No Rush, Thanks

By Steve Evans

I love rock documentaries. Any chance I get to learn context and meaning behind the music, I jump on it. Sometimes I get lucky and encounter an unintentional comedy disguised as a rock doc, leaving me sputtering with laughter. Rob Reiner’s great mockumentary This is Spinal Tap (1984) relentlessly skewered rock and roll pomposity and stupidity, of which there remains no shortage.

Sometimes, though, you don’t need a work of satire to help high-minded musicians look foolish. Often, they don’t need any help.

This set the scene for my viewing of Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, a film about the Canadian power trio’s 40-odd year career. The picture came out eight years ago, though I had successfully dodged it until last night when, in a fit of tedium, I cracked into a six-pack of particularly good beer and cued up that Rush doc. Eons ago, when I was in high school, Rush was an anomaly. If you listened to them at all, it was just to tide you over in-between Zeppelin albums. From the first time I heard the band, I thought a root canal could be no more painful. Or a spinal tap. Not even sure why I watched the damn documentary last night, except beer was involved.

But I’m glad I did. This is a band that should be slapped for writing a song titled By-Tor and the Snow Dog, which still makes me giggle decades on. Their early success, 2112, is a ponderous space-rock concept album that devotees say is best experienced, if not understood, under the influence of vodka and Quaaludes. From my high school days I recall the band’s biggest fans were people you wouldn’t want to be alone with.

The stumbling block for me was always Geddy Lee, the band’s bassist. His banshee-shrieking, kicked-in-the-balls vocals could resurrect a cemetery of skeletons who’d abandon their graves in mute protest. Tunes like Tom Sawyer and Freewill (a wince-inducing ode to whack-job Ayn Rand) were staples of MOR classic rock radio stations. Still are, for all I know. My best recollection of Rush in their heyday was making fun of them with my own band of hooligans out at the lake, blasting the local FM station on a boombox and striking absurd rock-hero poses on the sand whenever a Rush tune was played. Some music ages well. Some music does not. Some sounds just as ludicrous as the day the tunes were pressed into vinyl.

What elevates this documentary to comedy gold is the occasional interview with one of the band’s celebrity fans. When a no-talent peanut head like Jack Black starts using the words “Rush” and “intellectual” in the same sentence, it’s time to pop another beer and stare in amazement that absolutely no one, except me, is laughing. And Sweet Baby Jeebus laff I did, until my tears fell like rain.

Cinema Uprising Copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.