Errors-To: rush-request@syrinx.umd.edu
Reply-To: rush@syrinx.umd.edu
Sender: rush-request@syrinx.umd.edu
Precedence: bulk
From: rush@syrinx.umd.edu
To: rush_mailing_list
Subject: 08/27/91 - The National Midnight Star #325 ** Special Edition **
** ____ __ ___ ____ ___ ___ **
** / /_/ /_ /\ / /__/ / / / / /\ / /__/ / **
** / / / /__ / \/ / / / / /__/ / \/ / / /___ **
** **
** __ ___ ____ **
** /\ /\ / / \ /\ / / / _ /__/ / **
** / \/ \ / /___/ / \/ / /___/ / / / **
** **
** ____ ____ ___ ___ **
** /__ / /__/ /__/ **
** ____/ / / / / \ **
The National Midnight Star, Number 325
Tuesday, 27 August 1991
Today's Topics:
GFPM Interview with Neil/Geddy in the Listening Room
----------------------------------------------------------
[ This took a while, but I finally got it out! :rush-mgr ]
From: erik habbinga <habbinga@tramp.Colorado.EDU>
Subject: GFPM Interview with Neil/Geddy in the Listening Room
The Songwriting Interview
Neil Peart
by Bruce Pollock
Reprinted without permission from
Guitar for the Practicing Musician Oct. 1986
Downstairs, in the labrynthian chambers of the Meadowlands, at
two minutes to midnight, is neither the place nor the time one
would be expecting to discuss the course of American Literature.
"When you look at Herman Melville and Henry James, Nathaniel
Hawthorne--the turn of the century American school of writers--
and how writing developed through Sinclair Lewis, Theodore
Dreiser and then up to Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway,
there was a tremendous progression, but at the same time an
elimination. That progression of writing was a process of
stripping things away and eliminating the inessential, making, in
effect, the right word do the job of five approximations."
And neither would you expect the drummer of a world-renowned
arena-resounding rock band to be conversant with the subtleties
of Black Humor. "I love writers like Thomas Pynchon and John
Barth and Tom Robbins. To me Robbins is the quintessential
modern writer because he's funny, he's profound, he's sexy, he's
irreverent, he's dirty, he's hip. He's everything I would like
modern writing to be."
If you're talking rock lyrics, you'd have to consider Neil
Peart, Rush's resident drummer/lyricist, as today's
quintessential songwriter. Unashamedly intellectual in a world
of lip-readers, Peart is the thinking man's wordslinger
equivalent of Yngwie Malmsteen. What the flashy Swede does with
notes, sheer manual dexterity, the loping Canadian accomplishes
with words, a verbal drumbeat that is as much a part of Rush's
sound as Alex Lifeson's guitar or Geddy Lee's bass. Speaking, in
fact, in the same shifting time-signatures that characterize
Rush's music, Peart is in total command of his mental resources,
analyzing, conceptualizing, pontificating about the lyrics that
are near and dear to his heart, and near and dear to the hearts
of Rush fans the world over.
"I can take someone like T.S. Eliot, who has influenced me
greatly over the last few years, and realize that what he was
doing was just throwing so many images at you all the time that
you were left dizzy. But at the same time you were left with
something, You were left with a sense of unease, a sense of
stepping into something mysterious, of almost stepping into
another dimension. So I use that idea. On a song like _Red
Lenses_ from the _Grace Under Pressure_ album, I tried to
construct a series of ongoing images that just came at you. The
color red was the theme of it, but I twisted it in so many ways.
It was the hardest song I ever wrote, because I was trying not to
say anything, and each line was saying something but at the same
time it was trying to be so obscure and so oblique about the way
that I went around saying it--on purpose. It seems confounding,
but in the end you're left with something. T.S. Eliot's poetry
is the same way to me. At the end of it I don't really know what
I've read, but it comes back to me. When I think of _The
Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock_ or _The Wasteland_ I can't quote
lines from them, and I can't say I understand everything that was
said, but they move me.
With a catalogue of standards that includes _Big Money_, _Tom
Sawyer_, _The Spirit of Radio_, _Closer to The Heart_, _New World
Man_. _Vital Signs_, _Distant Early Warning_ and _Limelight_,
you'd think Peart would be content to relax atop the shelf of
lyrics he's given his many fans to ponder. But, like the
relentless perfectionist he is, Peart is driven to grander vistas
of achievement. "For me, prose is where it's at," he says, a
rare lapse into the vernacular. "I'd love to throw away the
limitations of verse and be able to express myself in a much
broader medium. To be able to write in sentences and paragraphs
and whole chapters and sub-chapters appeals to me greatly.
