I saw RUSH last night at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles. In one word, it was WOW.
First of all, the sonics of that show were the best I have ever heard at an indoor show. The drums at that show were the loudest I EVER heard and I have been to a few RUSH shows before, Maple Leaf Gardens, Caeser's Palace, and maybe another. The impact from those drums even startled me a few times, just fantastic sonically.
The band sounded incredible, Alex and Geddy were their usual brilliance, and Anika was terrific and the fans were really behind her. The show of appreciation for her on Tom Sawyer I think emotionally hit her. At one point there were 2 female performers on stage, Anika and a mystery guest, who is one of my favorite artists. I saw the other at a show in San Francisco long ago and that was one on my fav's.
I stated this thread by linking the Juno Finding My Way performance. Compared to the same performance last night I would say it was 10/10 last night and 5/10 at the Juno's. Geddy's voice was really strong yesterday. In fact it was so sweet to hear the gasps of appreciation from the people around me when Geddy hit the vocal high notes so nicely on Free Will.
Normally, at a RUSH show there are songs that I am not blown away with initially, these are the new songs. There were no new songs last night. For example, in the Vegas show I went to they were playing the new album a Clockwork Angels. I liked it but it was not familiar. Last night, when they played Head Long Flight, I was blown away. Every song except maybe my fav, Working Man was right up there with the best rendition of it.
I took the half my age friend to the show, and he is a guitar player. He did not know the music as well as me, but he was pretty shocked. My only complaint on the show was related to how my friend would have seen the show. The camera folks did not show the correct musicians in almost every passage of every song. There are parts of a song when you need to show Alex, Geddy, or Anika. In ALL cases, they did it incorrectly. Not so big an issue for me, but my friend would have seen more into the performance if the camera work was better.
All in all, this was the best sounding RUSH show I ever went to. The Forum and the sound engineers brought out the great sound from RUSH. In the past, I would think I wish Neil would hit harder on the drums. After hearing Anika pound the crap out of the drums, it was not Neil it was the sound guys.
I am going to try and see them again in Toronto when I go home for the summer visit.
BTW - a lot of nostalgia for me, like in seeing my old high school and school lockers projected onto the video screen.