Latest news with #NeilPeart
Hamilton Spectator
31-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
The Big Money: Viability of St. Catharines' Neil Peart memorial being assessed
A memorial honouring legendary Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart at Lakeside Park has only reached a fraction of its fundraising goal, prompting Mayor Mat Siscoe to ask what's going on. The city launched a $1-million fundraiser last September for an art installation to honour Peart, who grew up in St. Catharines, and the volunteer task force behind the project had hoped to have funds secured by now. But Phil Cristi, director of community, recreation and culture services and staff liaison on the task force, told council that hasn't happened. 'The memorial that was supposed to be at Lakeside Park has hit a bit of a standstill, unfortunately,' Cristi said. 'We've raised about just over $120,000 towards the $1-million project budget but, unfortunately, we've not been able to secure any more funds after that and it's proved to be quite difficult to get meetings arranged.' The project is being led by a volunteer task force struck in 2020 and facilitated by the city with the understanding it would be entirely paid through fundraising. David DeRocco, a Rush fan who has been the driving force behind the memorial for five years, said in an interview he knows support is out there for the project, but it needs a sustained fundraising campaign, a new chair who can bring in money and more commitment from the city to make it a priority. DeRocco was chair of the task force since its inception, but informed the city in January he was resigning as its head. He said he thought it would be a good idea to get a new person at the helm with financial and fundraising connections to move the project forward since they hadn't reached their benchmarks. He said he expected the city to replace him quickly and call a task force meeting, but the next one isn't planned until September. The last time the task force met was as a subcommittee last November. 'I really don't want this to disappear because once it's built, it's going to bring people to the city who would not normally come to the city and it's a worthy cause,' said DeRocco, who remains an active task force member. 'Neil is a worthy person to have a memorial in St. Catharines, so I think we're just stalled. The artist is still behind the project. We just need to get awareness of the need for donations a lot faster.' The city has released a video that depicts a rendering of the planned Neil Peart installation at Lakeside Park in St. Catharines. The concept includes two bronze sculptures of Peart in his younger and later years connected by a pathway with interpretive panels. Peart, a recipient of the Order of Canada and a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee with Rush members Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, is considered one of the greatest drummers of all time. Born in Hamilton, he grew up in St. Catharines during his elementary and high school years and worked at the former midway in Port Dalhousie's Lakeside Park. The Rush song 'Lakeside Park' was written by Peart and inspired by that time. Peart died Jan. 7, 2020, at age 67 from brain cancer. City council established the Neil Peart Commemorative Task Force in April 2020 to look into commissioning a public work of art in his honour. It also named a new pavilion in Lakeside Park after Peart in June 2020. After holding a bidding process, the task force announced in November 2022 Morgan MacDonald of the Newfoundland Bronze Foundry had been selected to create the memorial. The $1-million installation will include two bronze sculptures depicting Peart in his younger and later years, connected by a pathway of interpretive panels about his personal and professional legacy. A soft campaign to pay for a memorial began in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the official fundraising campaign launched in September 2024. Cristi said the artist hasn't been paid and won't be until the budget has been raised as part of the agreement. DeRocco said Rush fans, if they know about it, will give money to the memorial. He's been spreading the word as much as possible, speaking with fans, the media and on Rush podcasts. He's now working with 97 Rock in Buffalo, N.Y., where the station's morning show hosts Shredd and Ragan are holding 'The Great North American Rush Off.' Bands are submitting cover tunes of Rush songs that will be part of a compilation to be sold, with proceeds going to the memorial in St. Catharines. But there's no equivalent on the Canadian side. DeRocco said there's never been a sustained awareness campaign and there's no active fundraising other than the presence on the city website . DeRocco, who has a full-time job and publishes a 20-page newsletter for Port Weller Residents Association, said the task force needs someone who can build a plan to generate money faster, including holding auctions and gathering sponsorships from music industry corporations to honour Peart. 'He's international and scandal free and homegrown and revered and is iconic a musician as you can possibly get, internationally recognized as the best at his craft,' DeRocco said. 'I need the city to get serious about supporting this, not waiting for it to happen.' Siscoe wants something to happen, too. He asked city staff on July 14 to convene a meeting of the task force to discuss next steps for the project and report back to council as soon as possible. In an interview, he said because the project is being done outside of council with the city as a facilitating body, he doesn't know what's been going on with it in terms of planning, advertising or capacity for fundraising. 'I'd like to know exactly what's going on because we don't want to keep using city resources if we're not moving forward. But if we are moving forward or if there's a plan to move forward, well then let's move forward … I don't like things just languishing,' Siscoe said, adding he feels the same way about city assets. 'You shouldn't just let things sort of fall apart. I don't want this to fall apart. We're either going to do something with it or we're going to disband it. I don't know what the case is. I'm looking forward to the report.' Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Forbes