Someday I would love to turn out just one good short story."
So, while we've got him on our turf, working in the medium of
the song lyric, we sat Neil down and grilled extensively about
his approach to his craft.
GFPM: Were you a student of songs before you started writing
them?
NP: No, but I was a student of words and a student of rhythm. I
think as a listener to music, lyrics were strictly tertiary to
me. First there was the song and then there was the
musicianship, and then, after I already liked the song, there
were the lyrics. There's no way I'll ever like the lyrics to a
song that I don't like. It's an essential relationship. So I
never really paid a lot of attention to lyrics until after I
started writing them, and then it became a craft, like drumming.
If I weren't a drummer I don't think I'd spend a lot of thinking
about drumming or drummers. It's something I became aware of as
my involvement with words became more and more active and
intense. At that point I started to become more aware of the
techniques. I learned about rhymes and learned what's a real
good rhyme and what's a false rhyme, what's a rhyme for the sake
of convenience and what's a carefully constructed one. I have a
very rigid set of values in those terms. I' never rhyme just for
the sake of it. I hate semi-rhymes.
GFPM: With some of the words you use in your songs, it seems the
lyrics must have been written before the music.
NP: It essentially goes both ways, but I think being a drummer
has been very helpful to me. I have a good sense of the music of
words and the poetry of words and what makes a nice-sounding and
even a nice-looking word. For instance, Territories as a title
appeals to me as much to look at as it does to listen to. I find
that the more layers a word or a series of words offers to me,
the more satisfied I am. So if I can get a series of words that
are rhythmically interesting and maybe have some kind of internal
rhyming and rhythmic relationship, plus at least two layers of
interpretive ideas in there too, the more pleased I am. I love
to sneak in little bits of alliteration in--even if it world
never be recognized. It _is_ recognized. It's like, the more
you put in it;s always there and even sometimes the more you take
out, it's still in. I do like to get away with unusual words,
but there are limits. There are some words that are not good to
sing. They can sound good and look good and feel right in the
context of a piece of verse, but when I go over them with Geddy,
he'll complain to me that either I've gone overboard with the
alliteration or there are certain vowel-consonant combinations
that, from a singer's point of view, are very difficult to
deliver because you have to think so much about the elocution of
those syllables that you can't possibly deliver them with the
necessary emotions. There are things that Geddy suggests to me
from a singer's point of view that help me a lot.
GFPM: Are you thinking with the drum track in mind when you
write lyrics?
NP: Oh definitely. Being a drummer helps me a lot, because
words are a subdivision of time. Sometimes I give my verse to
Geddy and he's perplexed by how he's supposed to deliver it and I
have to try to express it with my toneless delivery. Things have
to be phrased in less obvious ways sometimes, across a bar line,
with one syllable stretched and another compacted. In a song
like _Manhattan Project_, where it was essentially a documentary,
I wanted the delivery to be like punctuation, and the chorus had
to be more passionate and more rhythmically active. It was hard
to express exactly how I wanted it. The first time we worked on
the music, they had phrased the lyrics in a very slow manner and
I had to protest. The phrasing of the line was two short lines
and then a long line and two short lines and a long line. There
were internal rhymes and internal relationships among the words
and within the delivery that had to remain intact for it to make
sense at all. It was so carefully crafted that it couldn't be
delivered any old way.
GFPM: When you come up with lyrics do you have your own melody?
NP: Yes, but it's purely arbitrary. Sometimes it can be the
most childish melody or the most unrealistic one, or sometimes
the melody to another song entirely. But it's just a framework;
it's a written structure in my mind that allows me to go forward
and to have something on which to hang all the rhythms, and it
allows me to be adventurous and not be satisfied with the
rhythmic basics. Being fairly adventurous rhythmically as a
drummer, I'm driven that way lyrically. I like to stretch lines
and play with phrasing. The more I became appreciative of
singers I understood what phrasing could do for lyrics, how it
can make them come alive. The first time I hear words sung is
really when they come alive for me. When they're written on a
piece of paper, it can be satisfying technically, but whether
they work or not really happens when I hear Geddy sing them for
the first time.
GFPM: You obviously don't turn these songs out in one sitting.
NP: Definitely not. Sometimes the gist will come at one sitting,
but the process of refinement will be very laborious. A lot of
times I'll have a basic idea and a layout; usually I like to have
a verse/chorus organization before I go to the other guys with
it. Geddy, being the singer, has the greatest amount of input
lyrically and he might suggest some little key twists that will
help.
