4 min read

I saw Rush at TD Garden in Boston on Monday night. It was a fantastic concert, one that came at the exact time I needed it.

I don’t have any photos to share with you. That was a conscious decision.

I’m going to sound like an old man yelling at clouds, but I turned 54 last week, so I may as well wear it. 

You see it at concerts and sporting events all the time: too many people watching the action through the small phone screen instead of their eyes. Social media can be good in a lot of ways, but man, it gets in the way more and more every day. 

As Rush took the stage, I reached into my front left pocket for my iPhone. Time for a photo of the stage. Zoom in as much as I can and hopefully get a shot that, if you squint, shows Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson together on stage. Maybe get drummer Anika Nilles behind the drum kit. Forget trying to get a shot of keyboard player Loren Gold tucked in the back of stage right, behind Lee and next to Nilles.

Nope. Instead, I put my phone in airplane mode, shoved it back in my pocket and focused all my attention on the concert. 

I pulled it out in the brief intermission between sets, checked my email, and put my phone back in airplane mode in plenty of time for Rush to open the second set with their classic “Tom Sawyer,” as they began to play their seminal album “Moving Pictures” front to end.

This is Rush’s first tour in more than a decade. In Nilles, they found a drummer worthy of the legacy of the late Neil Peart, who died in January 2020 after a 3½-year fight with brain cancer. She absolutely crushed every song, and I focused on how seamlessly she interacted with Lee and Lifeson.

Throughout the show, the three of them shared smiles. They were having fun, and everyone paying attention fed off the positive energy. I don’t need blurry photos on my phone to retain memories of that. My mind’s eye caught it all. 

A concert is a communal expression of a personal experience. Every song hits the individual listener differently. When Rush played “Dreamline,” nobody else in TD Garden was reminded that the first time they heard the song was on the radio while behind the wheel of Dad’s company car for the first time, running to the store for him while he recovered from back surgery, hoping not to make him regret the trust given with that set of keys.

Distance is a long-range filter/ Memory a flickering light left behind in the heartland

Nobody else heard “Vital Signs” and thought of the time they listened to the song while working at that indoor mini golf course-arcade that summer between sophomore and junior years of college. 

A tired mind become a shape-shifter/ Everybody need a mood lifter

Two guys in the row in front of me sat throughout much of the show, their faces pressed into their phones. I caught a glance at what held their attention more than Rush ripping through its “Moving Pictures” album song by song.

They certainly weren’t letting the music germinate memories. They certainly weren’t letting the music do its job to simply evoke. They weren’t engrossed by “YYZ.” They were engrossed by “Monday Night Football” and sports gambling apps. Really. A Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band is performing, and they’re exploring DraftKings. 

A man behind me held his phone up the entire show. I hope he was trying to stream it for a diehard Rush fan who couldn’t make it.

The highlights were the two tributes to Peart, one in each set. In set one, Rush performed “Bravado” while videos of Peart played behind the band. 

If love remains though everything is lost/ we will pay the price but we will not count the cost

In set two, “Time Stand Still” was accompanied by an animated video. At times, it showed a drum kit, solitary and without a player. Other times, it was a riderless motorcycle speeding through a desert or forest, a symbol of Peart’s love of riding his motorcycle from show to show. 

I’m not looking back, but I want to look around me now

I don’t have photos from the show, and I’m 100% good with that. I didn’t attend it on behalf of anyone but myself. I have memories both awakened and new, and those are so much better.