Rush and Styx on Palladia

The other night on Palladia Channel I was watching a couple of concerts.   The first was by the Canadian band Rush, a trio that has amassed a very impressive amount of recorded work over the past 39 years.  The other featured Styx, also a band with its own resume of very popular music.  With the latter, I have enjoyed several of their songs but never got around to buying any of their albums.  I liked Too Much Time on My Hands, Come Sail Away, and most of all...Mister Roboto.  It was this last 1983 hit and the subsequent concert tour that year that reportedly caused a severe rift between front singer and creative force Dennis DeYoung and Tommy Shaw, leading to a permanent, very acrimonious split.  So I was surprise to see them back together.  But wait, that wasn't DeYoung up there singing, was it?  No, as it turned out, the rest of the band, seeing the cash cow in keeping their name and trading in on it, just played on, pretending that this integral member had never existed.  That would be like the Beatles acting like Lennon never had been there.

In stark contrast was Rush, with their members bassist/keyboardist/vocalist Geddy Lee, lead guitar Alex Lifeson, and drummer/lyricist Neil Peart bringing down the house with a closing finale performance of their first hit Working Man.  These are people who knew how to stay together over the years and work out the inevitable issues that arose between them.  I have a special respect for them and others who have persevered like this (the Rolling Stones prominently come to mind).

I already have several of Rush's albums.  My favorite songs of theirs are the aforementioned Working Man, Spirit of Radio, Red Barchetta, Vital Signs, Subdivisions, and New World Man.  And the 1981 album Moving Pictures is one of the very best rock albums ever made, in my opinion. 

And they're still together, no doubt planning to come up with another album!