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Subject: 11/28/92 - The National Midnight Star #569 ** Special Edition **
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
The National Midnight Star, Number 569
Saturday, 28 November 1992
Today's Topics:
Administrivia
Subject: FAQ: Rush Fans Common Questions [3/3]
----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 28 Nov 1992
From: rush-mgr
Subject: Administrivia
Sorry, I did not send out a digest on Thursday or Friday -- I went out
of town for the holidays and forgot to set it up! So here at long last
is part 3 of the FAQ.
- rush-mgr
----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 92 00:32:49 -0800
From: dan@rat.csc.calpoly.edu (Dan Delany)
Subject: FAQ: Rush Fans Common Questions [3/3]
Rush Fans Frequently Asked Questions List, Part 3 of 3
Generated: Sun Nov 22 00:30:12 PST 1992
This file contains questions that seem to crop up frequently in The
National Midnight Star and alt.music.rush. If you received a copy of
this file in email, other than as an issue of TNMS, it is probably
because you asked one of these questions.
This file has been expanded into 3 files because some mailers have
problems with files that are longer than 60K. Part 1 contains general
questions about the band. Part 2 contains questions inspired by
specific albums and songs up to and including stuff on _A Show Of Hands_.
Part 3 contains questions about material starting with _Presto_.
If you want a copy of the current version of this file, email me and
I'll send you the most recent version. This set of files is posted on
the 2nd and 4th Sunday of each month to rec.music.info,alt.music.rush, and
TNMS.
If you have any suggestions for additions to the list or corrections,
please send them to me at dan@rat.csc.calpoly.edu and I'll add them in
if you have documentation supporting your theory. Also, don't send
your suggestions to rush-mgr@syrinx. I'll repeat that because it's
important. Don't send faq suggestions to the moderator of the Rush
fans mailing list. He doesn't have anything to do with keeping the
faq up to date. Faq suggestions should be sent to me at
dan@rat.csc.calpoly.edu and not to the mailing list moderator.
If mail sent to dan@rat bounces, try dan@polyslo.csc.calpoly.edu or
dan@garden.csc.calpoly.edu - they should work.
I'd appreciate it if people who submit questions submit anything they know
about possible answers, since I don't have all of the answers myself!
THE FAQ IS A FILE OF FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT RUSH AND THEIR
ANSWERS. IT IS NOT AN "OBSCURE RUSH TRIVIA" FILE.
Please consider this before sending me a suggestion for an addition.
I'll repeat that because it's important and people don't get it.
THE FAQ IS A FILE OF FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT RUSH AND THEIR
ANSWERS. IT IS NOT AN "OBSCURE RUSH TRIVIA" FILE.
Please consider this before sending me a suggestion for an addition.
I know that it's fun to come up with pet theories for how things
are related to each other. But please don't send them to me saying that
"It *can't* be a coincidence!" I routinely ignore such email. Send me
a reference to an interview or a quote or something from a band member
that supports what you say, and I'll be happy to add it to this file.
If you have a pet theory that you want feedback on, post it to TNMS
or alt.music.rush.
For example: Don't point out to me that 1001001 in binary is equivalent to
73 decimal, and 73 decimal is ASCII for the letter "I", and the letter "I"
was significant to the plot of Ayn Rand's _Anthem_, and Neil Peart read
lots of Ayn Rand, therefore "The Body Electric" is a reference to _Anthem_.
Believe me, you won't be the first to point that out. But Neil Peart has
never said anything on that particular subject as far as I know, so I'm
not going to put that into the FAQ. (Especially since I think it's
a coincidence!) Remember, coincidences happen, even in Rush songs!
An additional thing to consider is that many questions are answered in,
of all places, the liner notes on the albums. Please look there before
posting a question.
DISCLAIMER: The information in this file is accurate to the best of my
knowledge, but I'm not perfect. If you have an answer to one of these
questions that doesn't match the one given here that you can verify, let me
know, and I'll put it in. But if you make a bet based on this
information and you lose, don't blame me.
One more thing: If you send me mail and I don't answer right away, please
be patient. I eventually read all of my mail. However, Rush FAQ related
stuff has a lower priority than my job.
Here are the questions I get asked the most, so I'll put them here at the
start:
What is The National Midnight Star?
