January | 2020 | redeyegin

it is with a heavy heart this morning that i help share the news that neil peart has left us. neil and his music might seem a bit out of scope for my usual writings, but keep in mind that i have been listening to rock and roll for going on five decades now, and my formative years were definitely influenced by the prog rock genre. i think it is fair to say that at one time rush was my favorite band, and neil was by far my favorite drummer. i was a drummer (still am to a certain extent), my best friends in high school were drummers, and we all revered him. i saw them three times – the ‘2112’, ‘motion pictures’, and ‘permanent waves’ tours. the band was hugely popular in northeast ohio in the seventies, more so than other parts of the country, mainly due to getting considerable airplay on the dominant rock station of the time, wmms. wmms was not only the locally dominant fm station, it was considered one of the best fm stations nationally, winning rolling stone magazine’s annual survey of best station something like seven years in a row in the seventies. legendary dj kid leo was instrumental in bringing the canadian trio’s sound down across the border, much like he had helped bring springsteen’s music west from new jersey.

after my brother texted me last night with the news, i read a few articles about him before settling down with a tall cocktail and watching a few documentaries i found on netflix. all of them referenced the notion that he was one of the great rock drummers of all time. of this i think there is little doubt. his hero growing up was keith moon, but other than the fact that they both beat the shit out of their drums, i don’t think they were all that similar. keith had more of a wild and reckless style of playing, whereas neil’s style was more of a machine gun precision. stewart copeland of the police said he ‘was the most airdrummed drummer ever’, and i confess to being a part of that tribe. but very few could come close to his level of talent, and he was a wonder to behold.

on top of that, he was the band’s lyricist, and his writings often belied his personal philosophies. he was a big fan of ayn rand at the time – ‘2112’ was roughly based on her novel ‘anthem’, and was mentioned in the credits. now that i think about it, i am sure that is why i read ‘the fountainhead’ when i was in high school. that book influenced my young mind, and although i drifted away from her philosophy as i grew up later (as did neil), the individualism aspect of it still runs deep in the way i look at the world today.

i hadn’t thought about him for quite some time. i knew he had left the band a few years ago, citing the fact that he just couldn’t do what he once did physically. but it became clear last night that he had been battling brain cancer for three years now, finally succumbing on tuesday of this week. his death brought back a flood of memories, and i had to just get it all out. thanks for listening.

rest in beats, dude.

as my friend dave c. once told me a couple of decades back when i was getting all uppity about not being a country music fan, his reply to me went something like ‘i get what you are saying, but the best songwriting comes from that genre’. i now understand there is a lot to that notion. ‘three chords and the truth’ is a phrase from the fifties that attempts to describe the simple nature of a country song. i am not sure why country has such an underpinning of great songwriting – we could argue that it usually comes from rural areas and hard scrabble life, the rough nature of the honky tonks, and so on. ken burns’ recent documentary ‘country music’ spent a lot of time on this and i think got to the core of it. but at the end of the day i am not sure we really need to analyze it. it has always been true, and i see no sign of it fading. you could argue that country has gotten too commercial and there are a lot of bad songs out there, but that has always been true about country over time, and has been true of many other genres. i am not denying that aspect of country, but i feel pretty confident in saying that we are currently living in an incredibly vibrant period of access to great songwriting, and most of it comes from the americana/country/ folk universe.

if you find this topic compelling, i urge you to check out a new documentary about the bluebird cafe. i was familiar with its existence, and i have some albums recorded there, and i generally knew about the status as a songwriters mecca. but this movie goes into great details about its history, and offers some very good live playing from tons of artists – some you will know, and many you will not. when mrs. redeyegin suggested to watch it last night, i was intrigued by the prospect of learning more about this club, but i told her i was turned off by some of the names in the marquee – namely taylor swift, garth brooks, and faith hill. don’t let that scare you off. all three were discovered there, but they all play small cameos, and it is clear that they are not the true story that is being told here. this is a story about a hole in the wall joint in a strip mall outside of nashville, that somehow became the place to go if you wanted to get your story out. it is also about how songs get written in nashville, and how it is rather unique in the fact that it is not unusual when more appreciation is given to the songwriter, rather than the singer. getting to the bluebird is now on my bucket list.

my only small beef is that it spent most of the time showcasing how just about anybody can audition to play there, and have a chance at being a taylor swift. it didn’t spend much time on people who came there just to get their song heard, and be appreciated for that. songwriters who needed to tell a tale, and didn’t want to get ground down by the nashville musical industry. can you just imagine being there to see these three playing together?: