My Holiday

On VH1 Classic they are showing 24 hours of Rush to celebrate “Rush Hashanah” — not the Jewish new year, but just a clever way to program 24 hours of videos, interviews, and live concerts featuring Rush. I just watched a few videos I haven’t seen since the early ’80s, and it great to see them on TV again.  I know, I could watch many of these online, but there’s something great about watching a clean, uncompressed, broadcast quality video on TV.  Yeah, I know, I sound like “Well, when I was a kid” kind of guy right now, but sorry, it’s true for me.

The videos featured were:

“The Pass”

“Spirit of Radio”

“Countdown”

“The Body Electric”

“Vital Signs”

Right now as I’m writing this (12:20pm, PDT), it’s an interview of Rush’s release of “R30” where they mention John Rutsey (Rush’s first drummer).  The host asked if he’s the Pete Best of prog rock, and Geddy and Alex and said “No.” Why? Because he chose to leave the band and wasn’t kicked out.  Unfortunately, Rutsey recently died (May 11, 2008), so it’s kind of weird to hear them chuckling about their first drummer in this interview.

Anyway, this is all pretty cool for me, and I hope VH1 does more of these type of things.  Not necessarily Rush (although that would be fine with me), but other bands.  It’s like when radio stations used to feature one band (usually a big superstar band like the Beatles) and spotlight it all day with music and interviews.