1/13/24: R30 Overture

Medleys of fan favorites at live shows served a practical reason.

In addition to the video features, another hallmark of Rush’s live shows were the song medleys. Usually these pieces featured fragments of their earlier songs or songs that had parts that were tougher for an older Geddy to sing live.

As Geddy Lee explains in his memoir, My Effin’ Life, the medleys also were a way to ensure the group played the big fan favorites while still remaining under a three-hour time limit, which was required by most staff unions at the arenas and other event spaces where they played.

Because it’s Rush, the live show medley became an art form in and of itself. Many of their live albums feature medleys, and I enjoy puzzling out why these particular songs were smashed up together. What common threads bind them? What narrative does it tell?

For example, the R30 Overture pulls from the opening riffs—or the, um, overtures--of one song from each of Rush’s first six studio albums: “Finding My Way,” “Anthem,” “Bastille Day,” “A Passage To Bangkok,” “Cygnus X-1: The Voyage,” and “Cygnus X-1: Hemispheres.”

Lyrically, each song in the medley is about making a journey, whether that’s meant literally (“Finding My Way”, “Cygnus X-1”) or figuratively, as in marching into the future (“Anthem”, “Bastille Day”). The rhythm sections have an insistence to them that carries the listener forward—it’s hard not to feel your heart race as each song dissolves into the next.

Which makes sense, seeing as how R30 was itself a journey through Rush’s previous three decades of rock!