuck in. AllMusic.com claims more than 400 songs include the words "All I Need" in the title. I'm thinking of making a song called "All I Need is a Unicorn," because both notions are equally fantastical.

When I try to imagine singing "You're all I need" about any one person, or any one thing, or even God, it gets kinda icky and scary. I need lots of people. Some of them are specific people, and some are in the abstract, but I need them all. I need people I haven't even met yet, people who might not even have been born as I write this.

The words "You're all I need" conjures notions of addiction, and not the kind of addiction that gains you favor in Heaven. I think of alcoholics and compulsive gamblers, of overeaters and exercise freaks, of unhealthily-obsessed lovers. I think of people who have lost perspective, and maybe some of their grip on reality along with it.

Even the most devoted of childless spouses end up buying a puppy or tackling separate careers. Even the most dedicated and devoted parent yearns for other ways to find meaning. And 99.9% of religious folks have needs beyond food, water and their Creator regardless of whether they can admit it to themselves.

Maybe this is the devil on my other shoulder whispering in my ear. Maybe this is just one more sign I'm in big f*#kin' trouble when I die. But I yam what I yam. I've spent most of my life trying very hard NOT to be so completely focused or obsessed with a single thing that the other important stuff in my life fades out. I'm kinda proud that, so far, I've managed this goal quite nicely. Life has always felt more like a never-ending mixtape than a longplay version of "Every Breath You Take."

We're on a big, cool planet with billions of cool people. Wouldn't it be a crime not to need as much of the good parts and as many of the right people as we can find?

After all, this is my Father's world. Right?

"All I Need" is from Bethany Dillon's So Far... The Acoustic Sessions and can be found on iTunes and Amazon.com. "Flowerparts" is from Bob Schneider's third studio album, The Californian, available only on iTunes.

Bringin' The Wood

Bill Morrissey--"Birches" (mp3)
Neil Finn--"Weather With You (live)" (mp3)

I bought a load of wood yesterday, half a rick. It's one of the things that I like to do best--you know, stand outside on a cold, slightly rainy day, shooting the shit with the guy at the fruit stand who is both selling the wood and living the life that involves selling that wood.

For half a rick, I get to live that life briefly.

Bringing home the wood is among the manliest of endeavors, and that's probably why it's such a special event to those of us with suburban sensibilities.

Of course, I could just sit in your SUV and minivan and let him load the wood, but how pathetic. I've got to do it all.

"How much wood you want?"

"As much as can fit in there," you say, pointing the vast cargo space of your vehicle with the back seat down.

"Looks like she'll take about a half a rick."

"Sound good." And with that, you're in, cheerfully engaged in manual labor that you would dread if you had to do it alone in your own yard. Hmm, let's see, I need load this stack of heavy shit into my car, drive it over there, and then unload it again? Not how I'd typically want to spend my Saturday.

But here there's two of us, and, like the men we are, we take turns loading our own piles of wood into our own arms, maybe trying to outdo the other guy every once in awhile, maybe me adjusting the stack inside the car, just because it is my car. And of course we don't worry about the dirt, leaves, wood chips that fall all over the car.

What I really like is when I get home. I like to pull the car right up in front of the house so that the back of the car is right in front of the porch. And I like to stack up all of my wood, as slowly as I want, a couple of logs at a time, placing each piece strategically so that I slowly build a kind of wood puzzle that is tightly-packed, solid and level, inside the brick porch wall.

The cats, who like all things that are new, are very happy with this new perch.

And, this is just the beginning. Because then I get to carry inside the perfect pieces of wood as the first step in one of man's most primal duties: firestarter.

FOOTNOTE: Not only a great story song, "Birches" also captures the conflict between passion and sensibility in a marriage better than anything I've ever heard (or read). All using a wood-burning metaphor.

"Weather With You" comes from Finn's 7 Worlds Collide; "Birches" is on Bill Morrissey's Night Train. Both are available at Itunes.

