State Controlled Radio #219-221

08.25.10

Hello friends and neighbors…this is my last day [in this lifetime at least] as a 45 year old. Onward and upward I say…

As I wrote in my last missive, this summer has been filled with unexpected twists and turns, especially regarding the production of my radio program, State Controlled Radio. I have had an unplanned hiatus of sorts and it has given me the time to sort out which kinds of projects that I wish to invest my time in the coming new [solar] year. I feel inspired to concoct, compile and evoke a book out of my various musical endeavors throughout the years [with a working title of Turning On At Forty-Five Revolutions Per Minute & Coming Down At Thirty-Three-And-A-Third] and as that vision continues to come into focus I will keep you posted on the development of that project.

Anyhow, I will resume production of SCR here in the next couple of weeks but in the meantime I want to let you know that State Controlled Radio will not be airing any longer on BZoO Worldwide Radio. It has been a great four-and-a-half year run creating programs for RG and his audience but both he and I feel that it is time for a change and I feel that the eclectic nature of my program no longer fits into the Dance/House format that RG has moved onto. Many (if not all) of my previous programs will soon be archived over at Babble Radio.com and I am excited about creating fresh content for the folks over at Babble Radio come September.

In the meantime, I highly recommend the last three SCR programs to be found below; episode #219 Ffity-Nine/Pearls Before Swine, #220 Ode To LS.d and I especially encourage you to check out episode #221 entitled Flipping Your Wig! A Conversation With Peter Case. This interview with Peter may be my favorite show yet in the SCR series.

http://www.petercase.com/

I have been enjoying a number of books this summer including The Masked Rider by Neil Peart, a 1996 autobiographical account by the Rush lyricist and drummer about his travels and travails of riding a bicycle through Africa in November of 1988. I picked up a copy of the book after seeing Rush in concert with my daughter Emily at the Verizon Ampitheater in Irvine, CA on 08.13.10. I devored the story in less than two days and now I’m on to his most recent memoir Traveling Music. I highly recommend Peart’s prose. I found The Masked Rider to be exhilarating and I can’t wait to read his other three books.

http://www.jonkanis.com/blog/2010/08/13/rush-verizon-ampitheater-irvine-ca-081310/

Another book that I have been enjoying immensely this past week is Richie Unterberger’s White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day-By-Day. A native of Philadelphia, Unterberger has called San Francisco his home for the past 27 years and I was able to pick up a copy of the Velvet Underground tome this past weekend when Unterberger came down to San Diego to give a lecture and screen a couple of hours of obscure video clips from groups of the British Invasion (starting with The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show in February 1964 and ending with their Our World performance of “All You Need Is Love” on June 25th of 1967). [By the way, props to Kurtis Strange, Mike Stax and others for their hand in organizing the event.] I’ve read many of Richie’s essays in the past, being a regular contributor to Mojo and Ugly Things magazine, but this is the first book of his that I have owned and it is a thing of beauty. The photos and layout are awesome (reminding me quite favorably of Keith Badham’s excellent day-by-day diary of The Beach Boys), the text is well written and it is superbly researched. You can check out this and several other of Richie Unterberger’s books at his website:

http://www.richieunterberger.com/

I have no concerts scheduled at the moment but I am investigating the possibility of playing some house concerts in the fall. I will, of course, be sure to keep you posted.

Stay cool everybody and enjoy the rest of your summer. Happy birthday to my fellow Virgos.

In peace & harmony,
Jon

State Controlled Radio Episode #219
August 1-2, 2010
Fifty-Nine/Pearls Before Swine

State Controlled Radio Episode #220
August 8-9, 2010
Ode To LS.d [layne sterling • dragon] [take two]

State Controlled Radio Episode #221
August 15-16, 2010
Flipping Yer Wig! A Conversation With Peter Case

Rush, Verizon Ampitheater, Irvine, CA [08.13.10]

Rush at Irvine Meadows Ampitheater, Irvine, CA 08.13.10

1) The Spirit Of Radio
2) Time Stand Still
3) Presto
4) Stick It Out
5) Workin’ Them Angels
6) Leave That Thing Alone
7) Faithless
8) BU2B
9) Freewill
10) Marathon
11) Subdivisions

12) Tom Sawyer
13) Red Barchetta
14) YYZ
15) Limelight
16) The Camera Eye
17) Witch Hunt (Part III of Fear)
18) Vital Signs
19) Caravan
20) Drum Solo [10:12 pm to 10:20 pm]
21) Closer To The Heart
22) 2112 Overture/The Temples Of Syrinx
23) Far Cry

24) La Villa Strangiato
25) Working Man

Well well well, RUSH in 2010…I would have never believed that I would be seeing this trio of musicians ever again in my lifetime…for a variety of reasons, but most of all because I thought that I had grown past a contemporary appreciation of Rush.  Or that I had at least grown out of my adolescent passion for a group that I basically stopped listening to back in 1982.