GFPM: Do you have certain parts of the year when you do your
writing?
NP: Yes, but the important thing is to keep those divisions
external. They're limitations as opposed to compromises. What I
find important are two other things--inspiration and
craftsmanship. Those are things you cannot compromise. When an
inspiration comes to you, it doesn't matter how inconvenient it
is, you must take advantage of it at the time. So I keep a
notebook all the time and always force myself to write down any
cogent thought, however sketchy it might seem, whether it's a
title I like or a phrase I like or even just an image that I
would like to develop or a theme I would someday like to address.
So by the time we reach the writing period, I'm prepared. That's
the ironic part of it--you set aside a month or two months and
say, ok we're going to write songs now. Obviously, anything
creative doesn't work that way. But if you already have that
part done, if you've already yielded to the spontaneity and the
inspiration at the proper time, and had the discipline to take
note of it, then you can literally sit down at a desk on the
first Monday morning of the writing period and start sifting
through pages and pages.
I keep things forever, and then, as I use them, I cross them
out. As a page gets too full of things crossed out, I re-copy
the things that haven't been used yet. Some things sit in my
notebook for ages and ages, and then sometimes a catalytic idea
comes, because it's never just one idea. For me no song is ever
written on one idea. It takes probably four or five things and
than I have to find the common parallel that will either unite
all of those things, or at least give them some kind of linear
flow. I think in anyone's experience, your thought will tend to
follow a pattern and evolve around a nucleus of things that
you're sensitive to at a particular time. All those things will
collect together automatically. If you write a short story you
have the luxury of developing all those things in a very relaxed
form. Lyrics are a tremendously demanding form of discipline; it
requires precision.
GFPM: Do you have a special room where you work?
NP: Yes, but it's been a different one with every album.
Basically I just need a table and a chair and my rhyming
dictionary. On the last four or five albums we've worked each
time in a different place, but in each there's been a room where
I can go to have quiet and to be able to think. You need
solitude for the amount of concentration that it takes. I try to
get to writing as early as possible, before anything else becomes
distracting. So I'll generally spend the whole day writing.
Geddy and Alex work on the lyrics, and we all get together after
dinner to work on arranging and rehearsing the songs. So, in
essence, days are devoted to individual work and the evenings are
devoted to collective work.
GFPM: Did you all ever work together in a kind of spontaneous
atmosphere?
NP: Not very comfortably, because for me the craftsmanship is
important. I'm not happy with spontaneity musically either. I
think you take such a chance. It's the same with those ideas you
wake up with in the middle of the night. Sometimes you write
them down and you wake up in the morning and go, 'What?' And you
rip it up and throw it away. Other times you save it. We do,
musically speaking, have improvisational periods during our
soundcheck or just when we're playing together, and we record
them and at the end of the tour we sift through them and look for
anything that happened that was magic. And there are ideas that
we can mine out of there, taking advantage of the spontaneity of
one day;s mood. But to go on stage and expect people to indulge
you; that doesn't work. I prefer organization. I don't like
lyrics that are just thrown together, that were obviously written
as you went along, or the song was already written and the guy
made up the lyrics in five minutes. I can tell--craftsmanship
speaks. It's the same with reading books. I admire writers who
have obviously worked and worked over what they've done, to make
sure it's clearly presented and as beautifully presented as it
can be. And there's nothing like time and careful work to make
that happen.
GFPM: Have you adjusted to your own rhythms of writing?
NP: For me, the important thing is to do the inspirational part
of it when it happens, so I never have to go there with an empty
book. At worst, if I'm stumped I can just put the work in
progress aside and I have pages and pages of other things to look
at. i'll just sit there and leaf through those and hope
something will connect, and generally it will. But the important
thing is to be enough ahead that it's not;s scary, because if you
get frightened, that's when writer;s block will occur. I never
want to be in that position. There have been things that I've
tried to write that haven't worked out, but I've been able to
find out early. You don't have to write 200 pages and then
discover you're working at nothing. By the time you've gone
through a verse and a chorus and you've shown it to the other
guys, you can see if it's not working. It might be a satisfying
technical exercise. I can be satisfied that I achieved what I
set out to achieve even if the song wasn't used.
GFPM: So you basically do a verse and a chorus and show it to
the others?
NP: More often than not it's complete. I'll have a series of
themes or a series of verses. Sometimes they become reversed.