Happy Birthday, Dad

Father, Son - Peter Gabriel (mp3)
Life Class - W.G. "Snuffy" Walden (mp3)

One of my more enduring memories from childhood is sitting in our living room on Saturday morning and watching Looney Tunes. My father would take a break from working in the yard or from whatever project he was buried under and plop down with a drink in his swivel rocker. I would sit on the floor next to him, and we would watch together.

My father had three different kinds of laughs. He had:

• a social laugh -- "heh heh hehhhh"
• a snicker intended to amuse others -- it was a cross between Mumbly the Hanna-Barbara dog and a duck quack
• and a sincere, deep, belly laugh.

It was that last laugh, the un-self-conscious laugh of someone alone in the den with his young son, that was the most infectious to me. Although Foghorn Leghorn was one of his favorites, it was Daffy Duck that seemed to evoke the most laughter from Dad.

My biological father died just a day after I was born, which, while certainly tragic for my mother and relatives, meant I never really knew what I was missing or had lost. So the man I knew as my father was actually my step-father. He adopted me when I was five. I practically begged him. Not to get all conservative and preachy on anyone, but we all have this aching need for parental figures of both genders in our lives, from childhood on up. And I hungered this man to be in my life. I don't remember asking him to be my father, but I can vaguely remember the sense of emptiness that his presence somehow made go away.

Frank was a grossly imperfect man. He drank too much. He conferred too little. He was a little too antiquated with views on gender and race. But he was also a lifelong example of a man who prioritized humility and championed respect, loyalty and responsibility, and he loved his family -- even his adopted son -- more deeply than he was ever capable of expressing. The only ways he knew were by keeping all of our birthday cards and notes we wrote him tucked away in a file cabinet and other similar, small gestures.

I can't say I ever idolized him. I can't say he's my hero, not in the way many sons think of their fathers. But it's frustrating to me that praising him as simply being a devoted and loving (and imperfect) father isn't good enough. It was more than good enough for me, and a far better option than 99% of the alternatives. I never expected perfection, and he gave far better than I deserved.

It's been just over a year since Dad died. (Cancer. Not a particularly unique story there, although suffering doesn't have to be unique to feel that way.) He lived longer than I ever expected by making it to 74. I honestly had no idea how losing him might affect me. I spent years preparing for the inevitability of his death, but no time accurately contemplating what it would mean.

In 2006, the two of us traveled to Auburn. It was the first time he'd been back to his alma mater in decades. He'd always settled for watching the football games on TV. I can't imagine being much happier about any single decision in my life than I was about arranging for and enjoying that weekend with my father. I go back to that weekend frequently, and it's a sign of our odd biology that recalling such happiness could be so seductive and yet so agonizing.

Dad would definitely snicker that I've struggled more with his passing than I ever thought I would. I'm trying my best to show it in small gestures. The father's way, handed down to the son.

Everytime I watch Looney Tunes and find myself laughing un-self-consciously, I end up crying a little bit, too.

"Father, Son" is from both the Barnyard soundtrack (no kidding) and Gabriel's 2003 compilation Hit. "Life Class" is from the thirtysomething soundtrack. The first can be found at iTunes, the latter I couldn't find anywhere outside my own CD collection.

Do You Wanna Touch?

Dirty World - Traveling Wilburys (mp3)

We humans are touchy creatures. We're touchy about people touching us, and we're touchy about touching other people. If our skin (and nature) is sensitive, it's especially alert to having the right or wrong people making contact.

For better and worse, I'm a touchy person. There's something in me that feeds off making physical contact with friends or acquaintances when I'm in conversation. It's not a necessity, and I won't go out of the way to feed some desperate need. But all things being equal, there's something empowering and energizing about making (non-sexual, non-aggressive) physical contact with another person. A hand on the shoulder. A pat on the back. A slight pseudo-punch on the arm. Or, in the rarest circumstances, a hug. Yes, hugs are very, very good, but they can also be horrifically awkward if done in the wrong circumstances, so guys tend to go with the "Half-Hug," also known as one arm around the shoulder with both males facing in the same direction.

