2010 Endies: Live Performance of the Year

And you thought I forgot about this list, didn't you?

Anyway, this year's win also goes to Rush, for their Sep. 2nd performance at the State Fairgrounds in Syracuse, NY.

Granted, everyone who knows me wouldn't be that surprised by this choice, given my fondness for the band, particularly their live shows in the past decade. For a bunch of guys many would consider up in the 'geezer' category by now, their live performances have only gotten stronger in so many respects over the last few years. I've said before, something seemed to occur to them back in '02, when they did their leg of shows for the first time in South America, witnessed the all-too-rabid support, and came to the conclusion: "Hey, we really are that good."

Since then, each tour has showed a grizzled sort of self-awareness, a sense of accomplishment, a new gained (albeit nearly 40 year old) confidence that was often kind of lacking in their first twenty years as a band.

The summer tour seemed a tad extraneous. The band had only gotten about half-finished with their yet-to-be-released record, and opted to release its single as sort of a teaser. Longtime fans were a little puzzled as to what the point of touring was for (a show-business insiders hint: bands don't make money on albums now, so touring is a financial necessity more than ever; drummer Neil Peart, as old as he is, is nonetheless a new daddy, meaning an all new college fund to build upon for the next twenty years).

In order to make it feel like the tour would be worth the audiences', and in a likely sense, the band's time, they decided they would make performing Moving Pictures in its entirety the central portion of the show. This has been a bit of a gimmick among musicians lately. Sometimes running a little cliche at this point. This time it still worked. Some songs off of MP haven't been performed in twenty years or even longer. Some songs hadn't been played long enough that some fan's hadn't even been alive the last time they were done. I, for one knew the band had performed'The Camera Eye' during their Signals tour,however
I'd been ten years old at the time, and, y'know,hadn't been there for that (I wasn't a fan until I was eleven). I watched ten and twelve year old fans watching the band play 'Vital Signs' for the first time for them to experience it. This was an act encountering its third generation of fans, and for them, 'YYZ' getting played was still a new proposition. 'Red Barchetta' was a fresh experience. And in the encore set, 'Working Man' as old as it was, had never been experienced live in their lifetime (and Alex shredded the fuck out of a solo that by today's standards is considered kind of classic-rock overlong--and we didn't care). It was like watching a band reborn again.

The Endies-- Record of the Year

This year, I think, was a tougher one to pin down. A lot of albums were coming out late this year, which means I don't make them eligible until next year, and the bottom line is, there wasn't a ton of records that I was finding myself acquiring, outside of filling in on my vinyl collection, and stuph like that.



So the one that I kept coming back to turned out to be Rush's single release 'Caravan' this year (which was more of a preview of the upcoming Clockword Angels, set for a spring release). Truthfully, it wasn't 'Caravan' itself which got my attention, so much as the b-side, 'BU2B' which could almost be the theme song for Four Horsemen-style secular activists and anti-theists. Critics have panned the Neil Peart's lyrics on the tunes as preachy and self-righteous, but I'll still side with any song that echoes sentiments of James Hetfield's anti-religion screed "The God That Failed" (which was much less preachy, and maybe more anguished by first-person experience). It's also the best marriage between music-vocals-lyrics the band has put together in some years (I wasn't very impressed by anything they did on Snakes and Ladders back in '07), so it was a happy return to form. Hopefully, that's an indicator of things to come next year.



Honourable Mentions--Ben Folds and Nick Hornby--Lonely Avenue; Peter Gabriel--Scratch My Back

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