Anyhow… We all know that Geddy is a huge baseball fan but this article about his donation of signed baseballs to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum shows how much he cares not only for the game but its history as well.

Low key and unassuming as ever — you gotta love him.

I knew John personally from 80 to 89 and then lost all contact.

We were all regulars at Mack’s Gym. He was extremely friendly and always had a hello for everyone. He had no use for material possessions, wore an old grey sweat suit, had a bad haircut, took the streetcar to the gym, and had the same gym bag for years. He often wore a wool cap for training before it was fashionable.

He never ever dissed the band or anyone else. He ended up becoming close friends with 2 gym members who were decent well rounded fellows completely unlike the rock scene. He ended up tearing his knee up bad some time in 86 or 87 at a drunken pre wedding stag for one of these friends (whose name was also John). Can you believe they were doing piggy back fights while drunk. I guess this says a little about the boy inside the man that he was. This injury ended his aspirations in bodybuilding which he didn’t know at the time.

He was starting to get a decent physique on a medium frame. This was a hardcore gym so we were all serious about training and little else. When we were first introduced he was more amazed that my dad’s name was Gene Krupa like the drummer (perhaps I should research my family tree).

A few months before his death, he came to mind and I posted a comment similar to this on You Tube for Working Man (posted by Axeman). He just came to mind for no reason as if a premonition.

The last time I saw him was at a gym he was managing in the Yonge Davisville area in Toronto. He introduced me to his girlfriend and this was back in 88 or 89 and he appeared happy despite having a noticeable limp.

I hope he remained happy those final 20 years because he was a truly kind gentle soul. I was sad reading his obituary because there was no mention of wife or kids. He truly would have been a great dad and hopefully the WOULD’VE, COULD’VE AND SHOULD’VE syndrome didn’t keep him from finding happiness.

R.I.P. John !

Yours Truly,

Richard

Not sure if this is old or not… It was posted today but one can’t be too sure about things sometimes.

Don’t forget to use PantFlap to keep up with the latest Rush news and info around the web.

Property details from mls.ca.

We’ve got so much catalog. I’d love to do a tour where we just play stuff that we’ve never played before. Don’t play anything that we play now and call it the B-track Rush tour. Play some of the stuff nobody has ever heard us play live. That would be a lot of fun. There are lots of opportunities and directions that we can go.

 Alex also discusses the Florida incident and their recent YYZ jam with the Foo Fighters.

Who knows what the end product will be? In the past, Bun E. Carlos from Cheap Trick was selling CDs of his drum licks… you could piece them together to get a performance and then record on top of them. I’m wondering what they’re thinking of doing with Neil’s set? Maybe loops? Certainly, we’ll get samples. This’ll be great for keyboard drummers!

Check out the Studio ProFiles site for a clue as to what may be coming… it appears that they’re doing the sampling work.

I just updated WordPress to its latest version and now I’ve got to go back and re-do my customizations. I’m sure everyone is up-to-date regarding Rush and their tour, so I won’t bore you with any of those details.

However, Neil Peart did post an update to his news site. If you haven’t ventured over there, I highly recommend it. His updates are rather entertaining and insightful. The latest update confirms the old saying… “it’s a bitch getting old”.

Doing a horizontal flip in Photoshop reveals the contents of a couple of the fans’ signs:

• Mr. Potatohead’s sign says “Come to Daddy”
• One of the gals’ says “I like girls too!”

If anyone figures out how to save the file, please let me know. While listening to the Neil-only version of the track, I had some riffs and melodies pop into my head. I’d love to import it into GarageBand and see what my ideas would sound like over that drum track.

I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before some folks start posting their interpretations online. Could be very interesting indeed!