I found a 2112 cassette tape in my P.E. locker midway through seventh-grade. I got home and put it in my mom's shoebox-sized player recorder - the kind with the little toggle switch.  Just play, stop and forward. The tape was already rewound to the beginning of side one. 

"Overture/Temple of Syrinx" blew my little sevey head CLEAN OFF.  It was the most stunning thing I had ever heard. It screamed at me, "ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?!! LIFE IS ALL AROUND US BEING LIVED!! DON'T SLACK! LIVE!!!!"

I immediately called my best friend, Joe Howe, and demanded he listen to it over the phone. His exact words were, "What IS that crap?!" 

Rush has always been a polarizing band. There is rarely a middle ground. For me it was love at first sight. That was 1980. 

Ten years after my introduction, my passion for Rush had cooled. They would always be a part of my formative years, but our wants and needs as band and fan had grown apart. They seemed to have stalled on the same vibe a few times in a row. Then they put out a record called Presto, with this haunting single called "The Pass" that seemed to embody a tragedy and resolve into an abyss.  Once again the band spoke to me. It clicked again. 

Twenty-five years after our first introduction, Channing was coming over to my house to show me the Rush in Rio DVD.  It was a beautiful sunny winter day in Southern California. In a few weeks my son would be born; a few months later I would re-relocate my cuddly little family to the lying cruel beauty that makes up the seven week Seattle summer.

It was a heavy time. Fatherhood. Marriage. Fuck. Fuck YEAH! But still fuck. 

Chan and I had previously Rush bonded over a SERIOUS session of air drumming. It's one test you can't cheat on. "Overture/Temple of the Syrinx" - you either know it or you're fronting. On the drive from Footsies (the bar Chan and I worked at together) to The Britespot Cafe (the late-night diner we frequented after getting off) - one night in my 4Runner - we proved to each other there was NO fronting going on. There has only been one other non-drummer in my life that has thrown down air drums like that. ONE. Fill for fill, beat for beat, we were matched perfectly. We nutted that thing. It had been a long time since I had shared that side of myself with anyone. We must have looked a couple complete cocks to whoever pulled up next to us at stoplights, but that's the beauty: blind, reckless abandon, to be free of thought, and acting purely on instinct of the professor.

Channing and I sat in my living room watching the DVD talking about how huge the Rio crowd was, how "Closer to the Heart" is basically the national anthem down there and had to be added to the set at the last minute, and then about all that Neil Peart had been through losing first his daughter (in a car crash) and then his wife (from a broken heart) in the same year. We talked about the books Neil had written, some about joy some about grief - books that Chan had read all of. It was just he and I.  

Then "The Pass" came on. The first resolution from the verse into the chorus caught me completely off guard. The chord change. It was like I had been punched in the stomach with emotion. My eyes welled up and I instinctively  looked over at Chan to see if he had seen me nearly burst into unexplained tears. He hadn't. WHOA! That was WEIRD!

We went back to talking just enough for it to startle me AGAIN - the second time the chorus came around. It was like being hit by an invisible wave of emotion. I welled up again, just barely in control of my functions. ... I had never had that (sober) reaction to a piece of music. I didn't understand it. I chalked it up to a heightened sense of vibe awareness brought on by the impending nuptials and offspring. When I asked Chan about it, he said it definitely gave him a heavy, heavy feeling. ...

Fast-forward three years. After being diagnosed with a 7- to 10-year-old, stage 3 col-rectal tumor, I had been through the first round of chemo and radiation - most of the way through my second round of a harder more strenuous flavor of chemo. I have had emergency surgery to install a colostomy bag, and I wear glorified fanny pack that houses a little bag of chemo and a pump with a line coming out of it and going directly into my upper chest, up over my collar bone (under the skin), and down into one of the main large arteries that feeds the heart. At the end of THIS round of chemo, I would go under the knife for the second time for the fully invasive "pull out all the bad parts and pray there is enough left to make a whole person" procedure. It's a heady time.  

My wife and I had just returned from a weekend away together at Westport on the Washington coast. While she was out getting a massage, I went for a longer walk down the beach than my weakened state should have withstood. But I wasn't just meandering. I was talking to the ocean. And I suppose to God, or whatever you wanna call her. I was making my peace with ... not death, or dying in the immediate sense, but just letting it be known that, I appreciated being alive and I had every intention of remaining so - but that if it wasn't in cards that I return to see the ocean again, I didn't want to leave without saying goodbye. Heady indeed.