I'm very much in love with middle eights. It's something I
really love as a musical and lyrical departure. So a lot of
times I'll have a song that'll have a verse, chorus, verse,
middle eight--the classic thing. But then when the other guys
get hold of it, it'll be turned around and the middle eight will
become the chorus or the verse will become the chorus.
GFPM: Sometimes will they come back and say, we need four more
lines?
NP: Or the opposite, where there'll be two lines too many. Or
a song just wants to be structured a different way musically.
Those things are never negative. They're always a challenge.
Sometimes it can't be done, and if you have truly done a good job
and distilled the lyrics down to their most essential form,
there's not much you can do with it. But if the music's demands
are stronger, and if the lyrics can be messed around with, that's
very exciting to do.
GFPM: Do you ever work to a finished melody?
NP: Very often the guys will have worked out something
musically and made a tape of it for which they have nothing
particular in mind. _Grand Designs_, on the last album, was done
that way. They had the musical ideas laid out and just made a
little tape for me with guitar, keyboards and drum machine, and I
had that. So, again, if I'm stumped on something that I've been
working on, I pull out that tape and try to close my mind off for
a minute and listen to the tape. _Chemistry_ was a true
collaboration between the three of us. The other guys had a
couple of key phrases they wanted to express, so they gave me the
music. That was easy because all the groundwork was done.
Playing with words comes so much easier than having to dream up
the whole thing.
GFPM: Does the concept of each album start with you?
NP: Usually there isn't a concept. This album was the very
first time that I decided from the beginning that I wanted my
main theme to be power and I was going to address as many
different vignettes of power as I could. In the past there have
been themes in each of the albums, but they have been more after
the fact. For instance, on _Grace Under Pressure_, the theme of
that title seems obvious in each of the songs, but in fact it
came after, and the songs were each being written about different
reactions. The theme of that album, to me, is pathos, and it
came about through sometimes third-hand experiences, but most
often second hand, observing my friends. That was a period of
time when a lot of people were out of work and having
difficulties in terms of self-esteem. They had reached a point
in their lives where they felt they should be established and
they weren't. People were having life crises not only in
employment, but also in terms of their romances. All of those
things came to a head in my perception and I was writing with a
great deal of empathy. It wasn't always understood by either
listeners or critics, but that was the stem of it all. So, after
the fact I realized the 'Grace under pressure' concept. That
album was made under a great deal of difficult circumstances for
us personally, too.
GFPM: Doesn't it seem to you that sometimes a group is
categorized for its music, but its message isn't considered as
important as that of an individual singer/songwriter?
NP: That's ok; as a member of the audience it was that way to
me, too. If people don't want to take all the trouble
interpreting lyrics that I took in creating them, that doesn't
bother me, because I'm a musician first and not just a lyricist.
I only spend two months out of every two years doing that and the
rest of the time I'm a drummer.
GFPM: Do you feel that Rush is the best vehicle for your self-
expression--or do you have a goal to express yourself elsewhere
too?
NP: That;s complicated, because being a drummer first, the kind
of liberty I have in Rush is important to me. Stylistically I
never feel limited as a drummer and that will carry over
lyrically, too. There;s no way I'll ever write anything good
that won't be suitable for Rush. On the other hand, I have
written things with which I was happy but which didn't fit into
the scheme of things at a given time. But I have no trouble
putting those away. Those things always lead me on to something
else. We have musical ideas all the time that never get fully
developed, but at the same time they lead us on to another area.
Or even things that do get developed and recorded, from an
artistic point of view a lot of times we're not satisfied. At
this point we've gone through several periods of different
stylistic approaches, different areas of influence and at this
moment they might seem indulgent to us or naive, but without that
experimentation we couldn't have arrived now at the ability to
write a five or six minute song and put everything into it that
we do. We can write a song that will have complicated time
signatures time signatures but it won't be five minutes of that.
It'll be two minutes of that. But the point is that now we have
such comfort with that type of thing that we can change types of
signatures three or four times in a song very comfortably.
I want through periods the same way lyrically of being over-
ornamental and spending a lot of time developing an atmosphere
lyrically. I don't do that anymore. I want five words to do
what I used to use five lines to do. I'm fairly satisfied with
my body of lyric writing over the last four or five years, but
prior to that it was strictly kindergarten, strictly groundwork
and experimentation. Musically too, I don't have much use for
our stuff prior to 1980. That's not negative. That's the way it
should be, because we were honestly experimental. We pushed
ourselves over our heads a lot of times and we were grappling for
some kind of grip on the technique we were aiming for.
