The National Midnight Star #584

Errors-To: rush-request@syrinx.umd.edu Reply-To: rush@syrinx.umd.edu Sender: rush@syrinx.umd.edu Precedence: bulk From: rush@syrinx.umd.edu To: rush_mailing_list Subject: 12/22/92 - The National Midnight Star #584
** ____ __ ___ ____ ___ ___ ** ** / /_/ /_ /\ / /__/ / / / / /\ / /__/ / ** ** / / / /__ / \/ / / / / /__/ / \/ / / /___ ** ** ** ** __ ___ ____ ** ** /\ /\ / / \ /\ / / / _ /__/ / ** ** / \/ \ / /___/ / \/ / /___/ / / / ** ** ** ** ____ ____ ___ ___ ** ** /__ / /__/ /__/ ** ** ____/ / / / / \ ** List posting/followup: rush@syrinx.umd.edu Administrative matters: rush-request@syrinx.umd.edu or rush-mgr@syrinx.umd.edu (Administrative postings to the posting address will be ignored!) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The National Midnight Star, Number 584 Tuesday, 22 December 1992 Today's Topics: Administrivia All the great drummers (R) do not adjust your set... Re: All the great drummers (none) mtv and rush Trivial Info Neil's postcard CFV: talk.philosophy.objectivism NMS T-Shirts ---------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tues, 22 Dec 92 From: rush-mgr Subject: Administrivia There were no digests for Thursday, Friday or Monday (12/17, 12/18, 12/21) because of lack of posts -- everyone seems to be on vacation! Also, the first part of the FAQ will go out later tonight and the other two parts will follow on Wed and Thurs. - rush-mgr ---------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 21:21:05 EST From: Scott Kaplan <sfkaplan@cs.amherst.edu> Subject: All the great drummers (R) Considering that I have said I can play most of Neil's stuff, I suppose that makes me either very talented or very egotistic (the later seems more probable but who knows?) So, I will give my own answer to Chris Schiller's question about how well people seem to think they can immitate Neil. When I play his songs, I really can't judge how much I sound just like Neil. Some people seem to think a lot, and some think not so much. I think there's a resemblance, but I would never say it's the same (and I wouldn't want it to be exactly the same--that would be fake.) I am curious, though, as to the songs you seem to pick as "easier" and "harder" from the various Rush songs. I don't want to start a string of responses as to "Which Rush song has the hardest drumming in it"...However. Tom Sawyer: Not that hard, not horribly *easy* to make it sound right, but not that bad...I'll agree. Limelight: Not quite as easy as some think. I've seen lots of people try to play it, and they usually are WAY off on the bridge and the ending. Those things are not always that easy get right...It's not a matter of playing, but listening correctly many times. Distant Early Warning: what makes you catagorize this as so difficult? I think it's no more complex than Tom Sawyer. La Villa: Okay, good one there. That's just requires a good bit of concentra- tion to get the timing right, no two ways about it. Digital Man: Huh? Again, the bridge requires some listening and some mental acuity while you play...But what else is so tough? Neil has done an excellent job at making his fills flow in a very melodic way. It sometimes sounds, until you listen closely, as though more is going on than there really is. Many of his fills sounded horribly complex to me until I took some time to listen carefully. Those parts are just well composed, and fill in the space very effectively. Sometimes they're tough to get the coor- dination to, but once you do it really sticks in your brain. Moreover, a lot of what Neil does involves the same sticking patterns onto different drums or cymbals. Lots of people play Neil, some people play it right, and among those that play it right a decent percent can probably make it sound fairly like Neil himself. The thing very very very few of us could do, really, would be to come *up* with such beats and fills that control the music so well. Scott Kaplan sfkaplan@cs.amherst.edu ---------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 20:33:26 EST From: "Cygnus X-2 (Gerry Good)" <J455%NEMOMUS.bitnet@ACADEMIC.NEMOSTATE.EDU> Subject: do not adjust your set... Hey all you Rushians, I just read the story about the video of Geddy mowing his lawn. Hilarious! Almost as good as the story about the Japan shows. Can you make a copy for me? :) Anyway, what is the progress on the tape/CD? does anyone know? And finally... Many people have been discussing Neil's drumming and the difficulty of it, etc. (by the way, Rush-mgr, could you put these at the end?) It reminds me of today while I was eating lunch, and people were watching MTV (another of my pet peeves) on a big-screen TV. The two guys I was sitting with began discussing who was a good guitar player, etc. The concensus seemed to be that the person who could play the fastest was the best. I beg to differ, as the fastest guitar player I've heard is Yngwie Malmsteen, yet I don't consider him to be a great musical powerhouse like Rush. People don't seem to consider that the playing talent and the songwriting talent don't always go hand in hand. Many of the bands I listen to aren't the MOST talented, yet I like their music because, well, I just like it. I'd have to say that's how most people pick their music. Oh well, my $.02. ---------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 01:06:48 -0600 (CST) From: MuffinHead <smills@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu> Subject: Re: All the great drummers Chris Schiller <chris@cdc.hp.com> wrote: >Are the drummers saying they can hit the >licks as smoothly and precisely? I will give you Tom Sawyer and Limelight, >but what about Distant Early Warning, La Villa Strangiato, and what I >consider the crown: Digital Man? I know this is turning into a ego-or-reality type of discussion. But I feel the need to reply to at least inform all the non-drummers how many excellent drummers there are out there without recording contracts. First, Chris, you think Digital Man is a more complex/challenging drum tune than