Rush Live at the PNC Bank Arts Center 7/08/07 Review

Well this was a pretty packed week for me in terms of music, I was able to get a hold of The Smashing Pumpkins' new album a bit early which means that has been listened to quite a lot despite The Smashing Pumpkins' show of disapproval of the downloading of their music at Live Earth. While on that note, there was also Live Earth which seems to have received more criticism than praise, when looking passed the environmental issue, something which the concert seems to have done, there was actually some pretty impressive performances from bands like The Smashing Pumpkins, Bon Jovi, and even the larger than life Spinal Tap. All of that paled in comparison to what was greeting me on Sunday. I went to see Rush at the PNC Bank Arts Center in New Jersey, but before you read on, I just want to let you know this review is going to be very condensed and brief compared to what they deserve, because to explain a Rush concert in detail is so difficult because of its length and musical technicality.

Being that the show was Rush, I had high expectations, I was expecting a lengthy show, and was crossing my fingers for a lot of my favorite songs to be played. I got one of those and a bit of the other. Rush took the stage at 7:40 and opened up the show with "Limelight", the band sounded great, Geddy's voice was spot on and as normal the musicianship of Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart were fantastic. The band went to play a handful of songs from their newest album, enough to actually take up 1/3 of the entire setlist. While that may sound a little disapointing, the songs performed live gave me a completely different view of the quality of the album, their performance of these songs brought more life to the album which I thought was a decent album but not Rush quality. Also the setlist was really lacking their early material from the 70's with just two songs being performed from that decade: "Circumstances" and "A Passage to Bangkok". Towards the conclusion of the show Neil Peart gave a stellar drum solo which lasted what seemed to be around seven minutes, his talent is completely mind blowing and almost unfathomable. The band threw in some classic favorites into the setlist, namely "Tom Sawyer", "The Spirit of the Radio", "YYZ", "Freewill" and "Limelight". The band threw in a lot of video sequences throughout the show with band members acting in several of them, and my personal favorite was the intro to "Tom Sawyer" was a South Park introduction, one which must have been specifically made for the band, because being an avid South Park fan I know that wasn't in any of their episodes and upon further research I learned that Neil is actually good friends with the South Park creators.

The show ended at about 11:00, which means the show spanned a solid three hours and twenty minutes, but only three hours of actual playing time considering they had around a twenty minute intermission, but perhaps the word "only" shouldn't have been used in that sentence because three hours is one hell of a long show. These guys certainly aren't young, but their energy and talent has not diminished. One really has to give this band credit for their ability to go on night after night putting on such an epic show for such a long period of time. As I said before, to review this show in detail would be nearly impossible, my only recommendation is seeing it for yourself.

Setlist:

01. Limelight
02. Digital Man
03. Entre Nous
04. Mission
05. Freewill
06. The Main Monkey Business
07. The Larger Bowl
08. Secret Touch
09. Circumstances
10. Between The Wheels
11. Dreamline

Intermission

Set 2:

Video Intro

12. Far Cry
13. Workin' Them Angels
14. Armor And Sword
15. Spindrift
16. The Way The Wind Blows
17. Subdivisions
18. Natural Science
19. Witch Hunt
20. MalNar
21. Drum Solo
22. Hope
23. Summertime Blues
24. The Spirit Of Radio
25. Tom Sawyer

Encore:

26. One Little Victory
27. A Passage to Bangkok
28. YYZ