Today’s Tom Sawyer

Rush

28 October 2012: Quicken Loans Arena, Cleveland, Ohio

In the foreword to my book, Marvel legend Tom DeFalco defines the Golden Age of Comics as whatever point at which the reader first discovered comic books. I couldn’t agree more and have been known to expand that same theory to musical discovery. Because he's a drummer and a fan of sci-fi/fantasy/all things geeky, I introduced Jack to Rush’s music a few of years ago, but it wasn’t until this year’s Clockwork Angels album and accompanying steampunk novel came out, that Jack fully claimed the band as his own.

My original intent was to take Jack to the Time Machine Tour last year, but travel plans forced me delay his live experience. As is often the case, hindsight proved that things turned out for the best. I’ve seen and heard the DVD/CD from that Cleveland tour stop and was disappointed with lead singer Geddy Lee’s vocals and, beyond the Moving Pictures set, the song selection didn’t do much for me. Any fears I may have had about either Lee’s voice or setlist decisions going into this show were quickly erased.

Jack and I have been excited about this show for months. With our anticipation peaking, we headed out early, and arrived downtown around 6:30 for the 7:30 curtain. The garage I had intended to park in (attached to The Q) was already full and only accepting pre-purchased passes, but I had a backup plan and hit the garage directly across from the main entrance and box office of the arena. Leaving our jackets in the car, we dashed across the street and between the raindrops to get to the show. After a bite at Clevelander Michael Symon’s signature restaurant in The Q, we decided to scope out our seats.

On the way, we heard a voice call out Jack’s name. It was his drum instructor there with his son! We chatted with them for a bit (including his instructor telling him they’d break down drummer Neil Peart’s bells performance in their next lesson!) before heading off to check out the concert swag. The vendors only had adult small sized shirts in two designs, but thankfully one of them was one Jack really wanted. Decked out in his new shirt and clutching a newly purchased pin set, we headed to our seats to settle in for the show.

Walking into our row, a first-generation fan jokingly quizzed Jack as he passed, asking “When did Rush release their first album?” In a moment of introversion, the kiddo didn’t answer, but after we got into our seats, Jack turned to me and said, “It was 1974, wasn’t it, Dad?”

I’ve heard complaints about this tour’s setlist choices, but as far as Jack and I were concerned, it was pretty damn perfect. Focusing almost exclusively on their ‘80s output and the new album, this felt tailor made for both of us. The three-hour show was divided into two acts: The first leaning heavily on Power Windows; The second consisting of three-fourths of the Clockwork Angels album, along with a string of classics to close out the main set and encore.

Thematically, the song selection just works. The philosophies behind the Kevin J. Anderson/Neil Peart Clockwork Angels novel mesh with the ideas in “Grand Designs” and “Middletown Dreams” and “Territories” off of 1985’s Power Windows. Cuts like Snakes & Arrows’ “Far Cry” (the lone song from the early 2000s in the set) and Roll the Bones’ “Dreamline” also fit perfectly in the setlist by bookending the new material.

The first set highlights included the show-opening “Subdivisions” and “Territories”, along with the Roll the Bones’ instrumental, “Where’s My Thing?” – providing the kiddo his first exposure to a Peart solo! Jack was truly transfixed by The Professor. He was completely in tune with what the rhythmist was doing, clearly studying his every move when projected on the big screen. Jack thrilled with every rotation of the drum riser and every flip of the stick. On the drive home, Jack asked if I noticed how Peart wasn’t tossing his sticks in the air or twirling them just for show, but that he was using that as an opportunity to change up his grip on the sticks. (I hadn’t noticed that.) Two additional, shorter drum solos followed in the second set, but that first one cemented Jack’s appreciation of the master.

The band’s use of moving pictures (pun intended) – projecting both live images from the stage and canned videos – was great. I don’t know if the footage accompanying “Territories” was a holdover from an ’80s tour or something new for this one, but we both enjoyed it and the footage for “Far Cry”. And I had to laugh in surprise when the kiddo nudged me and exclaimed “The Three Stooges!” during “Big Money”. I had no idea he even knew who they were. But it was the videos for the Clockwork Angels material in the second set that really stood out.

When the band took the stage after a short intermission, the Clockwork Angels String Ensemble joined them. It was this set of songs that has endeared the band to Jack, and reignited my love of Rush. “Caravan” is Jack’s favorite Rush song, and it delivered live – bombast, pyrotechnics, everything an 11-year-old could ask for! While I dig that song, I was thrilled when the band ripped into “Wish Them Well” (one of the few Clockwork Angels songs they’ve been rotating in and out of the setlist), my favorite of the new stuff. The surprise for us, though, was “The Wreckers”. A powerful song with an accompanying video that ended up a live favorite of Jack’s and mine among the second set.

