Rush’s Time Stand Still has been on earworm for me all day. Not complaining, to be clear; love the song. Perhaps my subconscious grabs ahold of it as my son moves into Middle School; capturing a bit of my zeitgeist? Eh…
Their musicality deeply resonates with me. When I studied bass, Geddy Lee’s skills blew my mind. As I learned drums, Peart’s drumming amazed me. And this song had the amazing Aimee Mann singing the back-up vocals. A major score, musically, that only a group with Rush’s stature could’ve pulled off. {Bias acknowledgement: Ms. Mann was a major musician crush of mine.}
I loved this song from when it first hit the airwaves. This time of my life was one of great musical and artistic expansion. Rush made it’s way into my life around the same time as the B-52s, Tangerine Dream and the Rocky Horror soundtrack. Yeah, I’d heard of Rush before, but I hadn’t broke free of the cliquish confines of early youth. Thus, I didn’t “like” them. But I came to love them as my awareness expanded.
This this musical expansion and awareness came through many of my friends, mainly from the Cascades drum corps. When I marched drum-line, we offered a faux-prayer to Neil Peart: “oh Neil, who dwealth in Canada, let us not sucketh”. Or something like that. The 80s drum-line idolized Neil, like the horn-line idolized Maynard Ferguson. Oh, the memories! Makes me want to command “Time, Stand Still…”