It's a Rush fans newsletter that is distributed via email.
Submissions are all sent to one address, and the moderator goes through
the submissions periodically and sends out a digest containing lots
of submissions.
(If you don't know where the name "The National Midnight Star"
comes from, that means you don't watch enough Canadian TV.)
How can I subscribe to The National Midnight Star?
Send email to rush-request@syrinx.umd.edu asking to have your name added
to the list. Don't send email to me - I can't add you!
I'll repeat that. I (dan@rat.csc.calpoly.edu) have absolutely nothing
to do with the management of TNMS. I can't add your name to the
subscription list.
Latest Word on the next album:
The band is scheduled to go into the studio in January or February
1993. According to an interview with Alex on 97.7 HTZ FM in
Hamilton, Ontario, the album is expected to come out in June. Also
mentioned is that they will be taking the summer off, so we can't
expect an immediate tour. This info was originally posted in
alt.music.rush on Nov 4 by v281nr6a@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Mark D Uher).
(According to Jeff Robertson, 97.7 HTZ FM is actually in St.
Catharines.)
Atlantic/SRO has denied the rumors that there is a video release
scheduled for December.
*********** The following questions are contained in this file: **************
What are the hands in the "Presto" liner doing?
What is "Chain Lightning" about?
What is "The Pass" about?
What is "Scars" about?
What is the song, "Anagram (for Mongo)" about?
Has anybody noticed that Anagram (for Mongo) contains lots of anagrams?
What does (for Mongo) after "Anagram" on the "Presto" album mean?
What is "Red Tide" about?
Who does the RTB spoken section?
Who is the boy in the RTB video and on the RTB cover?
Is there a "Gangster of Boats" trilogy?
But why is "Where's My Thing" labelled as Part IV of the trilogy?
Is there a reason for the arrangement of the numbers on the dice on the RTB
cover?
Has anybody noticed that the "Gangster of Boats" is mentioned in the HYF
liner notes?
Who is the "Gangster of Boats?"
What does the pattern of skulls and bones at the bottom of the inside
front cover of the RTB tourbook mean? Is there a pattern to it?
Will there be a live album or concert video from the RTB tour?
-------- Questions and answers follow. -------
What are the hands in the "Presto" liner doing?
They are making scissors, paper, and stone, like in the children's
game. There is a discussion of the scissors/paper/stone
symbols in the Presto tour book. This is paraphrased in TNMS #212.
What is "Chain Lightning" about?
"I'm a weather fanatic - I really love weather, and I watch the
weather and look for a good weatherman. And, one night I was watching
it, and there are two incidents in that song that are synchronicity to
one weather report, where the weatherman showed a picture of sun-dogs,
and described them, and they are just two little points of light that
appear at sunset, often in the winter when the sky is clear and
crystalline, and they are like little prisms, and they sit about ten
degrees north and south of the setting sun, and they are just
beautiful little diamonds of light, and often-times there's a circle
of light -- one line, that connects them. So they are a really
beautiful natural phenomenon, and I love the name too. 'Sun-dogs'
just has a great sound to it. And in that same weather forecast, the
weatherman announced a meteor shower that night, and so my daughter
and I went out on the lake in the middle of the night and watched this
meteor shower. So the whole idea of the song was response and how
people respond to things, and it's a thing I've found a lot in
travelling around the world, too. It's not enough just to travel and
see things. You have to respond to them -- you have to feel them, and
a lot of the thrust of that song is how things are transferred, like
chain lightning or enthusiasm or energy or love are things that are
contagious, and if someone feels them, they are easily transferrable
to another person, or in the case of watching a meteor shower, it's
made more special if there is someone else there. 'Reflected in
another pair of eyes' is the idea that it's a wonderful thing already,
just you and the meteor shower, but if there's someone else there
with you to share it, then it multiplies, you know, it becomes
exponentially a bigger experience, so response is a theme that recurs
in several of the songs and was one of my probably dominant sub-themes
in the writing." -- Neil Peart, on the _Rush - Profiled!_ CD
What is "The Pass" about?
"There was a lot I wanted to address in that song, and it's
probably one of the hardest ones I've ever written. I spent
a lot of time on it, refining it, and even more doing research.