Jack commented a couple of times that the strings seemed a little lost in the mix on certain songs, but they shone during a number of Clockwork Angels cuts and “YYZ”.

I was surprised to see the entire upper bowl curtained off, but I don’t know that it was necessarily a bad thing. The band can still say they’re playing arenas, the fans get a more intimate show and better seating options, and everyone’s happy.

The myth that Rush doesn’t have any female fans is just that, a myth. The arena was easily split 50/50 between the sexes. And the new material and amount of kids there with their families dispel the idea that Rush is nothing more than a dinosaur band with an aging catalog and matching fan base. We saw everyone from preteens to pensioners. The air drumming cliché, however, holds true. I think if you’re a Rush fan of a certain age (myself included), it’s simply impossible to not air drum to the likes of “YYZ”, “The Spirit of Radio”, or “Tom Sawyer”. And from the vantage point of our seats, it was actually very cool to see the entire floor section air drumming along with Peart during those classic songs.

Clearly a Rush concert amateur, Jack informed me at the intermission that his legs were going to be bruised for days because of the hand drumming he was doing on his thighs as he drummed along.

My musical tastes and my dad’s have never really intersected – certainly not while I was growing up! It’s been such a cool experience over the last few years to be doing things like this with my kid. And when I hear Jack explaining to Tracy the day after the show how “we got them to do an encore!” I realize that even though I’m working without a blueprint, I might be doing something right. I have seen Rush twice previously: once in the ’80s, and again in the ’90s. But this time will always be special because it was Jack’s first Rush concert. A perfect storm of music, youthful enthusiasm, bonding, air drumming, and joy: Emotional feedback on timeless wavelength.

(All photos by Adam Besenyodi.)

They Say It’s Like Religion

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
17 April 2012: Quicken Loans Arena, Cleveland, Ohio

While never fanatical, I have always appreciated Bruce Springsteen’s music. Friends have steadfastly maintained that attending a Springsteen concert on a night when he’s playing with the E Street Band and they are all “on” is something akin to religion. After witnessing what took place in Cleveland on a Tuesday night, I’m of the mind that everyone should attend a Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concert once in their life just to experience what rock and roll is about on a primal level.

The first tour for the E Street Band without saxophonist Clarence Clemons is noteworthy for the void left by The Big Man, but also for the way both the band and fans clearly have rallied around Jake Clemons who has stepped in to fill his late uncle’s very big shoes. With the house lights up, there was little fanfare – but absolutely no mistaking what was happening – when the recently dubbed “Little Big Man” stepped forward for his Cleveland sax solo debut during the set-opening “Badlands”.

Born to Run was always huge, and Born In the U.S.A. broke Springsteen on a megastar level while I was a teenager. Although I enjoy 2002’s The Rising and this year’s Wrecking Ball, with a catalog so rich and so deep I wasn’t expecting to know a lot of the songs heading into the show. That proved to be a fairly accurate prediction, but it didn’t keep me from both marveling at the faithful and finding myself caught up in the throng.

Nearly a third of the setlist was frontloaded with Wrecking Ball cuts, including the powerful one-two punch of “We Take Care of Our Own” and the title track. These selections stood out in the live setting, alongside “Shackled and Drawn” and “Jack of All Trades”, as powerful social commentary on the state of the Union.

The thing about Springsteen is that he mixes it up from show to show – a rarity in this day and age, often playing songs that are specifically tailored to the audience. For the Northeast Ohio crowd, he brought out 1995’s “Youngstown” off of The Ghost of Tom Joad that finished with a dizzying Nils Lofgren guitar solo. Written for the movie of the same name that was set in Cleveland, “Light of Day” made its tour debut as a show stopping, rollicking high point that mixed bits of “Land of 1,000 Dances” and “You Can’t Sit Down”.

As impressive as Lofgren’s spinning guitar work was, it paled next to Max Weinberg’s efforts behind the drum kit. Relentless with the backbeat, he is the musical backbone of the band. It’s staggering to put into perspective these men – Springsteen, Steven Van Zandt, Lofgren, Garry Tallent, Roy Bittan, and Weinberg – are all in their 60s and put on a clinic on how to deliver a relentless three-hour rock and roll show with no breaks and indomitable energy.

(Springsteen’s wife and E Street Band vocalist Patti Scialfa was absent this night, as she was “home making sure the kids stay outta the drug stash.”)

Springsteen moved freely from the main stage to an island stage behind the pit near the center of the arena floor, and it seemed something unpredictable happened each time he ventured out there. He plucked a young fan out of the crowd to sing along with him on The Rising’s “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day”, and then carried her to the main stage to rock out with the band. On another trip out during the Apollo medley, he chugged a couple of beers handed to him by random fans and returned to the main stage by crowd surfing through the pit.

