We're only immortal for a limited time. | | | | Young Neil: Peart on stage two sticks, two kick drums and 200 or so tom-toms, Springfield, Mass., Dec. 9, 1976.
(Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | | “We're only immortal for a limited time.”
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| | rantnrave:// The things you can do with a drumkit. TOMMY LEE's, among many other things, can spin him end over end, head over heels, while he solos. KEITH MOON's could spontaneously explode a little or, sometimes, a lot. NEIL PEART's had almost comically long rows of tom-toms, meticulously tuned, on which, as we learn in this guide to his legendary instrument, "I can play the JEOPARDY theme, perfectly." Peart, who died last week from brain cancer, was the patron saint of uncool rock and rollers—a quiet, spotlight-shunning, bookish (but also worldly), musician's musician who brought a rigorous, classical-like discipline to a job famous for attracting free spirits and loose cannons. As one-third of Rush, he wrote and played parts that were famously intricate and difficult to play—they could be hard just to count—yet blended into the group's songs so elegantly you could fool yourself into believing they were the only parts any drummer could have played in Rush. (A listen to the one album the band recorded before he joined will quickly disabuse you of that notion.) He was a grandmaster—he influenced generations of hard-rock and metal drummers who followed—who hated grand gestures. He famously preferred reading books to drinking and carousing before gigs, and was more likely to ride his motorcycle alone to the next destination than party on the tour bus afterward. He was also Rush's chief lyricist. Needless to say, Tommy Lee and Keith Moon were not that in their respective bands. Rush's songs reflected Peart's reading interests, from AYN RAND (whose controversial philosophy he eventually rejected, saying he had become a "bleeding-heart libertarian") to sci-fi to steampunk and beyond. They also reflected his travels, on that motorcycle and elsewhere. His lyrics, like his own philosophy, changed along the way, becoming more generous, more open—anthems for outsiders and misfits who had grown up and discovered, perhaps, that nothing is cooler, more rock and roll, than being uncool. RIP. MusicSET: "Neil Peart Was Prog Rock's Philosopher King"... The first piece in that set, and the best piece I read about Peart this weekend, is HANK SHTEAMER's musically astute essay for ROLLING STONE on "How Neil Peart's Perfectionism Set Him Free." Shteamer starts by spending five paragraphs overthinking (spoiler: but not really) Peart's bonkers drum part for Rush's "SUBDIVISIONS," and goes on to give a master class in what Peart was doing behind those drums all those years, how it was different from what his peers were doing, and how he found freedom through nearly obsessive control... NICK ANDOPOLIS was particularly obsessed with Peart... Best album (by a man), best song (by a man) and best new artist (who is a man): Meet the 2020 BRIT AWARDS nominees... The Venetian ice cream maker with 26,000 records, or about one for each of Neil Peart's tom-toms... QUEEN & ADAM LAMBERT, ALICE COOPER and OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN are among the artists playing an all-day Australian bushfire relief concert next month in Sydney... COURTNEY BARNETT chips in for her native Australia, too... JAY-Z, financial adviser... RIP also HARRY KUPFER. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| Neil Peart read, wrote and hit things. As Rush's drummer, he anchored one of hard rock's most influential bands with clock-like precision and intellectual rigor. As the band's chief lyricist, he helped shape a generation or two of well-read rebels. | | |
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| He may be a relative newcomer to the music business - but with significant stakes in a portfolio of its biggest companies, the Liberty Media CEO has become a power that major labels and indies alike can’t ignore. | | |
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| The legendary saxophonist on buying his first horn, playing with John Coltrane, and searching for the right sound. | | |
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| After a frenetic year, the Grammy-nominated star is the hottest rapper in the US. He talks about his quest to be the best -- and the forces that could bring him down. | | |
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| CES, the big annual consumer tech show, is underway in Las Vegas. Unlike in most previous years, there has been little in the way of big new announcements. This is in large part because we are reaching a degree of maturity in the consumer landscape, with big new developments being replaced by smaller, sustaining innovations.... | | |
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| Beijing has unveiled a plan to expand its music and creative industries to be worth 120 billion yuan (US$17.2 billion) by 2025, as part of a local government initiative to become an “international music capital.” | | |
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| “As an artist, part of you doesn’t want to be joyful,” Crow says. “Because you think you’ll never write a good song again.” | | |
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| Only one British female artist has been nominated out of 25 available slots in mixed-gender categories. It’s indicative of a wider industry problem. | | |
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| “You don’t have to try at all to be a racist. It’s a little coiled clot of venom lurking there in all of us, white and black, goy and Jew, ready to strike out when we feel embattled, belittled, brutalized.” (Originally published April 30, 1979.) | | |
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| The music legend was a lover of this iconic Japanese city, and if you push beyond the usual tourist sights you can find what he did. | | |
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| It's not a threat if you're just laying out a person's option, Live Nation attorneys argued to the DOJ. | | |
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| At 35, heralded as one the best guitarists in a generation, he's played the White House, toured with The Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, and is up for four Grammy Awards for his album "This Land." | | |
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| Rick Ross sat down with Complex to discuss his 2019 Grammy nomination, Drake collaborations, and what's next in 2020. | | |
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| The podcast platform data from MIDiA's Q4 tracker is in. These are the high-level findings. | | |
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| After several years of growth, the music business no longer feels like its in freefall, and some hopeful industry insiders are hinting that the best is yet to come in the 2020’s. As streaming goes global, and the overall adoption rate goes up across the board, continued revenue growth will be the norm in 2020 and beyond, which is to say nothing of the new ways that music is being monetized in video games, short form video, and more. | | |
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| As climates, trends, and tastes evolve, so does the American festival scene. Tyler Clark predicts six changes coming this season. | | |
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| How a young bilingual Latina became one of punk’s enduring icons and helped create a new musical universe. | | |
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| In Dave Swindells’s photographs, nightclubs become spaces for community and belonging. | | |
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| These Nashville women are banding together not just as supporters from afar, but as friends. | | |
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| Looking back at a decade in which a new generation started to carve out what the future of jazz might look like. | | |
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| | | | | | | RIP Neil Peart, 1952 – 2020. |
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