FAR BEYOND 2112

They called me 2112 in high school. Different kids, not knowing that others were doing the same. I didn’t get the reference at first, but when your first name is Rush and it’s the 1970s, that’s what happens.

I had heard of the band called Rush before, loving their name for obvious reasons. I heard that their performance at Austin’s Paramount Theater downtown had rattled the lighting fixtures at the hotel next door. So when I learned that their latest album was called 2112, that number people had been calling me, I went out and bought it. It sounded like nothing else I had been listening to, but I already loved Genesis and Led Zeppelin who had seemed worlds apart from each other. This somehow had merged those two rock and roll worlds.

It was a concept piece that told a story, and like The Who’s , it was grand, yet somehow, , delivered by nothing more than a voice, a guitar, a bass guitar and drums. A wall of sound from just three players. I saw that the drummer wrote, and I also noticed that he was no ordinary drummer. When Neil Peart played the drums, it was not merely about laying the firm rock foundation behind a rock band. It was melody, experimentation, power and storytelling.