There was one song previously, called 'Manhattan
Project' where I wanted to write about the birth of the nuclear
age. Well, easier said than done, especially when
[writing] lyrics, you've got a couple of hundred words to say
what you want to say. So each word counts, and each word had
better be accurate, and so I found in the case of the
Manhattan Project, I was having to go back and read histories
of the time, histories of the place, biographies of all the
people involved, and that's not without it's own rewards, but
it's a lot of work to go to to write a song - having to read
a dozen books and collate all your knowledge and experience
just so you can write, you know, if it says the scientists
were in the desert sands, well, make sure they were and why,
and all that. So with this song it was the same. I felt
concerned about it, but, at the same time, I didn't want the
classic thing of 'Oh, life's not so bad, you know, it's worth
living' and all that. I didn't want one of those pat, kind
of cliched, patronizing statements, so I really worked hard
to find out true stories, and among the people that I write
to are people who are going to universities, to MIT, and collecting
stories from them about people they had known and
what they felt, and why the people had taken this desperate
step and all of that and trying really hard to understand
something that, fundamentally, to me is totally ununderstandable.
I just can't relate to it at all, but I wanted to
write about it. And the facet that I most wanted to write
about was to de-mythologize it - the same as with 'Manhattan
Project' - it de-mythologized the nuclear age, and it's the
same thing with this facet - of taking the nobility out of it
and saying that yes, it's sad, it's a horrible, tragic thing
if someone takes their own life, but let's not pretend it's a
hero's end. It's not a triumph. It's not a heroic epic.
It's a tragedy, and it's a personal tragedy for them, but
much more so for the people left behind, and I really started
to get offended by the samurai kind of values that were attached
to it, like here's a warrior that felt it was better
to die with honor, and all of that kind of offended me. I
can understand someone making the choice; it's their choice
to make. I can't relate to it, and I could never imagine it,
for myself, but still I thought it's a really important thing
to try to get down." -- Neil Peart, on the _Rush - Profiled!_ CD
What is "Scars" about?
"I think it's part of everyone's experience that a certain
record reflects a certain period of their life, and that's a
pleasurable scar, you know, there's a mark left on you, a
psychological fingerprint left by a very positive experience.
And music is an easy one, but it translates to so many other
parts of life where it's a given that, for instance, the
sense of smell is one of the strongest forces in your memory,
where a given smell will suddenly conjure up a whole time of
your life, and again, it triggers another scar, it triggers
another psychological imprint that was left by a pleasurable
thing. So it was just, again, the metaphor of scars and
using it to say that, as the song does, that these are positive
and negative aspects of life that have both left their
mark. Trying to make it universal, it's not autobiographical,
and I took a whole autobiographical story of my own and
made it one line, basically, but there are other things in
there, parts of life that I've responded to in a sense of
joy, and in a sense of compassion, and there's the exaltation
of walking down a city street and feeling like you're above
the pavement, and Christmas in New York is the perfect time
to feel that, really, where you just get charged up by the
whole energy and the positive feelings of it all."
-- Neil Peart, on the _Rush -- Profiled!_ CD
What is the song, "Anagram (for Mongo)" about?
"It doesn't really say one thing; it says a bunch of little things, and
I think that's OK as long as it sounds good. You know, as long as it
rolls off the tongue kind of thing? So I think different songs are
different exercises, to a degree, and I think that if they feel like
exercises, then there's something wrong with the song. But if they
can slip by in a kind of cohesive and fluid way, or if the effect is
to be disjoint, and sometimes that's what you're after. Sometimes you
want it to be jarring and disjointed and nonsensical. I think it
depends on what you're trying to do, and whether you've achieved it in
your mind, and whether it actually worked, and 'Anagram,' I think,
did work, even though it's a game - the whole song is a game. The
choruses are quite smooth and quite interesting, and they have a nice
sound to them and they kind of mock the whole song itself, so I think
it was effective there." -- Geddy Lee, on the _Rush - Profiled!_ CD
Has anybody noticed that Anagram (for Mongo) contains lots of anagrams?
Yes. {I resisted putting this into the faq for a long time, since
this seems to be about as shocking as pointing out that
"The Big Money" is about, of all things, money, or that
"Countdown" is about a launch. But it shows up in TNMS
every once in a while. Dan}
What does (for Mongo) after "Anagram" on the "Presto" album mean?