On Wednesday night I was out with a group of female coworker pals, and the touchy nature of coworkers was the center of discussion. One of our coworkers has a habit of touching both male and female coworkers in very awkward ways. Nothing criminal, mind you, just icky.

A finger "tickle" above the beltline. The smirking tug of a ponytail. A very brief back/neck rubbing. We were criticizing these things and the awkward feeling they create, and my guilty conscience was going haywire, because he's only slightly more touchy than I... but I have the benefit of being scrawny and pathetically harmless-seeming while he's larger and gives off that slightly icky vibe.

When I confessed my fear of hypocrisy, my perceived harmlessness and secure marital status seemed to be key factors in why my attempts at touch were not taken in the same negative manner.

In the rational part of my mind, I get it. Most of us have this electronic security system in our bodies, and that system goes off in different ways when different people touch us. As healthy and beneficial as hugs can be, in theory, some hugs do nothing but cause that security alarm to blare inside us. I'm fortunate that my touchiness doesn't caure that alarm to go off in others very often. That I'm making contact in very obvious, non-sexual ways does not, in and of itself, exonerate me.Nor does the fact that my aim is true and my intentions pure, because in these matters, motives are meaningless and perception from the touched party is everything.

Still, it does make me just the slightest bit sad for my touchy coworker. He wants his touch to be healthy the way hugs are healthy. I doubt -- although I can't be 100% certain -- his intentions are any more nefarious or lecherous than mine, but something about his approach sets off those alarms.

We all need human touch. We all need hugs. Those of us who get more hugs and have more physical contact with our counterparts and allies tend to live healthier and happier lives. It sucks that some of us are ickier than others. Unlike the fairy tales, sometimes frogs are just frogs. They'll never turn into Prince William (or, at left, Vladimir Putin).

Sometimes we feel icky when someone touches us because our bodies are smart, and sometimes they react in a defensive way because of concerns much deeper than someone's size or looks.

And sometimes, unfortunately, life and the human response system just ain't fair.

"Dirty World" is from the Traveling Wilburys' debut album and can be found on iTunes or Amazon.com's site. "Carnival Game" is from Cheap Trick's 1997 eponymous album, and I could only find it on iTunes. It took a lot of willpower to post none of these songs: "Human Touch" by Springsteen, "Human Touch" by Springfield, and "Do You Wanna Touch Me?" by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.

Obama and Me

XTC--"The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead" (mp3)

"he looked a lot like you and an awful lot like me" --Andy Partridge

The following original article about Barack Obama is reprinted from The Guardian UK. After all of the hoopla about how Sarah Palin was one of us, I thought I might compare myself to Obama. I have added in italics how I stack up.

Fifty things you might not know about Barack Obama (or me)

By Jon Swaine

(and Bob)

• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics. I once had an impressive collection of comic books that my mother threw away; my more impressive baseball card collection she sold to someone for $10.

• He was known as "O'Bomber" at high school for his skill at basketball. I had a friend in 9th grade who insisted on calling me "Cassius," though I never knew why.

• His name means "one who is blessed" in Swahili. My name is a verb, meaning "to float up and down in water."

• His favourite meal is wife Michelle's shrimp linguini. I don't generally find that Italian cooking is the proper setting for shrimp.

• He won a Grammy in 2006 for the audio version of his memoir, Dreams From My Father. Using two cassette recorders, I once cut a version of Neil Young's "Cortez The Killer" at a beach in Portsmouth, New Hampshire that captured the waves crashing ashore and a taped rhythm guitar, while I sang and played lead guitar live, getting 4 different tracks onto a cassette tape, perhaps the first lo-fi recording in history?