GFPM: Do you feel you have to distill your material to get it
played on commercial radio?
NP: No, I don't. The hardest thing is to have something that's
both personal and universal. To me, that's the aim. I try to
find something that moves me--a lot of times it's anger, but
sometimes it can be pathos or it can be joy. I can be thrilled
by the world at large or by nature or by some small experience.
Adolescence is a common theme for me. The crossover between
innocence and disillusionment is something I have addressed a
lot, because I know it's something I can personally relate to and
illustrate but at the same time it's universal. I don't want to
just be a confessional, like a Joni Mitchell. That's an area
I've tried to avoid; at the same time, that's what gives you
personal involvement, and without that impetus sometimes it's
hard to get going.
Fortunately, I'm very prone to anger, very prone to outrage in
the way people act and the way they treat each others and the
world we live in. So all of these things act as an impetus to
me, but I couldn't write only about my own areas of outrage. I
like to find those and translate them into something that is
universal.
GFPM: Do you feel that your best lyrics have become your best
songs?
NP: No, not always. It's weird how it goes. There's so much
chemistry involved and there's so many intangible things that
happen. There are ones where the music has been better than the
lyrics or the lyrics better than the music. I think _Middletown
Dreams_ is a good marriage of lyrics and music. _Mystic Rhythms_
is another one.
GFPM: You said there's a magic moment when you hear a song for
the first time. Is there another magic moment when you conceive
of a song for the first time--or finish it for the first time?
NP: That's a good point. I think the joy of creation is very
overrated. The irony of it is that the moment hoes by so fast.
When I'm working on a piece of lyrics and I have the theme of it
going and I'm working away, there is that moment when I realize,
yes, this is going to work. And then the knots in the brain
start to become untied. I'm figuring out, ok, this line goes to
that line, this verse to that verse. You can't just sit back and
go, oh, I'm great. The moment is great, but you can't just sit
back and feel fulfilled by it. To me the most satisfying time of
making an album is the writing period. We listen to a demo, and
yes, this is exciting, and it's what we wanted it to be and it
gets you off. That is the ultimate return that you will get from
the song. And then you'll spend another six months recording the
basic tracks, doing the overdubs, doing the vocals, doing the
mixing. At the end of it all there's no joy of creation; there's
no sitting back and going, 'This is finished and wow, I'm so
happy,' because you're so tired and drained from all of the
mental demands. You don't have anything left to throw a party.
In the demo period the rewards are instantaneous.
GFPM: Is there another level where you see a song you've worked
on and believed in going over with the audience?
NP: You picked out a very important thing, because at the end
of an album it's impossible for us to judge which songs will
truly be popular and which won't. We're inevitably surprised.
And then there are songs like _Vital Signs_ from our _Moving
Pictures_ album. At the time it was a very transitional song.
Everybody had mixed feelings about it, but at the same time it
expressed something essential that I wanted to say. That's a
song that has a marriage of vocals and lyrics I'm very happy
with. But it took our audience a long time to get it, because it
was rhythmically very different for us and it demanded the
audience to respond in a different rhythmic way. There was no
heavy downbeat; it was al counterpoint between upbeat and
downbeat, and there was some reflection of reggae influence and a
reflection of the more refined areas of new wave music that we
had sort of takes under our umbrella and made happen. That song
took about three tours to catch on. It was kind of a baby for
us. We kept playing it and wouldn't give up. We put it in our
encore last tour-putting it in the most exciting part of the set
possible-and just demanded that people accept it because we
believed in it. I still think that song represents a
culmination-the best combination of music, lyrics, rhythm. It
opens up so many musical approaches, from being very simplistic
and minimal to becoming very overplayed. Everything we wanted in
the song is there. So that song was very special to us. But we
had to wait. We had to be patient and wait for the audience to
understand us.
In The Listening Room: Geddy Lee
From Guitar For The Practicing Musician, June 1987
As the helmsman for Rush, Geddy Lee has taken the bass to new
heights of importance and imagination. As one of the foremost
role models for contemporary rock bassists, and the winner of our
Bass Wars competition, Geddy's opinions on music are always
welcome, so the mat went out in front of The Listening Room.
Musical selections by John Stix
1. "Yours is No Disgrace" from _The Yes Album_, by Yes/Atlantic
GEDDY: I loved this track. It was a very influential song for
me as a musician. Yes had never been a very concise band but
this was Yes at their most concise. There were very strong
melodies, strong playing and an innovative sound and direction
for song structure. It had so much complexity in the music
combined with melody and texture. There's a super bass sound on
this track, very driving. _Time and a Word_ was the first Chris
Squire album for me. The bass propelled that album. It led the
way. Texturally, _The Yes Album_ was a terrific album. The
songs go from electric-techno to acoustic. This song, "Yours Is
No Disgrace" is a full range song.