But my interest in this ultimate of power trios was re-ignited when I chanced upon an article back in 2009 relating the tragedies that befell drummer and lyricist Neil Peart when his teenaged daughter was killed in a car accident swiftly to be followed six month later by his wife of twenty years dying of cancer.  At that point [1997] Rush essentially disbanded and  Peart dealt with his devastating loss by embarking upon a 50,000 mile trek on his BMW motorcycle and eventually found his way through those experiences to slowly rebuild his life.  Much of this is recounted in the excellent 2010 feature length documentary on Rush entitled Beyond The Lighted Stage and even though I had long admired Rush’s music I was unaware that they had such a tremendous sense of humor until seeing this film.  Seeing the band in concert this summer also helped to fill in some of the gaps of my perception.

A lot has changed in the world of rock and roll since I first witnessed this band back in 1980 and 1982 (on the Permanent Waves and Signals tours respectively) and when I graduated from high school in ‘82 and moved from Northern Virginia to San Diego, California I made a lot of changes in my listening habits and many of the bands that I enjoyed as a teenager in high school no longer fascinated me in the same manner as they used to.  I’m sorry to say that Rush unfortunately fell into this category.  I still enjoyed their earlier albums (all the way back to their self-titled debut in 1974) but as they mutated into a more keyboard-oriented approach with their music they basically lost me after a series of albums (Grace Under Pressure, Power Windows and Hold Your Fire) that were at odds with my developing interest of music from the 1940s, 50s and 60s.  It appears that as they moved forward that I went backward and as a consequence I lost track of them for a couple of decades.  A similar thing happened to me recently with several of my closest friends from high school and after 25 years we got back in touch again.  A lot has happened and it was cool to get caught up.

I guess much of the impetus for going to see Rush once again came from my musically developing, 17-year-old daughter Emily.  As she herself is about to enter her senior year of high school she is exactly the same age that I was when I was a fervent Rush fan (in fact, there is a color photo of me in my ‘81 high school annual wearing my Permanent Waves tour shirt).  After her mother gave her a vinyl copy of Moving Pictures Emily has fallen in love with that album and when I found out that Rush was performing all of their 1981 masterpiece in its entirety on this 2010 Time Machine Tour it seemed like the time was ripe to check them out once more. Part of me always wished that I had seen them on the Moving Pictures tour and now, 30 years later with this Time Machine concept, I finally got the chance.

Neil Peart stated in the program accompanying this current tour (who prints tour programs any more?!?) that he was inspired by the current tours of Steely Dan and Todd Rundgren where they played classic LPs from their back catalog in their entirety [The Royal Scam, Aja, Gaucho and A Wizard, A True Star] and he suggested to his Rush band mates that they perform Moving Pictures in its entirety (Peart writes that the band had never played the ten-minute long “The Camera Eye” before live).  As an audience member who was there “back in the day” I have to say that it was better than seeing them in the 1980s, even as I viewed them from the very outer reaches of the lawn section at Irvine Meadows.  The technology for presenting this type of amplified multi-media experience is so much better than it was thirty years ago and quite simply all three members of Rush (bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson included) are even more accomplished at their respective instruments than ever before.  As I commented to my daughter after the show “Geddy Lee is the worst musician of the group and he is absolutely amazing.”

And clearly it is Geddy Lee who is the driving force behind the visuals of the band as Rush created three unique short films (about five-to-six minutes in length each) that were played at the beginning of the concert, at the interval and as the very conclusion, after the band had left the stage.  These short films set up the evening’s construct of the Time Machine and created a context for how the band presented their music in two thousand and ten.  With no new album to promote the band decided to feature their most successful album of their career, but in addition to performing Moving Pictures they also provided a wide swath of songs from across their 36-year journey, without feeling the need to focus on their big hits or promote a new album.  But they did have a pair of excellent new songs (”Caravan” “and BU2B”) that they performed from a work in progress entitled Clockwork Angels and I thought that the new material sounded as good as anything else that they performed during the entire evening and I gotta say that I’m sorry that I let Rush slip out of my sight for so much time but I am glad to have them so strongly on my radar once again.  I look forward to their next long player and I just might have to check them out when they go out on the road next time to promote Clockwork Angels.  Probably with my daughter in tow.  Break a leg guys and I’ll see you in 2011.