• He is left-handed – the sixth post-war president to be left-handed. I, too, am left-handed, though I eat right-handed, but while in Korea this past summer, I instinctively learned to use chopsticks left-handed, even though I play guitar right-handed.

• He has read every Harry Potter book. I have read every Hemingway book.

• He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali. I have Roberto Clemente's autograph.

• He worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop as a teenager and now can't stand ice cream. I worked in a bakery as a teenager, and, as a result, have a strong distrust for store-bought baked goods. except for thumbprint cookies.

• His favourite snacks are chocolate-peanut protein bars. I had to quit keeping pretzels in my office for my students because I was ripping through them like crazy.

• He ate dog meat, snake meat, and roasted grasshopper while living in Indonesia. I have an intact dog.

• He can speak Spanish. I have never been to Spain, but I kinda like the music.

• While on the campaign trail he refused to watch CNN and had sports channels on instead. I thought a good portion of CNN's election year coverage sucked, but I do have a thing for Campbell Brown and, just based on seeing him on TV, my wife outed Anderson Cooper.

• His favourite drink is black forest berry iced tea. I am drinking my favorite drink as I write this; it comes from the oldest brewery in America.

• He promised Michelle he would quit smoking before running for president – he didn't. If that's the only promise he's ever broken, he's in great shape.

• He kept a pet ape called Tata while in Indonesia. My friend Tommy has a brother-in-law's brother named Tanu.

• He can bench press an impressive 200lbs. I weigh an impressive 200+ lbs, which means he can probably bench press me.

• He was known as Barry until university when he asked to be addressed by his full name. My original name was to be Todd Robert, until my father decided that other kids would make fun of me by calling me "Hot Toddy."

• His favourite book is Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. I bought a copy of Moby-Dick just this year, intending to read it.

• He visited Wokingham, Berks, in 1996 for the stag party of his half-sister's fiancé, but left when a stripper arrived. I am pretty sure I would have stayed.

• His desk in his Senate office once belonged to Robert Kennedy. I believe every JFK assassination conspiracy theory.

• He and Michelle made $4.2 million (£2.7 million) last year, with much coming from sales of his books. I have written a novel, a writing help book, and a cookbook, all of which have netted me $0.

• His favourite films are Casablanca and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. My wife likes films; I like movies, preferably World War II movies.

• He carries a tiny Madonna and child statue and a bracelet belonging to a soldier in Iraq for good luck. My Ipod never leaves me.

• He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee. Most likely, I, too, would have been rejected.

• His favourite music includes Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Bach and The Fugees. My daughters think that The Fugees' version of "Killing Me Softly" is superior to the Roberta Flack original. Plus, here's perhaps the only raunchy classical music joke you'll ever hear: Why did Bach have so many children? Because his organ didn't have any stops.

• He took Michelle to see the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing on their first date. I also took my wife to see Do The Right Thing, when she was pregnant with our first child, and, powerful though the film was, we were so tantalized by the pizzas coming out of the oven in that movie that we went right across the street and got pizza as soon as the movie let out.

• He enjoys playing Scrabble and poker. I find the sign "Liquor in the front. Poker in the rear" unceasingly funny for some reason.

• He doesn't drink coffee and rarely drinks alcohol. He doesn't teach.

• He would have liked to have been an architect if he were not a politician. I plan to build a brick oven in my back yard.

• As a teenager he took drugs including marijuana and cocaine. No cocaine for me, Barry!

• His daughters' ambitions are to go to Yale before becoming an actress (Malia, 10) and to sing and dance (Sasha, 7). My childhood ambition was to become "an ice cream man on a battleship." I'm sorry, I have no explanation.

• He hates the youth trend for trousers which sag beneath the backside. I don't like tatoos, piercings, and am especially freaked out by those earlobes that get stretched real big.

• He repaid his student loan only four years ago after signing his book deal. This pisses me off for some reason.

• His house in Chicago has four fire places. When I was 11, I came home to find the kitchen on fire and my father asleep on the couch and I briefly became the hero of the family.

