Mystic Rhythms

Neil Peart, seen by many as the greatest drummer in the history of Rock music, ascended to Xanadu after a cruel and lengthy illness. So our pal Miguel asked me to come on to a live Aeon Byte stream to talk about the man and his music for a spell.

I got into Rush a very, very time ago, probably before a lot of you were born. They were a massive influence on me musically and I sparked many a phat one to their music (and cleaned many a stash on their double albums). I dipped out during the Power Windows era, but held what I see as their "classic era" tight to my bosom in the years that followed.

Robert and Carol Price -- who co-authored a book on Rush called Mystic Rhythms-- joined us and the discussion ranged widely around music, technology, philosophy, religion and politics.

In honor of the man and the band, I thought I'd embed a few of my very favorite tunes from the Rush catalog. They were one of those bands who played as a unit in ways many others were incapable of. A classic case of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts, even though the parts were all pretty fucking great.

Share your memories, dreams and reflections in the comments section.