This month, I’m looking back at movies and tv shows to rediscover songs that graced the screen. The scenes and the music are inseparable. They’re engrained in our heads and our hearts. And they’re proof that the best music we have doesn’t exist in isolation. It attaches itself to a moment or an experience. #SceneSongs
Movie: I Love You, Man
Rush fans are an interesting bunch. They are inarguably some of the most devoted fans on the planet. Rush fans possess a special bond, but they are scorned, laughed at, and misunderstood by the masses – just like the band. Which is why I Love You, Man had such polarizing reactions. Many viewers saw the main characters’ obsession with the band as hilarious. Rush fans, however, viewed the obsession as nothing short of awesome. If anything, they wish the deep cuts, or at least less obvious picks, made it on to the movie soundtrack, not the universally known stuff. But c’est la vie. “Limelight” – along with “Tom Sawyer” and “Fly By Night” – deservingly put Rush truly into the limelight for a moment.
Moving Pictures is often cited as one of the band’s greatest records. It’s an amalgam of the band’s prog tendencies (“YYZ”, “The Camera Eye”, “Witch Hunt”) as well as their occasional penchant for straight-ahead rock (“Red Barchetta”, “Limelight”). On the latter, there actually isn’t much “slappin’ da’ bass”. Geddy’s biggest contributions on “Limelight” are singing in a more palatable tone for the masses and working in sympatico with Alex on the melody and instrumentation. Alex has some pretty fine guitar chops on “Limelight” as well. But I’d argue that this song was all about Neil, as the lyricist and purveyor of whatever the drum equivalent is of “slappin’ da’ bass”. There are some phenomenal fills in there.
“Living on a lighted stage. Approaches the unreal. For those who think and feel. In touch with some reality beyond the gilded cage.”