Sunday main event! Top night of the tour so far!
Trish, Mike, Andre and I watched the World Cup final during the evening and then grabbed a few sausages before heading to RUSH. Andre scored a $25 ticket to the show on our way in and he also introduced us to a new stairwell to take down to the grounds. I may not have spoken about the original stairwell on this blog before…but there is a killer long stairwell that we take down from downtown to the festival and at the end of the night, it is the bane of our existence! Little did we know that there is another less cumbersome stairwell 100 meters to the left! Doh! This made for easy walking on the way back.
I headed to the Silent Auction tent to discover that it is NEXT Sunday when the Sam Roberts picture goes up for auction! But we grabbed a few beer and headed to a good spot in the crowd. While it wasn’t our regular spot, it wasn’t too far from it back near the beer tent. I would say that there was pretty well close to the amount of people that KISS had the year before. No one was clawing our eyes out for a spot…it was pretty relaxed. Actually, at the time of writing this, I found out that RUSH played to 32,220 fans…which is the largest they have ever played to as a headliner.
RUSH came out in full force and the crowd loved it. Not knowing much RUSH (although I was indoctrinated into them with a couple of discs from Troy a few weeks back), I thoroughly enjoyed their show. They were quite intense. They had some excellent videos playing in the background as well. You know…everyone feels that Neil Peart is amazing…and I wholeheartedly agree. But I can’t get over how much each of the band members stands on their own as well. Geddy Lee ‘slapping de bass’ and his wild vocals…Alex Lifeson handling most of the other duties involving synth and guitar…it was an incredible performance. I gotta ask…if I had as many drums as Neil, would I be a decent player as well? It’s almost like I can just swing my stick and hit *something*. I’m kidding around.
We left after the new song BU2B and headed for the Swell Season. I was really disappointed that the two shows overlapped as I was really digging the RUSH concert and I knew that their second set was going to be the entire Moving Pictures set. But I figured we had to give the Swell Season a shot as they don’t’ come by that often whereas it’s almost a guarantee that I can see RUSH again in my lifetime.
As soon as we arrived at the Hard Rock Stage I knew it was going to be trouble. You couldn’t hear the RUSH concert too much from us…but Levon Helm was dominating the sound waves and it pretty well crushed the hopes of hearing a good folk act like the Swell Season. They rolled with it though…they realized that they would have to compete so they changed a few songs around and just gave it their all. Glen Hansard has one of the more powerful voices I’ve ever heard and he really touched me with his songs. I was inspired after seeing them. At first I was thinking I may just see a few songs and go around the rest of the festival but it wouldn’t have happened with this great music coming from the stage. The band made a few snide comments about RUSH (although it was pretty well the Levon Helm Band blanketing our area with music) and requested that the Bluesfest organizers should think twice between slotting a folk act in between a prog-rock and a classic rock band! I wholeheartedly agree.
I would see the Swell Season live again in a heartbeat. Like I said, I was musically inspired after the show was done and I think it is going to be my favourite set of the entire festival. It’s too bad that they were hassled by the sound bleed from the other stages, but so be it. In fact, Benoit was chatting with the pianist of the band afterward and she didn’t seem to have noticed it all that much. If she did, she didn’t make it too known which was nice of her. I did manage to snap a photo of her and Benoit after the show. I must admit that SLR cameras are a mystery to me so I practiced for about fifty pictures before the magical moment happened. I didn’t want to be that guy who takes an out of focus shot!
We headed over to see Levon Helm (who, that day, I found out was the drummer from The Band!) and we showed up for their last song where the guy from the Swell Season were up on stage with them! Sweet! Get drowned out of their own show, but get invited up to a legendary stage! That’s even-steven in my books!
We headed back over to RUSH but they were done and all they had was a little video vignette with Paul “Slappin’ De Bass” and Jason Segel (who is a huge RUSH fan). We headed home for the night and I stayed over at Mike’s that night considering I had my first day of work after a good vacation.
RUSH Setlist
SET 1
THE SPIRIT OF RADIO
TIME STAND STILL
PRESTO
STICK IT OUT
WORKIN’ THEM ANGELS
LEAVE THAT THING ALONE
FAITHLESS
BU2B
FREE WILL
MARATHON
SUBDIVISIONS
SET 2
TOM SAWYER
RED BARCHETTA
YYZ
LIMELIGHT
CAMERA EYE
WITCH HUNT
VITAL SIGNS
CARAVAN
LOVE 4 SALE
CLOSER TO THE HEART
2112 OVERTURE / TEMPLES
FAR CRY
ENCORE
LA VILLA STRANGIATO
WORKING MAN