By-Tor And The Snow Dog

" MY SNARE," I hollered, craning my neck stage left toward the roadie (a post-Jurassic era term for what's now known as tech, i.e., drum tech, guitar tech, spatial awareness tech etc.) My look of urgency was greeted with a Yeah?...So, gesture of indifference.
But a few seconds later Mr. I Shouldn't Be Lifting A Finger For You must have taken pity on this pimply, country bumpkin who probably had no business being on this stage to begin with, for out it came, Neil Peart's gleaming #2 snare. And seconds after that, I'm poppin on it.

I'll admit, I often fantasized about being mid-song and wacking a boom stand out of place and having a "tech" run out crouching down as if invisible, and repositioning the mic, then racing back off stage like a NASCAR pit crewmember. And I just watched it play out for real, on my rig. What a narcissistic ass I was, er, am?

Just a couple hours earlier that evening, our band was led into an area backstage reserved for "talent" and crew. Nobody from Rush's table raised an eyebrow as we bashfully shuffled around a couple of card tables with thoughtfully arranged party platters brimming with lunch meat, bread, cheese, lettuce, French's mustard and salad dressing beautifully represented. Sorta cool cuz it was just for us. You kinda wanted to pocket some of it as a momento cuz when was this ever gonna happen again. But of course, the stench.

I was never a huge Rush fan to begin with ( not to be sour grapes) cuz they were so not Tequila Sunrise. I just couldn't get passed Getty Lee's shrill, nasal narration of viking lords descending upon the hobbits. But I gotta tell ya, Neil Peart's guns-a-blazin attack and those prog-style time signatures are what made them the ferocious power trio that they are, period.
Plus 2112 is like the college thesis of air-drum work outs.

Amusing Unrelated Photo of Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield at Romanoffs in Beverly Hills From theinsider.com - Just Because