• Daughter Malia's godmother is Jesse Jackson's daughter Santita. One of Emma's godfathers is the former drummer of Spinart recording artists, The Technical Jed.

• He says his worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry. My wife does the same thing, even in bed. If Blackberry advertises a soundless scroll button, they're lying.

• He uses an Apple Mac laptop. The school owns my laptop, is reluctant about updating to the latest version of Itunes, and won't let me download the program so that I can "watch instantly" on Netflix.

• He drives a Ford Escape Hybrid, having ditched his gas-guzzling Chrysler 300. Growing up in Pittsburgh, we had a gold Chrysler 300 with a black interior. Not only was it hot as a motherfucker, but, stylistically, what was my dad thinking?

• He wears $1,500 (£952) Hart Schaffner Marx suits. The black suit I currently wear came from Target and cost less than $100.

• He owns four identical pairs of black size 11 shoes. My feet are also size 11. I wonder if he has Birkenstocks.

• He has his hair cut once a week by his Chicago barber, Zariff, who charges $21 (£13). My barber, LaDonna, of the Pioneer Barber Shop in East Ridge, cuts my hair 3 or 4 times a year; she charges $12 and I tip her $2. She vacations in Daytona Beach each year.

• His favourite fictional television programmes are Mash and The Wire. Dude, I cannot believe that McNulty tried to fake a serial killer!

• He was given the code name "Renegade" by his Secret Service handlers. On a website that generated Mafia names when you entered your name, my friend Chet came out as "Chimpy Nuts."

• He was nicknamed "Bar" by his late grandmother. As a child, my dad called me "Boo"as an affectionate nickname; my brother effectively tormented me with the same nickname. Tone matters.

• He plans to install a basketball court in the White House grounds. Once on a very cold night in Pittsburgh when I was about 13, my parents allowed us to use the hose to create a thick layer of ice on our drivway and play ice hockey all night; in the morning, the sun heated the blacktop underneath and ruined it quickly.

• His favourite artist is Pablo Picasso. I got no problem with that. Which period?

• His speciality as a cook is chili. Cooking is my specialty.

• He has said many of his friends in Indonesia were "street urchins." I wonder what they said about him? Probably that he pals around with terrorists.

• He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol of the fragility of life. I have pretty soft hands and am fairly adept at the egg toss, even at long distances, but, like all things, eventually that egg must break.

• His late father was a senior economist for the Kenyan government. I have a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Go figure.

Listen w/o Prejudice: Rush

The third in a four-part series. Click here for the Preamble.

Rush is the Star Trek of rock.

Geddy Lee is the Jewish Kirk. Neil Peart is Spock. And Alex Lifeson's gotta be Bones McCoy. Instead of pointy Vulcan ears, we air drum every detail of Peart's solo from "YYZ" or "The Rhythm Method." Instead of bathing in Shatner's overdone melodrama, we shriek along with Geddy's trill voice.

Those who love Rush are blindly devoted. We can't remotely figure out why their songs aren't blaring out of speakers in millions of homes every day and night.

Just as Trekkies (or Trekkers) can tell you the episode numbers of specific lines or specific villains, Rushies can identify the song -- and probably chorus or verse -- of any given riff or lyrical line from the band's entire collection. Some fans, like myself, have a devotion that is more decidedly Rush: The Next Generation as opposed to Old School Rush. My undying devotion for All Things Rush doesn't really kick in until Permanent Waves, although there's plenty to adore about the older stuff, too.

I am a Rushie mostly because my friends were Rushies. Andy, my three-years-older friend since before I wore my first pair of Underoos, started playing these guys for us on his turntable when he could sneak away Exit... Stage Left from his brother's collection. It probably didn't hurt that, at just the time we were really discovering this band, we were also heavily into Dungeons + Dragons and J.R.R. Tolkein's collection.