2. "Driven to Tears" from _Zenyatta Mondatta_, by the Police/A&M
GEDDY: "Driven to Tears" is another great track. This is a
phase of the Police I like a lot. They have a lot of energy and
propulsion and I loved the way they used to combine their sort of
reggae rhythms. Sting is a bass player I have a lot of respect
for and I was sort of sad on his solo record that he didn't play
bass. He's got a great style with a real nice choice of notes.
A lot of times he plays very simply but if you listen carefully
there's an unusual choice of notes. That adds a lot of depth to
the melodies of the songs he writes. He's got a great slinky
style that you feel in this particular tune. He's very
repetitive and locked into the drums. But it's got a real nice
tone and a real good feel. He's very much a feel player.
3. "Marabi" from _Vox Humana_, by Jeff Berlin/Passport Jazz
GEDDY: This is tremendous. Jeff is one of the best bass players
living today. His knowledge of the instrument is overwhelming.
He doesn't have any gaps. he can run up and down that thing and
knows where he can go. He knows what his options are. His
precision and delivery is so precise he blows me away. He can
play so many notes and make them sound so fluid. It's not easy
to play but it's easy to listen to. His choice of notes and his
taste is impeccable. That's what makes a great musician in the
end anyway-how much taste they have and how they apply what they
learn. He;s got great taste. This song is taken from Cannonball
Adderly and shows how he can do it all. Some of the things he
did with Bill Bruford show him off even more. I think what he's
trying to show on this solo album is that he's not just a bass
player, he's a band leader and a composer as well. He can write
arrangements for every instrument. He's saying, I'm a musician
in the total sense. I consider to be a total musician. he's a
mindblower.
4. "Life In One Day" from _Dream Into Action_, by Howard
Jones/Elektra
GEDDY: I like Howard Jones a lot in general. A lot of pop comes
by and a lot of it is synth/pop that comes and goes pretty
quickly. But this guy's got real talent. This song is typical
Howard Jones. It's a very fresh sound. The drums always have a
lot of snap. The keyboards are never to dense. There's always
lots of nice little things coming in and out. He's strong in
melody and I like the statement in this song, even though it's
not too complex. It's a simple song gone over and over. I like
this kind of music when it's done real well. I don't think this
is his best song from this album. I liked "Things Can Only Get
Better" a lot.
5. "First Blood" from _Fly on the Wall_, by AC/DC/Atlantic
GEDDY: I don't know who it is, but it's not very interesting.
It's obviously guitar-oriented rock. I can't understand what
they're singing about, so I can't comment on the statement. It
sounds pretty cliche. I can't even hear the bass and I like to
hear the bass. It sounds very formulaic to me. I've grown pretty
far from this particular thing. I can still feel for some young
metal. I think Metallica are great. They are real players, too.
Some of that stuff is wrist-breaking at five million mph. That
feels close to me. With this kind of thing sometimes you have to
listen to it many times to get the feel of it. It's an acquired
taste. On first impressions this wouldn't be my favorite example
of that style.
Erik Habbinga "And on bass, The Doc of Shock, The Duke of Spook!"
habbinga@tramp.colorado.edu
U-niversity of
C-olorado between "Time to make the doughnuts, you bastards!"
L-ongmont and
A-rvada "Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball"
----------------------------------------------------------
To submit material to The National Midnight Star, send mail to:
rush@syrinx.umd.edu
For administrative matters (additions, deletions, changes, and
questions), send mail to:
rush-request@syrinx.umd.edu or
rush-mgr@syrinx.umd.edu
There is now anonymous ftp access available on Syrinx. The network
address to ftp to is:
syrinx.umd.edu or 128.8.2.114
When you've connected, userid is "anonymous", password is <your userid>.
Once you've successfully logged on, change directory (cd) to 'rush'.
There is also a mail server available (for those unable or unwilling to
ftp). For more info, send email with the subject line of HELP to:
server@ingr.com
These requests are processed nightly. Use a subject line of MESSAGE to
send a note to the server keeper or to deposit a file into the archive.
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, 1991.
Editor, The National Midnight Star
(Rush Fans Mailing List)
********************************************
End of The National Midnight Star Number 325
********************************************