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Rush Charts A New Top 10 Album As Fans Revisit The Early Days Of The Band's Work
Rush's Rush 50 debuts on four U.K. charts, including a No. 5 entry on the Rock & Metal Albums list, ... More giving the band its fifteenth top 10 on the tally. LONDON - 1st JUNE: Bassist Geddy Lee, drummer Neil Peart and guitarist Alex Lifeson from Canadian Progressive rock group Rush posed in London during the Permanent Waves tour of England in June 1980. (Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns) Rush hasn't been an active band for nearly a decade, but the Canadian rock legends continue to reach generations of fans, and longtime listeners are clearly still paying attention. This week, the group finds itself back on the charts in several territories around the world, thanks to an exciting career retrospective. The aptly-titled Rush 50 celebrates half a century of the group's groundbreaking music, and it's become a big win in the United Kingdom, where the rockers maintain a loyal following. Rush 50 debuts on four charts in the U.K. this time around, and it manages to enter the top 40 on all of them. That's no small shift for a rock act that officially disbanded years ago and hasn't released brand new material in a long time. Among the quartet of tallies the group reaches, one stands out as particularly important. The rock act lands its highest debut on the Official Rock & Metal Albums chart, where Rush 50 opens at No. 5. The special release ranks as the fourth-highest new arrival on the genre-specific tally this frame. It trails only Cradle of Filth's The Screaming of the Valkyries (No. 1), Big Big Train's Bard (No. 2), and Bloodywood's Nu Delhi (No. 4). Beyond the rock and metal-onlyl ranking, Rush 50 also opens inside the top 40 on three other U.K. charts this week. The collection enters the Official Albums Sales list at No. 28, while it launches at No. 31 on the Official Albums Downloads ranking. On the Official Physical Albums tally, it starts slightly lower at No. 33. Rush's return to the Official Rock & Metal Albums chart is huge for the group, and it earns the act its fifteenth top 10 on that tally. Altogether, the band has now appeared on the genre-specific ranking 24 times, with most of those charting efforts reaching the loftiest space. On the other rosters, Rush's track record is slightly more modest, though still notable. The band now claims seven entries on the Official Albums Sales chart, eight on the Official Albums Downloads list, and 16 total appearances on the Official Physical Albums ranking.
Telegraph
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Why ‘virtuosic weirdos' Dream Theater are every rock connoisseur's favourite band
Dream Theater have never been what you might call a straight-up rock and roll band. Even at the start of the Long Island quintet's recording career, 36 years ago, their debut album, When Dream and Day Unite, attracted praise and opprobrium, in more or less equal measure, for its metal-adjacent technical flamboyance. As a former student at the esteemed Berklee College of Music, in Boston, Mike Portnoy, the group's drummer, was singled out for particular attention. 'In the band's very first appearance in Kerrang! magazine… there was a photo of me with the review and [music journalist] Derek Oliver wrote, 'Mike Portnoy: heir to the Neil Peart throne,' Portnoy tells me. (For anyone unfamiliar with the name, the now late Neil Peart was the drummer from the Canadian group Rush, known to all as the gold standard of modern progressive rock bands.) 'To me, that was the ultimate compliment,' he says, 'especially on our first album because Neil was one of my biggest heroes when I was a teenager. Seeing that comparison at such an early age was the ultimate compliment back then.' Over the course of 16 studio albums, like Rush, Dream Theater have done their business away from the mainstream. As was the case with their Torontonian forebears, though, an almost perfect absence from the airwaves has had no discernible impact on the box office. Never mind, either, that the critics can be a bit sniffy – The Guardian once described their sound as a combination of 'old-school heavy metal wailing and unrepentant prog' – because the people keep coming. With almost no fanfare at all, in October of last year, the group headlined their largest-ever London concert, at the O2 Arena. Now, Dream Theater are on the road in North America for a tour to mark the 40 years that have elapsed since forming in Massachusetts (where two other founding members also attended the Berklee College of Music). Unlike many metal groups of a certain age and standing, however, nostalgia is not usually their stock-in-trade. Later this year, the group will return to the road in order to play their latest album, Parasomnia, released this month, front to back for ticket-holders who are evidently keen on hearing new songs as well as old. 'Our audiences are very supportive of us making new music,' Mike Portnoy says. 'We have a fanbase that's very, very passionate. They're not casual. We don't have the kind of fans that just pop in to check out a show because they maybe heard a song on the radio. We're just not that kind of band. We've always been an album-oriented band.' He continues. 