Something for Nothing: A Rush Fancast
One of my favorite weekly podcasts celebrates the music of the legendary Rush.
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This week’s subject is one of the best band-specific podcasts available — Something for Nothing: A Rush Fancast. But before we talk about that, let’s set the stage…
I. Finding My Way
I don’t recall a specific moment when I became a lifelong fan of that trio out of Canada called Rush. I know that I had been aware of the band’s music for quite some time. Songs like “Working Man,” “In the Mood,” “Fly by Night,” and others were played on FM radio in the Midwest when I was growing up, and I liked them all, but they didn’t capture my imagination right away.
My first Rush purchase was the 7-inch single of “Closer to the Heart.” I got that as a kid at some department store in Heath, Ohio — either Arro or King’s. Neither exists now and they haven’t for many years, but those were the nearest places I could get music at the time. Despite the purchase, I wasn’t yet a Rush fan in 1977 and it would be half a decade before I started to fully immerse myself in the Canadian trio’s music.
Over the next few years, I heard more of their songs on the radio. “The Trees” reached my ears in 1979 and “The Spirit of Radio” a year later. My interest was growing with each song, but I wasn’t there quite yet. At the time I was into REO Speedwagon, Cheap Trick, and Blondie, having graduated from my first favorite rock band, KISS. The turn of the decade from the 1970s to the 80s was a vibrant and fascinating time for music. The remnants of disco were still alive, synth pop was rising (though it wasn’t called that yet), and hard rock was still king in the Midwest.
A year later, in 1981, Rush released Moving Pictures.
II. Closer to the Heart
I heard “Tom Sawyer” and “Limelight” on Q-FM-96, the rock radio station in Columbus, Ohio. You couldn’t really avoid that. Rush went from a band I enjoyed when I heard them on the radio to simply a band I enjoyed. I wasn’t buying a lot of records in those days. I would buy one every now and then and ask for some for my birthday and Christmas. FM radio was still generally good in those days, especially in the evening, so there was no rush (no pun intended) to run out and get the newest album.
Rush, for me, became a thing just couple of years after the release of Moving Pictures. The band released Signals in 1982 and then along came something called MTV. When we got MTV, it became the focus of most of my free time. The channel was spewing out incredible songs from bands I’d never heard of, and there were all manner of strange haircuts and clothes making their way across my television screen.
There were guys in sleeveless shirts that looked like the British flag. There were guys with hairdos that looked like bird wings. People were wearing chains and spikes and collars and plastic on their bodies while they sang and played guitar, drums, and keyboards. And through it all, there was exciting and interesting music playing. Sometimes it was cool just to see a band you’d heard on the radio. Some of them didn’t put photos on their albums and so MTV provided my first glimpse of some of the bands I’d been hearing for years.
And there was Rush.
My interest in Rush grew with MTV because I got to see them play. They weren’t playacting in their videos. Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart simply played their instruments and mimed (or probably actually sang) the lyrics. The videos from “Tom Sawyer,” “Limelight,” “Vital Signs,” and “Subdivisions” rotated with the likes of Devo, A Flock of Seagulls, the Pretenders, the Police, Def Leppard, Men at Work, Asia, and countless others.
When I watched Peart drumming to “Tom Sawyer” or Lifeson playing a solo, something clicked. This band was different. These guys played impressively and made so much sound for just three people. The drumbeats were never where I expected them to be. This was my first taste of truly complex music with changes in time signature, virtuoso solos and fills, and interesting flourishes that were never boring. I was hooked.
Like many of us in our misspent youths, I had memberships in record and tape clubs, and I ordered Moving Pictures and Signals through those clubs. As I recall, I got Moving Pictures from Columbia House and Signals from BMG. Thus began my journey into buying everything the band ever did (often across multiple formats). In my college years, I met other Rush fanatics, became friends with them, and attended my first concert on their Power Windows tour at Richfield Coliseum in northeast Ohio. My love for the band and their music grew more and more with each album and concert, and I eventually considered them one of my two favorite bands (the other is Genesis).
III. Chemistry
Today, the band is over. The R40 Tour in 2015 was the final live farewell and any dreams that fans had about the band reconsidering calling it a day were crushed when Peart passed away in January of 2020. Peart was the band’s lyricist, and he had a unique voice to go with his incredible, one-of-a-kind drumming style. There is no Rush without him, or indeed without any of the three.
There is always new product though, such as recent deluxe sets and anniversary releases.
As I like to keep up with new releases, I follow a myriad of social media accounts, both official and unofficial, that keep Rush’s music in the forefront. I check out their website periodically and enjoy stories and discussions that reflect on their vast catalog of material. That’s how I stumbled across Something for Nothing: A Rush Fancast.
The podcast, hosted by Steve and Gerry (last names withheld at their request), celebrates and analyzes Rush music and discusses news related to the band. Steve and Gerry show their reverence for Rush music and yet are able to dive deeply into the lyrics and analyze it like seasoned music critics. All the while, they provide an accessible and relatable hosting duo that never talk down to their audience or assume they know more than their listeners (often quite the opposite). It’s, quite frankly, endearing.
The primary reason their show works so well is that they have such a comfortable rapport. They challenge each other without arguing and tend to build on what the other says. Their chemistry comes from having known each other since grade school.
“We've known each other since the fifth grade, so it's been over 40 years,” Steve said. “So, we have that in common with Rush. They were together for over 40 years. Gerry and I have been friends for over 40 years.”
