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I always wondered if they would do this with a big name drummer. As a series of tribute concerts. Never dreamed they would go this direction.

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She is a big named drummer if you are a drummer. She is freaking fantastic and more than capable of playing anything Peart could play.

Behind home plate for George Springer's ALCS home run

Thanks for posting that. I've been looking for him at the games and never can spot him. He's why I'm rooting for the Blue Jays. ( and I can't stand the Dodgers)

Just love that guy. How could you not? He loves music, baseball and wine.

Great interviewer, too.

They played live tonight at the Juno Awards. Ironically a song from the first album that Neil didn't have a hand in.

maroon barchetta said:

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I heard Paul Gilbert talk about this I think it was on the Anderton's channel. Didn't know it existed.

One of Rush's crew put Mr. Big up to learning the song and crashing the encore.

Paul played the regular solo while Alex took Paul's drill with picks attached and did a modified solo.

Neil seems to be enjoying the hijinks.

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OK... with that, you actually reminded me of a couple of things there.

When I saw Rush at The Summit, I was a second semester Pisshead in the Aggie Band. I had cruised through my fish year academically (except for CHEM 102 and a close call with MATH 161) but Fall '89 was tough as I failed 2 Mechanical Engineering classes and MATH 251 (and still retained my Army ROTC Scholarship - after losing major amounts of my ass to an old fashioned COL Woodward ass chewing).

Bottom line, I had a Black Card for Call to Quarters so I was not allowed out of my dorm room but... I had a Class of '91 guy in charge of our Academics and probably the only time he was nice to me, he let me slide out so I could go to the Rush show in Houston. Good Bull.

Mr. Big opened for Rush and one of the guys in the Aggie Band who was in my Class was a massive Rush fan. He had all of their albums of course. Plus he had recorded radio appearances, interviews and all kinds of Rush stuff. He was an All State Bass Horn player from Corpus Christi who unfortunately failed out during our 2nd year - big loss to the band because he was a helluva a player and was definitely carrying the "t.u.ba" section to make up for players like my fish buddy and current political rabble rouser in Austin - MQS (LOL).

Anyway, this dude had been talking up Billy Sheehan and Mr. Big. So, I was glad to see them to find out if they lived up to the hype and they were a great opening band.

After that, I did't give Mr. Big another thought.

Fast forward to 2006 when I'm living in LA and my singer friend invites me to go with his Latin Rock band to a couple festival shows in Japan. The first one is in Osaka.

I fly out from Orange County John Wayne Airport to San Jose to Tokyo Narita and then take the Shinkansen to Osaka. So I've been traveling like 20 hours or something to get to Osaka.

I meet up with my buddy and we go grab dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe and then head out to meet up with some of the guys in the band who are at the famous Osaka bar called "Rock Rock".

I walk in and my drummer friend has a Japanese girl who has handcuffed herself to him. And I'm like, OK, I expected things to be kinda crazy but this is nuts.

Next day, we do the show, I meet a whole bunch of people and that night we head back to Rock Rock. Turns out, I wind up talking to this older guy wearing a black shirt and red leather pants and it's Billy Sheehan. I think he was playing bass for Steve Vai at the time.

Cool guy. Had a couple beers with him (and my drummer friend).

It was just wild thinking that 16 years earlier, I had to sneak out of Call to Quarters so I could go see this guy open for Rush in Houston and here I am now having beers with him at a bar in Osaka. Bizarre.

Even more bizarre, a few years later, I started watching a bunch of Scientology stuff (Leah Remini or whatever) and find out that Billy Sheehan is a Scientologist and had been for a long time.