'Luckily, these days, we're established enough, or have been around long enough, where we can kind of do whatever we want and call the shots. But it wasn't always that way. It took many, many many years to get a fanbase built up to that level of dedication and support. If we were just starting out, I don't know how we would do it. But luckily we've built this fanbase that has been with us all these years and which allows us this freedom.' Late at night in the thick of February, Mike Portnoy appears on my computer screen from a dressing room of the Hard Rock Live theatre in Biloxi, Mississippi. In response to the observation that his quarters look rather posh, not without humour he answers, 'We play nice places, you know?' Reassuringly, though, with a fulsome beard, long hair and a t-shirt bearing the words 'Directed By David Lynch', he retains the air of a man whose very presence in a department store would attract the attention of the head of security. In a voice that sounds like a Harley on the horizon, he answers my questions with considered concision. His backstory is pleasingly irregular. After toiling away on the lavatory circuit under the name Majesty – chosen following a conversation about Rush – it was the drummer's father who suggested the group rechristen themselves Dream Theater. Far from an ordinary working dad, as well being an author, a film director and the owner of an art gallery, the late Howard Portnoy was for a spell a DJ at KRML, in Carmel-by-the-Sea, in California. As if this weren't quite unusual enough, the job was secured after watching the Clint Eastwood thriller Play Misty For Me, a cult standard from 1971 about a lover-turned-stalker. 'He saw that movie and wanted to move to Carmel and get a job working at that radio station, which is exactly what he did,' his son reports. After an apprenticeship banging on pots and pans, Mike Portnoy took possession of his first real drums at the age of six. Lacking any real branding, it had a blue-sparkle design, he remembers, and was a gift from a grandfather who suffered a heart attack on its day of purchase (and who died before the week was out). A decade later, in possession of serious musical chops, he became the owner of a kit made by Tama, the brand he endorses to this day. Asked to guess how much his current set-up would cost were he required to buy it with his own money, he answers, 'I don't know… tens of thousands of dollars' The understandable desire not to pay for his own clobber led to a deal with Sabian Cymbals, which in turn led to a friendship with fellow endorsee Neil Peart. The sight of the two men discussing the intricacies of their trade, in the company of former Frank Zappa drummer Terry Bozzio and session great Tony Braunagel, in promotional clips on YouTube, affords a glimpse of the exalted level at which Portnoy is operating. In the distinction made by Buddy Rich, these are people who play drums rather than hit them. To hear them joined in conversation is like eavesdropping on the winning team in the World Cup for geeks. With his busy paradiddles and mad time signatures, naturally, the relationship with Peart progressed beyond professional obligations. 'I knew Neil very well,' Portnoy explains. 'He became a good friend of mine for about the last 15 years of his life [the drummer died in 2020]. It was a friendship I had so much gratitude for. He would invite me to sound-check, so I would go and see Rush's sound-check. He would let me sit behind the kit and let me play whatever [set-up] he was using on each particular tour.' But there were differences between the two men. As habitués of the 1970s rock circuit, Peart and his bandmates' preference for reading books over hedonistic chicanery led Gene Simmons, from Kiss, to note that 'in rock and roll even an ugly bastard like me can get laid, but none of the Rush guys ever did it'. I can't speak for Portnoy's predilection for pleasures of the flesh, but, certainly, he enjoyed other trappings familiar to the rock-biz circus. Enjoyed them, that is, until they threatened his livelihood, and even his life. With bombastic élan, over a series of Dream Theater albums, the drummer's journey to sobriety is itemised in a song-series nicknamed the Twelve-Step Suite. 'Back in 2000, I knew I was drinking and partying too much,' he explains. 'My kids were just born and they were young and I didn't want to become a rock and roll casualty like my heroes, like John Bonham and Keith Moon, so… I got sober at that time and [have] spent many, many, many years sober. It was probably what saved my life. It's very easy to fall into the trap of boredom on the road, and things like that. Luckily, Dream Theater isn't a crazy Mötley Crüe [or] Guns N' Roses type band, so our environment is a little more' – he searches for the right word – ' normal than some of the crazier bands out there.' Maybe. But the weird truth of it is that rock and roll is one the very few occupations at which, at one's place of work, one will find crates of beer and bottles of liquor left by promoters apparently unconcerned that touring musicians will end up too trollied to play a show. As if to prove the point, Mike Portnoy raises an unopened bottle of Jack Daniel's 'Gentleman Jack' whiskey into view, against which his phone has been resting. 'I think musicians are creative people and you see those kinds of issues not only with musicians but with actors and even athletes sometimes, [where] you live a life where you're put in the spotlight and you're surrounded by whatever you could want and all you have to do is request it and it's brought on a silver platter,' he says. 