Yes, I realize this makes the entire Rush thing pathetically predictable. Didn't Rush's entire fan base come from goobers who played D+D and loved the LOTR trilogy, you may be asking yourself? And if you are asking yourself that, you're a mean person. A bully or a bully wannabe. Go listen to your death metal and leave us geeky prog-rockers alone.

The first song I ever remember making me think, Yeah, this is my kind of band wasn't "Tom Sawyer" or "The Spirit of Radio," but the lesser-known "Red Barchetta." It was about a teen, a car, and an open road. Although I wasn't remotely interested in cars or going so fast I might die in them, it was a story I could connect with, and the music arced so well with the words. And -- let's be honest -- that one dude could pound the crap out of those drums. (For the record, it also most definitely qualifies as a great storytelling song, per Bob's post from yesterday.)

After "Red Barchetta," it didn't take much work to want to listen to "YYZ" and "Tom Sawyer" over and over. And because I only had a cassette tape copy of the concert, this required my rewinding, waiting, and playing. Rewinding, waiting, and playing. Back in the '80s, if you really loved a song, you had to endure silence and the imperfect art of searching for its beginning when you rewound. It was so much more of a dedicated love than you whipper-snappers have now, with your REPEAT button. You kids don't know what love is!

But that's for another time.

What Rush fans adore, what is the pinnacle of Great Rock for us, is instrumental mastery, technical dead-on balls accuracy*, and lyrical poetry that explores topics beyond getting laid... or breaking up after getting laid... or reuniting after breaking up after getting laid.
We drool at their concerts because the only thing more breathtaking for us than masterfully-arranged and tightly-produced recorded songs is to hear them played live, by only three people, missing nary a note, a beat, or a word.

Rush is, for all intents and purposes, the anti-jam band. The magic of their music is not the ability to stretch one song into a 20-minute walk in the woods, but rather to prove that what they executed in the antiseptic confines of a recording studio is no sleight-of-hand. It was really Rush, and they really did it with three dudes.

Just as anti-Trekkies think the original TV show is hamfisted and overdone, anti-Rushies believe their music is over-produced and pseudo-intellectual. Or, even worse, it's just intellectual. Which, like, goes against everything Rawk is about!!

Their albums since 2112 have almost all been either concept albums or albums strung together with a loose theme. Power Windows, for example, explores themes of power and transition -- either socially, geographically, politically, or spiritually. Counterparts explores interpersonal relationships, which might be de rigeur for many bands but is rarely-trolled territory for this Canadian trio. Roll the Bones looks at issues of mortality and fortune. Vapor Trails -- their first album after a double-whammy of tragedies for Peart, who lost his only daughter in a car accident and his wife shortly after to breast cancer -- explores (shocker!) the gamut of emotions in dealing with loss and struggling to overcome tragedy.

My All-Time Top Eleven (Lesser-Known, post-1983) Rush Songs:

• The Enemy Within
• Marathon -- Better the tortoise than the hare, right?
  
• Prime Mover -- Neil's observations of life as an unexpecting father
  
• The Pass -- arguably, musings on teen suicide
  
• War Paint
• Dreamline
• Between Sun + Moon
• Everyday Glory
• One Little Victory (available with this post)
  
• Secret Touch -- The risks and rewards of letting others into your heart
  
• The Way the Wind Blows (available with this post)
  

Best post-1983 albums to purchase: Counterparts for overall stupendousness or Vapor Trails for their most musically aggressive and bombastic. If you'd rather hear a wide range of their ouevre, just buy one of their live albums. Exit... Stage Left, A Show of Hands and Rush in Rio are all fantabulous.

This post is dedicated to my fellow Rush fan and co-commissioner of our fantasy football league, Randy. For the Rushies out there, I welcome your respectful disagreement with any of this. For the non-Rushies, I only ask that you go easy on us. We're prog-rockers, not fighters.

Rush's 18 studio CDs, five concert albums, and dozen or so compilation albums are mostly available through iTunes or Amazon.com's mp3 site.