It's a joke from the movie _Blazing Saddles_, referring to the
"Candygram for Mongo" scene, according to Geddy on Rockline 12/4/89.
What is "Red Tide" about?
"It's a bit of a selfish concern, really. I really love
wildlife, and I spend a lot of my time in the outdoors when
I'm not working, so that's important to me. One of my main
hobbies is cycling, so air quality kind of becomes of critical
importance. So it is a selfish thing, and it's something
I've written about before, on the previous album - the song,
'Second Nature'. So, again, you want to say things in a way
that is not only not preachy, but also not boring. So finding
the images like 'Second Nature' - I was really fond of
that analogy of saying 'we want our homes to be a second
nature', you know. That was, again, taking a common phrase
and being able to twist it to say what you want it to say.
So, with 'Red Tide' it was a little more adamant, because I
think the time is a little more critical, and I had to be
firmer about it, but still there are ways of getting at it,
and to me there are jokes in there, too, that probably no one
in the world will ever get, but in the first verse, when I'm
talking about 'Nature's new plague' and then 'Lovers pausing
at the bedroom door to find an open store' and all that, to
me that was obviously referring to AIDS, but it was the irony
of modern life, you know, where spontaneous love still certainly
does occur, but here are two lovers who have just met
in the middle of the night, and they have to go find a store
before they can consummate their new relationship, you know,
and to me, when I put those things down, I have a smile, but
I know that it's one that will never be shared."
- Neil Peart, on the _Rush-Profiled!_ CD
Who does the RTB spoken section?
Geddy Lee, according to Neil on the Dec 2 1991 "Rockline".
Who is the boy in the RTB video and on the RTB cover?
According to "The New Music Magazine" 11/11/91, his name is
Michael Vander Veldt.
Is there a "Gangster of Boats" trilogy?
No songs other than "Where's My Thing?" are labelled as being part of
this trilogy.
But why is "Where's My Thing" labelled as Part IV of the trilogy?
S72UJOH@TOE.TOWSON.EDU has posted that Neil said that was a joke
on the Dec 1991 Rockline show. (I didn't hear that show - can
anybody confirm this or provide me with the exact quote?)
Is there a reason for the arrangement of the numbers on the dice on the RTB
cover?
I doubt it. And if there is a reason, I doubt that it will be
made public. (Much like the significance of the HYF cover)
Please don't send me mail saying that "it just has to mean something."
Lots of people have theories about that. But I haven't heard any
"official" word on the subject yet. If you have a theory about
this and have to share it, post it to TNMS or alt.music.rush and
see if anybody is interested in discussing it. Don't send me mail.
I won't add it to the faq without support from a band member.
Has anybody noticed that the "Gangster of Boats" is mentioned in the HYF
liner notes?
Yes.
Who is the "Gangster of Boats?"
degennar@bmsrs.usc.edu sent me this:
According to Neil on the Dec 2 1991 Rockline, it's a running joke.
Geddy and Alex keep saying to Neil, "If you don't come up with a name
for the album soon, we're going to call it Gangster of Boats."
It's also, supposedly, the nick-name given to the Mac they use.
What does the pattern of skulls and bones at the bottom of the inside
front cover of the RTB tourbook mean? Is there a pattern to it?
It's Morse code for "Remember Death".
Will there be a live album or concert video from the RTB tour?
"I don't think so, no. Definitely not a live album and no plans for a
video." -- Neil Peart, in the April 23 1992 TNMS interview
##############################################################################
Please send me your suggestions for additions or corrections.
But please read the beginning of this faq file for advice
on whether or not your suggestion is appropriate for the faq
before sending me mail. You might be better off posting your
idea to The National Midnight Star or alt.music.rush for feedback.
dan@rat.csc.calpoly.edu Dan Delany
"Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love."
-- Charlie Brown
----------------------------------------------------------
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The contents of The National Midnight Star are solely the opinions and
comments of the individual authors, and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of the authors' management, or the mailing list management.
Copyright The Rush Fans Mailing List, 1992.
Editor, The National Midnight Star
(Rush Fans Mailing List)
********************************************
End of The National Midnight Star Number 569
********************************************