Canadian band Rush goes steam-powered

MusicRadar reports that Canadian rock band Rush is going steampunk for their Time Machine tour.

According to Hughes & Kettner, Alex Lifeson’s TriAmp and Coreblade amps have been incorporated into the awesome custom cabinets you can see in the accompanying pictures, which the German amp gurus describe as “simply the biggest and best looking Hughes & Kettner rig that has ever been.”

Now he just needs one of these ridiculously cool steampunk guitars to play through it. Or a steampunk synth.

While they are rock giants up here in the frozen tundras, you basically only ever hear them playing on the classic rock station to fulfill the CRTC requisite Canadian content quota. It’s rather sad. I might not like them as much as I remember a few classmates did back in grade school, but I’ve always sort of appreciated that they proved Canadians can rock too.

And with a drum set like this, you’d better damn well be able to bring the noise.

Neil Peart and the Clockwork Drum Set
Neil Peart and the Clockwork Drum Set

That… is so damn cool. The only other thing I’ve seen this week that’s even remotely as cool is the Cthukulele. Coincidentally, Jodi also introduced me to the George Hrab podcast Geologic, who while being a sciencey skeptical atheist kind of guy, is also a music ubergeek probably on par with my wedding co-groom Mark. I’m not much of a music geek myself, normally. But if you guys keep this stuff up, I may have to mend my ways.

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Canadian band Rush goes steam-powered
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8 thoughts on “Canadian band Rush goes steam-powered

  1. 6

    They’re relatively hardcore libertarians. Listen to – or better, google the lyrics to “Red Barchetta” and read them. That isn’t to say that they don’t talk about it, it is just that that song made a lot more sense after I found that out.

  2. 7

    Well, that’s a damn shame. Neil Peart is an Objectivist and the whole band is halfway up Ayn Rand’s decomposed corpse ass. They think that people can only be good if they act in their own self interest, and that the only good form of government is laissez-faire capitalism. Red Barchetta reads like a dystopian fascist future with the band as the last hold-out rebels against this future, which is apparently (supposedly) already here.

    Sigh. The drum set is still sweet though.

  3. 8

    Honestly? I don’t care. Rush is a fucking incredible band, they just happen to also be nuts. There are innumerable entertainers who are remarkably talented and nuts, so I don’t really hold it against them. That isn’t to say there isn’t a limit – there is. It’s just that for my own part, Rush doesn’t quite pass it.

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