Snakes & Arrows Tour 2007 News Archive

"Turn up the music and smile, Get carried away on the songs and stories of vanished times"

Album News Archive - Tourdates & Setlists

In Their Own Words

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Image courtesy Rushisaband.com, click to enlarge
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Dryer shirt, click to enlarge
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"Rehearsal kind of takes three different stages. We do a couple of weeks of rehearsing on our own so that we can know all our notes and get them all in right order. Then we do four weeks of rehearsal as a band in a small hall. That's where we fine-tune the music. Then we spend two weeks in an arena with the full production while everybody tweaks the audio-visual. At the end of that, the show's ready for public consumption." - Geddy Lee, EdmontonSun.com, May 6, 2007

"We rehearse from 12 pm to 5 pm every afternoon, five days a week, for about four weeks. Before that, we’ve each already had about three weeks of individual rehearsal so we know our parts—or we think we know our parts." - Geddy Lee, Bass Player, Aug. 2007

“After doing the 30th anniversary tour, which was very much a nod to the past, we needed to go back and refresh the whole show...We felt pretty happy with the new material so we ingested a lot of it, and then went looking for songs we hadn’t played in a while. You can play it safe, but I think our fans like to be surprised. They look deeper into the albums than just the radio hits." - Geddy Lee, BostonHerald.com, June 26, 2007

"...we typically only do about four new songs a tour, but this time we're doing nine total. This album is such a joy to play and the response has been overwhelming to it. We did the greatest hits nostalgia thing on our 30th Anniversary Tour in 2004, playing all the old stuff that we hadn't done in awhile - we didn't need to do it again." - Alex Lifeson, The Arizona Republic, July 24, 2007

"Neil triggers a lot of sounds with electronic drum pads. Now he’s happy to call himself a drummer, a bass player, and a guitarist. In 'Far Cry,' there is one great big chord Neil triggers. I told him that every time he plays that part, he has to stick his arm in the air—if you’re going to sound like a guitar player, you’ve got to look like one!" - Geddy Lee, Bass Player, Aug. 2007

"They were up in Toronto filming a special for the CBC called the '2-4 Anniversary' (a 2-4 is what we Canadians call a case of beer). So they did this crazy special and they called me up and asked me if I would do a little cameo on the show. ... I've known Rick since I was a kid and I hadn't seen him in awhile and it was a blast doing this little segment with them. Then after we finished taping, I was leaving the building and I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great for them to do an intro to one of our songs?'... They said that they'd love to, so I sent them some titles of our songs and that's the one they chose." - Geddy Lee on the McKenzie Brother's intro to "The Larger Bowl", Austin American-Statesman, April 17, 2008

Show Notes

  • The dryers from the previous tours have been replaced by three rotisserie chicken roasters which are as tall as Alex's stacks of H&K amplifiers and say "Henhouse" across the front of them. Like the previous two tours, before the encore the band throw t-shirts to fans in the crowd. The t-shirt is black and does not say Rush anywhere; the front has an image of a waitress holding up a roast chicken while saying 'Feel like chicken?', while the back has the same phrase in six other languages: Dutch, German, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish; listed in the same order as they tour the respective countries.
  • There are multiple "Barbie Doll" groupies known as "Big Al's Babes" standing on stage in front of Alex Lifeson, holding "Post-It" signs with various sayings on them, apparently created by the roadies. Sayings have included: "I Like The Drummer", "My Grampa Says Your Cool", "Can I Roll Your Bones?", "I'm A Dino-Whore AKA Suckasaurass", "I Was Conceived While My Dad Was At A Rush Concert", "I'm Not Wearing Any Panties", "My Mom Thinks Your Hot!", "I'm Only Doing This To Pay For College", "Freebird!", "I Thought ZZ Top Had Beards", "Bass Player's Cute! Is That His Real Nose?", "I Golf Naked", "Nice Dinosaurs-You Must Be A Caveman", "If It's Too Loud You're Too Old".
  • The opening video begins with a dream sequence of Snakes and Arrows images, then Alex sits up in bed, saying, "Snakes? Who would dream about snakes, that's so creepy. Honey? Honey - wake up. I had this weirdest dream, it was a snake..." then the person lying next to him sits up and its Neil. They look at each other and yell in surpise...then after another sequence, Geddy wakes up in a chair and says "What did they do to my food?" and then in walks a man in a Scottish costume who speaks with a Scottish accent who tells Geddy he doesn't care how he is feeling, to "...wipe that chicken off your face and get out there!" after which they all ran out. The guy in the Scottish costume is actually Geddy, dressed in make up and wig. At the end of the show, another video of Scottish Geddy, aka "Harry Satchel" plays, where he tells people to go home because he wants to get back to eating his chicken, and we hear "Limelight" played on the bagpipes!
  • The video intro for the second set is all Alex in rare, comical form, playing several characters on the Snakes and Arrows Leela board. The board shifts around the screen and highlights certain lines to which Alex pops up and executes typical Alex rants.
  • There is a video of Bob & Doug McKenzie to introduce "The Larger Bowl"; "The Larger Bowl" has video snippets showing alternating images between the rich and the poor, etc.
  • Alex plays a mandola mounted on an Omega stand during "Workin' Them Angels"; "Workin' Them Angels" had a video accompaniment similar to the album art of various types of workers and soldiers with angel wings.
  • There is a South Park video intro to Tom Sawyer; during the video, the South Park characters begin playing Tom Sawyer but Cartman sings the wrong lyrics, "...floated down the river on a raft with a black guy", which leads to an argument with Cartman saying he's read the book and that's how the story goes, but the other quickly corrects him saying "that's Huckleberry Finn, stupid!". Cartman then says "I am Geddy Lee! And I will sing whatever lyrics I want!". They then start again to count off the beginning where Rush takes over and plays.
  • During "A Passage To Bangkok", a video plays showing footage of far east trains, poppy fields, marijuana plants and many other scenes related to the lyrics.
  • Geddy Lee is playing his 4001 Rickenbacker bass on stage for the first time in 25 years (last seen on the Signals tour).
  • Geddy Lee is using a minature Snakes & Arrows drum as a cup holder!
  • "Digital Man", last played on the Grace Under Pressure warm-up tour, has a new arrangement and is missing the first "He's got a force field" lyric.
  • The drum solo has been completely revamped: the "Scars" and "Pieces of Eight" sections have been dropped; there are a slew of new marimba samples which gives the middle section including the "Momo's Dance Party" bit an Oriental percussion feel; instead of "One O'clock Jump", the solo includes a complete big band triggered sample of "Cotton Tail" which Neil performed with the Buddy Rich Band on Burning for Buddy Vol. I.
  • Click here for Neil's House Music List

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