Grass and Sky

Earlier this summer, I thought to myself, it's been a while since the last Rush concert. Just about one day later, eve11 called to say that her boyfriend was buying tickets to the Rush concert, did I want one?

Fast forward to tonight. The Time Machine Tour is awesome. The music was, as always, fantastic, the guys were energetic and looked like they were having fun, the videos were all great.

"There's a steam punkish influence on what we're doing on this tour," said Alex Lifeson in an interview back in June. And that steam punk influence was pretty strong. Time machines on the stage (housing Lifeson's amps), as well as all sorts of other cool stuff, all with gears and cogs and steam coming out at various points of the show. The video to go along with their new song, Caravan, in particular reminded me of I'm On A Blimp, courtesy of Dragon*Con TV.

I probably liked the 30th Anniversary tour best, but this comes in a close second.

Oh, and the Consol Energy Center is beautiful. Huge and spacious, the seats were comfy (although I ended up with some sort of black gunk all over my foot - don't know where that came from), and the sight lines were pretty good. I don't think there's a bad seat in the house. Unlike the outdoor amphitheaters, they sell more than just beer (I had a Smirnoff Ice, but they also had mixed drinks and wine, all for cheaper than the draft beers) so I was a happy camper. It was a great sneak peek at the new arena, since it will probably be a while before I can afford hockey tickets at New Arena prices.

It's a completely smoke-free environment, in theory, but someone near us lit up a joint or three midway through the show, which reminded me of the Oasis concert I went to with lyda_pearl in 2006. All of us adults were getting contact highs from the second hand smoke at that show.