SOUNDTRACK: RUSH-The Fifth Order of Angels (bootleg from the Agora Ballroom,Cleveland, 26 August 1974) (1974).
I have mentioned this concert before, but I played it again today, and was struck by a couple of things.
1) According to the liner notes, Neil Peart had been in the band about two weeks. How did they decide that their new drummer was going to be doing a drum solo during the show? I mean, by now, everyone knows that the solo is its own song. But, he’s been in the band two weeks. It’s obvious he’s a good drummer, better than their original drummer, but a drum solo? Is that just what rock bands did back then?
2) I’m struck by how much this show sounds like early Kiss. I never really thought that their first album sounded like Kiss, but in this live setting, a number of the songs, or perhaps just the way they are recorded make me think of early Kiss. In particular, during the crazy “one, two, three, FOUR!” of “In the End,” when the guitars kick back in, it sounds like a Kiss show from circa Alive!.
3) It’s amazing how guitar-centric the band was back then. The mix is a little rough so it’s not entirely clear how insane Geddy is on the bass (when he gets a few solo notes, the bass sounds really tinny). But the concert is like a showcase for Alex’s solos. True, the whole first album really demonstrates what a great soloist he is, but it’s really evident here that Alex was the star.
4) Their earlier songs are really not very good. I mean, every Rush fan knows that the first album is almost not even a real Rush album, but it’s shocking how pedestrian these songs are compared to even what would show up on Fly By Night. Still, circa 1974 I’ll bet this show kicked ass.
It’s available here.
UPDATE: The missing content has been added!
[READ: August 9, 2011] Zone One
After reading the excerpt from Zone One in Harper’s I decided it was time to read the book (which is due to be published in October).
I admit I haven’t read Whitehead’s other works, but I have read excerpts, and I thought I knew the kind of things he wrote. So it came as a huge surprise when the excerpt ended the way it did. I didn’t want to spoil anything when I wrote the review of the excerpt, but since the entire book is set in the dystopian future and since it explain what has happened right on the back, I can say that Zone One is set in the aftermath of a kind of zombie apocalyptic plague. And I can’t help but wonder if the rousing success of McCarthy’s The Road has more or less opened up the field of literature to more post apocalyptic, dare I say, zombie fiction. [I haven’t read The Road, so there will be no comparisons here].
Actually there will be one. Sarah read The Road and complained that you never learned just what the hell started the end of the world. Indeed, in this book you don’t either. There is an event called Last Night, and after that, there’s simply the current state of affairs. I suppose you don’t really need to know, and since the story is all about dealing with the zombies, I guess it doesn’t really matter how it all started, but I think we’d all like to know.
Now what makes this story different from the typical zombie story is that for the most part there aren’t all that many zombies (or whatever these undead people are called) in the story. There are some of course, and they are inconvenient to the main characters, but unlike a story like Zombieland, (which was awesome) or the more obvious Night of the Living Dead, the story isn’t really about fighting zombies, it’s more about the rebuilding of the country in a post-zombie world.
In other words, quite some time has passed since Last Night (unspecified but it would have to be years, I think). In that time, the people in charge (whoever they may be) have settled in Buffalo and then decided that a section of Manhattan could be cordoned off, cleaned out, and made safe for regular human habitation. So they walled off all the subways and the bridges and tunnels–and the military blasted their way through the city, attracting zombies and killing them in massive fashion (we don’t really see that part of the story, it’s just alluded to).
And now you have a section of Manhattan which is more or less habitable. Of course, there’s a giant wall with zombies trying to climb over it, but if you ignore them, that section of Manhattan, or Zone One, has a kind of homey feel to it. Except, of course, for those last remaining zombies who for one reason or another didn’t flood the street en masse when the military came. And that’s where the main character comes in.
Mark Spitz (not his real name, and you won’t find out why he’s called Mark Spitz for nearly 2/3 of the book), upon seeing his parents devour each other, heads out for the wilderness. Since the story is set in the present (and the actual “time” of the novel is just three days), his story is told in flashbacks. We learn how he made it from the woods into reprehensible Connecticut (the amount of vitriol he directs towards what I affectionately call “The Construction State” has to be a record, a hilarious, hilarious record) and finally safely into Zone One.
The flashbacks look at some of the people that he (briefly) holed up with, the optimists, the pessimists and the downright crazy–and looks at the various ways they suffered from PASD (Post Apocalypse Stress Disorder). This part is more like a typical zombie story, except that the killing of zombies isn’t the point. Rather, many of the people he encounters seem to think they can outlast the zombies and start again. It’s an interesting twist to have the characters be so optimistic.
When the book is in the present, and Mark is in Zone One, he works on Team Omega. Team Omega is instructed to go into every single building in their area and check for stragglers. They find a few zombies every day and kill them. More disturbing that the violent zombies are the catatonic zombies–the ones who simply stand in one place and don’t move. At all. Forever. Mark and his team play a game, which is more existential than anything of guessing why the zombies are still there–what brought them back to this spot?
Of course, we meet the rest of Team Omega and we see their lives before Last Night (their characters are given just enough to flesh them out, but not so much as to overburden the story). We learn what happened to them on Last Night and what they have done since.
But what’s interesting about this zombie story is that because it is a post-zombie story, a story about reconstruction, it allows itself to question virtually everything about society as we know it. This post-zombie world is sponsored by the few corporations (and the cartoon mascot) that remain. Mark Spitz spends a lot of his time thinking about what Manhattan was like when he was a child (where his cool uncle lived); what it was like when he was an adolescent; and what it might be like again in the future–what is worth saving. So, although there are moments of (mild) gore, it is largely an introspective story.
And as such, I found that, like the stumbling zombies, the story was not terribly smooth. I think that the way the story is constructed–in a completely non chronological order–with explanations of important events coming much later than they are introduced, and with action sequences being interrupted by flashbacks and introspection–the story kind of plods along. It’s not to say that the writing is dull or the story is boring, not at all, it’s all about the style–a style that directly reflects the mindset of the main character–scattered, unable to focus, almost unwilling to move forward.
It’s a risky style, and one that had me questioning what Whitehead was doing on a number of occasions. And yes, I kept shouting at the book “Why is he called Mark Spitz?” “Where did all the zombies come from?” But it’s a style that pays off in the end.
It was also well-timed that I read it right after Zeitoun. Zeitoun also had a post- apocalyptic feel, except that it was much more real (because it was real). Zone One allows for more hypothetical ideas. And as Mark was wandering through the deserted streets of Manhattan, I imagined Zeitoun paddling through the deserted streets of New Orleans. obviously they aren’t connected in any way, but there was a familiarity between them that was totally unintended but nicely serendipitous.
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