It was about a week before the surgery, and EVERYTHING was hitting just a little bit of a morbid, "Is this the last time I'll be doing all of these things I do everyday?" vibe. This is when Mikey called me and said, "Rush is playing at the White River Amphitheater and you're coming with us. PERIOD!"  

Mikey and I met in 1999 in the men's room at Planet Hot Rod in Fife - during a New American Shame show there.  Mikey is the most animated hand talker I know. He will slap you on the back 30 times during a 10-minute conversation. Mikey also has a heart of gold and will do anything for a friend, as long as you drive out to HIS house, which is fucking 45-minutes from ANYWHERE in Covington, Wash.  

I said, "Fuckit, maybe this will be the last time I get to see ‘em?" I called the person managing the band I was playing in at the time and sought assistance. The reserved seating was supposedly sold out, but he was able hook us up with five tickets for the lawn. The night of the show it was pissing rain. 

After retrieving the tickets from Will Call I had a moment of clarity. I went back and asked the women if any tickets had opened up in the front rows. She said she had three seats one row behind the golden circle - $90 bucks each. I was not going to spend the evening in the rain watching Rush from 200 yards away. I bought a ticket. My cohorts decided free was too good to pass up and they would take their chances "gorilla upgrading'" once we got inside. 

As we entered the side at the top of the venue, we were immediately separated by seat placement. "Limelight" starts. I'm almost in tears walking down, down, and still down. My seat was brilliant. I could see all of their faces. I have a baseball cap on and have my hoody pulled up deep - trying for the turtle in a shell look. I hadn't realized how emotional this was going to be for me. 

After I was diagnosed I read all of Neil's books. In particular was Ghost Rider - a book about the months and months and months he spent on his motorcycle traveling endless highways trying to vanquish the agony of losing his daughter and then wife. It's a book about how close he was to the edge of sanity - maybe over the edge. The road was all he had left. Not the most uplifting subject when battling a life threatening illness, but somehow the crying everyday was going to happen anyway. I figured I might as well get some grief insight along the way. 

So there I was. Alone, enjoying what was never REALLY going to be my last rock concert; but who the fuck knew at the time, right?  And then I remember "The Pass."  I KNOW they're going to play it - they're going to play it and I'm going lose control and break into full sobbing. I try to recede further into my hoody, sitting, enjoying the show, waiting for it to get ugly. At least I'm alone, I think to myself. The people next to me may think I'm weird if they notice, but at least there's no one that's going to want to worry about consoling me. That would just make it worse.

That's when I glance to my left and see Ibsen sitting about seven seats down. Fucking Ibsen. 

Bill Ibsen, on his best days played drums with Dick Rossetti. On his worst, well, he was good before he played with Dick. But Dick hammered him into a machine of straight ahead rock and back beat. Bill couldn't see the forest of rock for the drum solo trees before hooking up with Rossetti. 

We exchanged, "Fuckin' Rush, duuude!"s and "keeler seats, huh?" before I went back to my anxiety attack level expectations of the ensuing torrential downpour of my own making once the band broke into the first chorus of "The Pass."

I enjoyed the show, waiting, waiting, waiting. At some point I realized they probably WEREN'T going to play "The Pass." I relaxed a little. The emotional tide had started to wane. I walked around a bit and ran into New American Shame guitar tech 'cousins' Dave and Dudley Taft - even snuck them down to the seats up front. I Had a great time catching up with them.

Later, I went to the men's room to take care of business and as I was coming out the door I ran smack into Mikey. He told me he and the co. had weaseled their way into an abandoned, dead-center box seat with its own cocktail waitress, and when the rightful ticket holders had returned, they made quick best friends and were invited to stay.  I made some comment about his habit of frequenting men's rooms for alternate forms of relief and how great it is to know some things never change. ...

Drummer Geoff Reading - who writes a bi-weekly online column (Fridays) for the Weekly Volcano called "Holding Down the 253" in addition to his weekly Wednesday music column - has played music in tons of Northwest bands - Green Apple Quick Step, New American Shame, Top Heavy Crush and most recently Duff McKagan's LOADED - to name but a few. He's toured the world several times over, sharing stages with the likes of Slipknot, The Cult, Buckcherry, Korn, Journey, The Sex Pistols, Nine Inch Nails and on and on. He has called Tacoma home since 2005, and lives in the North End with his wife and son.