'When you live that kind of lifestyle, it's very easy to succumb to it. And there's a lot of boredom, too. There's a lot of time sitting around, you know. I'm on tour with Dream Theater now. We play a three-hour show every night, but the other 21 hours of the day we're kind of sitting around waiting to play.' Today, it seems that Portnoy avoids the temptations of grape and grain by staying as busy as is humanly possible. He is, and has been, involved in what seems like dozens of side-groups with esteemed players such as bassist Billy Sheehan and guitarist Ron Thal. He's sat in with everyone from thrash metal prototypes Overkill to the jam band Umphrey's McGee. During a 13-year period of absence from Dream Theater, concluded in 2023, he kept the beat for both Twisted Sister and the brilliant Orange County metal group Avenged Sevenfold, whose own drummer had died from the misuse of opioids. But it's as a member of Dream Theater that Mike Portnoy has built what is, and what will surely continue to be, his most enduring legacy. Peculiar and esoteric, the group's continued popularity supports the notion that while some avenues of guitar-based rock and roll struggle to prosper, or even survive, metal remains bulletproof. But here's the thing of it: even in this context, the band are irregular. By emerging into the light in the early nineties, perhaps the only period in its history when the movement was in declining health, Dream Theater became a legitimate alternative for listeners who were seriously unpersuaded by the overnight popularity of alternative music. In the years since, they've remained somehow separate from the scene they represent. Lacking the 'cool' of Tool or the crossover wallop of Metallica, instead, with the persistence of Wile E Coyote, they've fashioned an enviable career out of virtuosic weirdness. 'We went through a lot of periods where this band could easily have broken up,' Portnoy reports. 'We went for three years looking for a new singer, trying to change our record deal, getting new management – we could easily have thrown in the towel. The late nineties was a very tough period for us. But I think all the stuff that's happened to us… well, it's like the expression goes: what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. I think we're an example of that.'
Yahoo
26-01-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
With apologies to Geddy Lee
Musicians Alex Lifeson, Neil Peart and Geddy Lee of the band Rush perform at the Nokia Theatre on May 6, 2008 in Los Angeles, California. One of the band's best-known hits is "Working Man." (Photo by) After President Donald Trump pulled off another win last year, dejected Democrats settled on how they can stage a comeback: They're gonna be the party of the working man again. This may sound familiar, because it's basically the same thing they said the first time he won in 2016. But in Michigan, the Democratic-controlled House couldn't get its act together during the lame duck session following the election, so alas, they lost the chance to pass a slew of economic justice laws before Republicans took charge of the chamber in the new year. Minimum wage and sick leave bills clear Michigan House with bipartisan support after heated debate This session, Republicans have made it their top priority to scale back minimum wage and sick leave laws that the Michigan Supreme Court ordered to go into effect in February. Next month, the minimum wage is set to jump from $10.56 to $12.48 per hour and will hit $14.97 by 2028. And employers with fewer than 10 employees would be required to offer up to 40 hours of paid sick leave and 32 hours of unpaid leave, while businesses with 10 or more employees must offer a full 72 hours of paid sick leave. Now the minimum wage is set to increase in almost half of states this year. But the situation in the Mitten State is pretty unique. The fight here has dragged on for over six years, with a past GOP-led Legislature adopting two citizen-initiated ballot measures upping the minimum wage and mandating paid sick leave before the 2018 election. Right afterward, they gutted those laws during a far more productive lame duck. A series of court battles ensued. In 2024, the state's highest court weighed in, ruling that the Legislature's maneuver was illegal and the ballot proposals should go into effect. That prompted a complete meltdown from business groups, particularly the restaurant lobby, as the law would also ditch the subminimum wage for tipped employees by 2030. So the first thing House Republicans did when they took charge of the chamber this month was create a brand spanking new select committee to take up bills curtailing the new laws. Their legislation slows down the minimum wage hike, with Michigan's rate hitting $15 per hour in 2029. The tipped wage would stay put at 38% of the state minimum wage and the rate for employees under 18 would be cut from 85% to 75% of the minimum wage. Employers with 50 employees or fewer would be exempt from the new paid sick leave requirements. Language permitting employees to take civil action if their employer violates the law got the ax. Both bills passed the House Thursday with bipartisan support — which seems like it flies in the face of Democrats' resolve to woo the working class. And while most Democratic House members did vote against the measures, it's significant that even Democrats who run the Senate have introduced their own bills watering down the minimum wage and sick leave laws — just not as drastically. Organized labor was decidedly unhappy, with Michigan AFL-CIO President Ron Bieber declaring, 'Every legislator, regardless of their party, should be held accountable for their vote to cut the pay and benefits for workers most in need.' But business interests have basically already declared victory, confident that significant changes will pass both chambers soon — and Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will sign them to show she's a moderate when she presumably runs for president in 2028. I've been around Lansing for over 20 years. I'm not a betting woman, but those odds seem pretty good to me. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
