Rush: R30 – the Rush 30th Anniversary World Tour DVD

Rush have been my favorite band since 1978. I have every album and saw them in London twice when I was younger. By chance, in 2004, I noticed an ad for their 30th Anniversary World Tour which was coming to London. I grabbed tickets, and enjoyed a show that ran for over two hours – far longer than most headline bands play these days, even when you consider there was no support band. Just before Christmas 2005, R30 – the DVD of that tour – hit my local shop. My letter to Santa suddenly got an extra line on it.

The concert footage is from the Frankfurt Festhalle – amazing, I used to work a few hundred meters from the venue when I lived in Frankfurt. It’s almost the concert I saw in London; there are one or two changes to the London set list, but everything else is as I remembered. The video and sound quality is first rate, and if you turn it up loud you can feel the atmosphere. Rush have a reputation for a live sound that is very close to their recorded sound, and this offering maintains that reputation. Alex Lifeson is one of the world’s most underrated guitarists, Geddy Lee’s bass technique is (bizarrely) all upstrokes, and Neil Peart’s 9-minute drum solo is the subject of another series of DVD’s. On the stage, they’re simply unbeatable.

What do you get for your money? The “deluxe” version includes the full concert and a second DVD full of interviews, archive video footage and interviews (the 2 DVD’s are what you get in the basic version). There’s also a double CD of the concert so you can enjoy it again without the video. On top of that you get a 24-page book full of photos, a reproduction backstage pass, and two autographed guitar picks. I added my ticket stub.

Highly recommended.