{"id":5576,"date":"2026-10-28T09:46:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T05:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=5576"},"modified":"2026-10-28T05:16:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T01:16:53","slug":"rush-invades-capital-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=5576","title":{"rendered":"Rush invades Capital One"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This past Sunday night I was at Capital One Arena for the second time<\/a> in a month, once again paying witness to a band I’d admired for decades but had never seen in person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Paul Rudd says in I Love You, Man<\/em>, I was prepared to get Rush-ified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell anyone in the crowd Sunday you’ve been a Rush fan for 20 years and probably the most polite reaction you’d get is some kind of eye roll and\/or exasperated sigh. This is the band’s “Fifty-Something Tour,” and yeah, there were people there I’m sure who’ve been following the Holy Triumverate for more than five decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found Rush when I was in college. Like most libertarian students hiding in progressive universities I completed the usual rites of passage: read Atlas Shrugged<\/em>, listen to Rush. Rush was cool without being flashy, mainstream without being too commercial, and what I’d call actual music<\/em> rather than mindless pop. Girls didn’t get it, and that’s why every party I went to in college was a bunch of dudes. Fast-forward a quarter century and yeah, Sunday night… a bunch of dudes. No matter. Rush and Rush fans lean into this; it’s actually a plot point of the aforementioned movie, I Love You, Man<\/em>. Luckily I’m not here to meet girls. I’m here to listen to music. Music that is kind of amazing. Hockey, maple syrup, Rush: these are things Canadians do well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve written before<\/a> about Neil Peart, Rush’s legendary drummer who passed away in 2020. I actually was a fan of Neil’s writing before getting into his drumming; he has a series of travelogues that include his musings on life and philosophy not unlike my own that go back to the 1990s. A Rush show on this current tour (the first in 50 years without Peart) spends much time paying tribute to its late drummer, and the adoring crowd certainly appreciates it. Neil can never really be replaced<\/em>, but listen to 43-year-old German maestro Anika Niles and you’d swear you were listening to the ghost of Neil Peart deftly cascading across a percussive landscape. (Sorry for the over-the-top analogy, but calling it a “drum set” or “playing the drums” just doesn’t do it justice.) Niles is worthy of the Neil Peart chair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew it was going to be great\u2026 and it was. There wasn’t one<\/em> moment that stood out for me Sunday night. There were about 50.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifty-something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past Sunday night I was at Capital One Arena for the second time in a month, once again paying witness to a band I’d admired for decades but had never seen in person. As Paul Rudd says in I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5576"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5587,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5576\/revisions\/5587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}