Late set appearances by “Because the Night” and “The Rising” were welcome additions. Loosely considered the “main set closer” (there was no substantial break in the show to necessarily indicate where the show ended and an encore began), “Light of Day” segued into a small set to finish the night, containing mind-blowing versions of “Born to Run”, “Dancing in the Dark” – the night’s only appearance by a Born in the U.S.A. track – and “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out”.

As expected, the obligatory but no less sincere tribute to Clemons took place during the last song when Springsteen was at the mid-floor stage and sang the line about The Big Man joining the band. The acknowledgment of Clemons’ absence was clearly cathartic for the faithful, a proper good-bye.

Along with being a dominant presence in the E Street Band, Clemons’ talent has been featured on dozens of other artists’ work through the years, including playing sax on three tracks from the Michael Stanley Band’s 1980 album, Heartland. I was fortunate enough to interview Clemons in December 2006 for my presentation at the Pop Conference in April of the following year. My paper explored the impact an artist’s hometown civic image plays in their attempt at national stardom, focusing on the Michael Stanley Band and late 1970s Cleveland. There was one phrase that Clemons used over and over in our short 20 minute phone conversation when describing why Springsteen succeeded and why Michael Stanley didn’t: “You can’t out-Bruce Bruce!”

I now understand what Clemons meant.

(All photos by Adam Besenyodi.)

The Big Come Up

The Black Keys
20 March 2012: Quicken Loans Area, Cleveland, Ohio

It is a strange thing to witness firsthand as a local band you have followed and championed ascends. To see the group evolve and, ultimately, achieve widespread acceptance from the masses is bittersweet. Alongside the feeling of vindication in your personal taste, there is the feeling of losing something that belonged to you, something you shared with a core group of fans. The Black Keys is to my mid-life what Nine Inch Nails was to my young adulthood.

Over the last decade, the Black Keys have risen to bona fide rock stardom. And now, they’ve proven it with an arena tour by selling out Madison Square Garden, then turning around and adding a second date that promptly sold out, too. But on this night in Cleveland, it was about perspective. And the magnitude of playing their hometown arena didn’t escape drummer Pat Carney and singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach. The latter taking the stage in a Firestone High School “Beat Green” t-shirt (Green High School being one of his alma mater’s rivals), and extending a “Hello, our hometown!” greeting that seemed to include genuine wonderment at where they’ve found themselves.

The setlist remained steady, virtually unchanged since the U.S. tour began, opening with Brothers’ “Howlin’ for You” and “Next Girl”, followed by El Camino’s “Run Right Back”. Carney’s elastic pacesetting for the opening trio of songs seemed to speed things up considerably from their familiar album versions, with Auerbach matching him stride for stride. The mid-set quartet of classics kicked off with Thickfreakness’ title track, keeping the faithful in thrall.

Although I don't think the new album's material is as strong as their previous efforts, as is often the case, it came off well in the live setting. The two El Camino songs that proved most revelatory were “Little Black Submarine” and “Nova Baby”. “Submarine” is probably my least favorite track off the new album, but its Led Zeppelin vibe translated epically to the live setting. “Nova Baby”, which feels like a late-album filler track, was transformed into a percussive powerhouse by virtue of Carney’s chest-thrumming beats.

The main set closer, the single “Lonely Boy”, had the 11,000 individual bodies churning as one, and the three-song encore opened with a giant disco ball and Auerbach in the sickeningly sweet falsetto of Brothers’ “Everlasting Light”. The fan club seats we secured were great (and priced incredibly). Five rows from the floor on the stage-side aisle, we were positioned perfectly for the kiddo to enjoy his second Black Keys show and first Quicken Loans Arena concert. And as some of the GA attendees started to make their way past us and up to the exits while the band was still jamming, the kiddo was on the receiving end of multiple high-fives as he rocked out on his air guitar along with Auerbach and danced in the aisle!

Things have clearly changed. It was a setlist for the converted with 14 of the 21 songs pulled from 2010 or later, but the deep-catalog nuggets (one track each from the first four albums) were well-picked. And the Black Keys are no longer strictly just a two-man operation, but similar to the Brothers Tour, Carney and Auerbach were able to preserve their history with in-show selections that stripped away the supplemental musicians and reestablished their past glory as a duo. Ten years and ten days since their first gig at the Beachland Ballroom, the Akron duo delivered on all the promise of their first arena stop to the hometown crowd.

(All photos by Adam and Tracy Besenyodi, original artwork by Marq Spusta.)