RUSH (the band) - and BIM?

I went to the RUSH concert on Saturday night here in St. Louis. It rocked. That is really all that needs to be said. For a band that has been around since 1974, they have some of the best music I have ever listened to and that is saying a lot.

Growing up, my mom did not allow me to listen to rock music. She has a degree in music from the conservatory at UMKC and she believed that children should only listen to classical music. I was not allowed to play the instrument I really wanted to learn (drums). Instead, I was forced to play violin. I still play (several instruments in fact), though I almost quit along the way – frustrations with the instrument, the teachers, the practicing – oh the practicing. I wanted to be an instant virtuoso… not happening, especially with an orchestral instrument. Now a kazoo… The point is that I had to sneak in my fix of rock music until I was on my own in college.

These days, there is no limit to what I will listen to. If they play good music, I am all over it. Enter RUSH. A three person band has, to my knowledge, never produced the quality and amount of sound that this band does. And they have been doing it for 34 years. Wow. So by now, you have figured out that the concert was incredible. It was perfect – the band, the weather, the company – I could not have asked for a better setup. If you are not a RUSH fan, you might want to listen to their music. Start with 2112 and Moving Pictures, skip the rest until you get to the Roll the Bones album and listen to them progressing in time forward from there. Then go back and listen to more of their seminal music from the 70’s and 80’s. Oh, one other word of advice – listen to their live albums as much as you can. RUSH sounds even better live than they do on their studio recorded albums (Exit Stage Left comes highly recommended). And that is no small feat.

What does this have to do with BIM? Nothing really. I could make plenty of tie-ins: the frustration that hits when you do not practice in your chosen software platform enough, the need to have an open mind when trying new software, learning how to pick and choose what is appropriate and what is not, figuring out the best tools, getting training on live projects… If you read this entry and take any of that out of it, you are reading too much into it.

Go out and listen to some good music.