LVS? I practiced along with Signals (and all earlier albums) in my senior year of high school, 1982, note-for-note, nuance-for-nuance. On the other hand, I still can't smoothly play some of the middle of LVS. The guitarist in my band can throw in an Alex riff in the middle of some completely unrelated song and have it come off. Sadly, our bassist doesn't have Geddy's finesse. To get to the point, yes, there are MANY drummers around who can effortlessly play most of Neil's work. That doesn't mean they have the creativity to come up with it. As I've said before, no one else can be Neil. Same with the rest of Rush and every other truly talented band in the world. Muff ___________________________________________________________________________ smills@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu -=<*>=- MuffinHed@aol.com ---------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 03:21:26 -0500 From: scott@zach.fit.edu (Scott Josephson ) Date: Thu Dec 17 02:30 EST From: SLLF <scott@zach.fit.edu> Subject: Geddy's best bass lines Greetings fellow Rush fans! I thought an interesting topic to discuss would be Geddy's best bass lines. I am a bass player and I have been playing for 10 years now. Rush has been my main musical influence, obviously. Over the years I have learned to play Geddy's bass lines, some of them were difficult, some were not so difficult. Here is my list of the most difficult in order of decreasing difficulty (1 being the most difficult): 1.) The analog kid (those amazin' triplets) 2.) FreeWill (during solo) 3.) La Villa Strangiato (bass riff,VI - The Ghost of the Aragon) 4.) YYZ (some of the bass riffs) 5.) The Big Money (some of the riffs) 6.) Marathon 7.) Show Don't Tell (during solo) 8.) Where's My Thing? (some of the riffs) I think it would be interesting to hear from other bass players or Rush fans what they feel are Geddy'd most difficult. Well, that is all for now gotta gooooooooooooooooooooo! SLLF <scott@zach.fit.edu) "And if the music stops There's only the sound of the rain All the hope and glory All the sacrifice in vain" - N.P. ---------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 4:12:34 cdt From: "LaVllaStrngiato (Krauss,Eric B)" <KRAUSS@AC.GRIN.EDU> Subject: mtv and rush About two months ago, during an episode of "mtv sports," about 15 seconds of the begining of "Distant early warning" was played as background to some mountain bike racing. I was so happy that I decided to slam a few beers (actually, come to think of it, it WAS at a party) EK "The West won't contain communism, it will transcend communism. It won't bother to . . . denounce it, it will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written." --Ronald Reagan, May 1981 ---------------------------------------------------------- Date: 17 Dec 92 09:25:24 EST From: doug <70003.5604@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Trivial Info Just a bit of trivial information......(for those who care). I saw the latest (gulp) Rolling Stone and in their listing of the TOP 10 albums from 10 years ago, they have none other than SIGNALS coming in at #10. Doug (never used that many 10's in one sentence before) Distribution: >INTERNET:rush@syrinx.umd.edu ---------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 11:37:36 -0500 From: Scott David Daly <skipdaly@wam.umd.edu> Subject: Neil's postcard Hi there! A lot of people have been writing to me asking for the address to write to Neil. I sent it c/o Modern Drummer magazine. I don't remember the address, but I got it from somebody on this list (can someone repost it?). There is another address listed in the FAQ...but I haven't tried it... Happy writing! Skip ---------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 22:42:54 -0600 From: amc@wucs1.wustl.edu (Adam Costello) Subject: CFV: talk.philosophy.objectivism Someone suggested that the readers of this list might be interested in voting on the following newsgroup proposal, copied from a post to news.announce.newgroups. Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,talk.philosophy.misc, sci.philosophy.tech,alt.individualism,alt.politics.libertarian, alt.politics.marrou Subject: 3rd CFV: talk.philosophy.objectivism Time is running out to vote on the proposed newsgroup: talk.philosophy.objectivism unmoderated For the discussion of all topics related to Objectivism (the philosophy of Ayn Rand). Votes will be accepted until 18:00 GMT Tue 22 Dec 1992. If you have an opinion and haven't voted yet, I suggest that you do. If you think you're vote doesn't matter, let me assure you that you're mistaken (trust me). HOW TO VOTE: Send e-mail to amc@wucs1.wustl.edu (replying to this post should yield that address). The Subject line is irrelevant. The body of the message must contain one (and only one) of the following two lines: I vote in favor of talk.philosophy.objectivism as proposed. I vote against talk.philosophy.objectivism as proposed. Text preceeding or following the line is ignored. If the message contains one of the above two lines (exactly, including the period at the end), then it will be recorded and an acknowledgement will automatically be sent to the address in the From field. If the message contains neither (or both) of the lines, then I will receive it, process it, and send an acknowledgement manually. AMC ---------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 14:52:59 -0500 From: meg (******* Meg *******) Subject: NMS T-Shirts The first round of shirts (12) were mailed out yesterday, so some of you should be getting them before Christmas! Sorry about all the delays, but being away from all the action doesn't help. We're including a special "bonus" in each package, free with every purchase! :) And those of you patiently waiting for a reply on your checks, I should have them by tomorrow and will mail you that I have gotten them. Hope you like the shirts! -Meg meg@syrinx.umd.edu <-- mail here for shirt info ----------------------------------------------------------
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