Steve found his way into Rush fandom slightly ahead of his co-host. Like me, he picked up his first Rush titles via a record club.
“I joined Columbia House I believe in 1982, and two of the albums I picked, based on hearing songs on the radio, were Moving Pictures and Signals,” Steve said. “I was in a band at the time and the drummer in the band and I, whenever we jammed, we'd always be playing Rush. We'd be playing “Tom Sawyer,” “Red Barchetta,” “Limelight,” whatever. And I only knew those two albums up until the time we went to the show in 1986.”
The show Steve mentioned was his first Rush concert at the Meadowlands in New Jersey in the spring of 1986 when Rush toured for the Power Windows album. The band played back-to-back dates on March 31 and April 1. This was just a few months later, on the same tour on which I had attended my first Rush show — on Dec. 19, 1985.
“That changed everything for me, seeing that show, seeing Rush live,” Steve said. “I was in after that. I went out and bought every album and I'm pretty sure Gerry felt the same way.”
Gerry wasn’t yet a Rush fan when he agreed to go to the concert, although he knew some of their songs. He was invited along for a specific (and strategic) reason.
“I had four tickets to the show, I had nobody to drive me, and Gerry was the only one I knew with a license,” Steve laughed.
“It’s not like I wanted to go,” Gerry said. “I had heard a couple songs, maybe. But, you know, at that time, I would just do anything. I was 17 or whatever. I mean, like, ‘Yeah, I'll go the Meadowlands Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey to go see a concert. I don't care.’ And it was definitely one of the better decisions of my entire life. It's just strange thinking about that. Two hours, literally, just pointed me in a different direction for my entire life. It's quite remarkable. I went in knowing nothing and I came out needing to know everything.”
They drove around after the concert listening to the live album Exit…Stage Left in the car. Gerry was now hooked as well.
“I don't even remember. I might have just gone to the record store the next day or the next couple days,” he said. “I bought LPs, I bought the cassettes, so I could have them in the car, and I basically listened to Rush exclusively — probably for at least a year, if not two.”
The duo became Rush concert regulars together over the years, with Gerry logging 26 of the band’s shows with Steve, who went to two more that Gerry couldn’t attend, for a total of 28. Despite having seen the band live 20 more times than I have, Steve expressed a classic Rush fan’s lament about the number of concerts he’s attended.
“I wish I'd seen them more. Knowing what I know now, I wish I could go back and go to a bunch more shows,” he said.
The two haven’t been exclusively going to Rush concerts though. The seeds for their podcast were planted on a concert trip to see Death Cab for Cutie at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado — a bucket list concert venue for many music fans.
“In between the flight and the show, we decided to take a ride out to Utah to Arches National Park, and on that ride, Gerry and I were discussing podcasts,” Steve said.
“Yeah, we were just talking about the different things that we love about podcasts, because we have different tastes,” Gerry said. “Some of them overlap. He’s more of a sports guy and I’m just more of a general interest type of person. Murder podcasts too, I suppose. And one thing we found we had in common is that we loved it when there were two hosts and there was a certain topic — basically one topic that could be branched out into other things.
“And then, as we were driving along, we were listening to Rush, and we were listening to the song ‘Kid Gloves.’ Steve didn’t know what the phrase ‘kid gloves’ meant, so I think I went off on some kind of long story about the origin of the phrase ‘kid gloves,’ and then it was like a Seinfeld moment. And I was like, ‘Hey, we could do this!’ And Steve’s like, ‘What? Talk about kid gloves?’ I’m like, ‘No, talk about Rush!’ And then it was like two weeks later we just started doing it.”
Each show begins and ends with a unique intro and outro — a bass line from a Rush song played by a high school friend of the two hosts, Lex.
“He’s a bassist and we’ve known him for almost 40 years as well,” Steve said. “I’m a bassist but I’m nowhere near as good as Lex, so when we started the podcast, we needed something for the open and close, but we didn’t want to use Rush music for copyright reasons. So, we asked Lex to do a bassline for us and he did, and he’s been doing that for us every episode since, and he’s amazing.”
As of this writing, Steve and Gerry have published 113 episodes of Something for Nothing, with a wide variety of special guests who are either directly related to Rush or who do something Rush-related. Some of my favorite episodes include a discussion with Ohio State University Marching Band Director Christopher Hoch on the recent Rush halftime show his band performed, a talk with art director Hugh Syme, who oversaw much of the band’s artwork, and science fiction/fantasy author Kevin J. Anderson, who was a friend of Peart’s and wrote the novelization for the story behind the Clockwork Angels album.
Some of their shows include deep dives into Rush albums, interviews with musicians who have covered the band’s songs, authors of books about Rush, radio personalities who helped the band break out of obscurity in the 1970s, and many other interesting topics.
I wholeheartedly recommend Something for Nothing: A Rush Fancast for anyone from diehard Rush fans to those with a mild interest in their songs. The show is well planned, produced well, heartfelt, entertaining, and — perhaps above all — honest.
Something for Nothing: A Rush Fancast is available on all the major podcast platforms, including Spotify, Apple, Stitcher, Goodpods, etc. You can find and follow them on Twitter or Instagram.
For my entire interview with Steve and Gerry, including our complete breakdown of my favorite Rush album (Signals), please see the video below. And be sure to share both this issue of the MRC newsletter and the Something for Nothing podcast with the Rush fans in your life.