Featured Essay: The Spirit of Radio

by Chris Bridgen

There were so few ways for 13-year-old me to learn about cool shit back in the swirling fog machine that was 1978: music mags such as Creem hyping bands that would never play our town; old concert posters at record shops specializing in Elton John or The Rolling Stones hagiography; stories from older siblings about great times already dim to local history.

Finally, thankfully, the CKLC DJ said Rush would play the Memorial Centre this fall, one night only, in Kingston, Ontario, Canada to support their new album Hemispheres. Get your tickets soon, he said. The show will sell out. This, I decided immediately, would be my first live concert. Parents be damned. Well, not so damned. One had to drive me and my friend Al from the suburbs downtown on that circled calendar date October 14th.

I was ready, trained by a.m. radio to love Rush. “Fly By Night” rocked. “Cygnus X-1” right down the gamma quadrant of a science fiction infatuation created by Han Solo and Chewie. Closer to the Heart’s intro played by every amateur guitarists showing off in a music store, doing their part to fulfil Canadian content rules.

Rush had played a smaller venue in town a year previous; Jock Harty Arena. This was the path back then: fill the Jock and earn the right – earn the box office – to play Kingston’s biggest venue. All 3,700 cracked, narrow wooden seats of it, plus floor. Home rink of the recently revived Junior A Ontario Hockey League franchise. A real barn.

This was Rush’s second of two tours back-to-back in support of A Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres – 279 dates in 22 months. Who does that? Rush did. A band that worked its ass off. Very Ontario, very Canada. Dad worked the factory floor at DuPont. Rush were working men too, even while performing in kimonos.

It’s funny now, those stern arms crossed photos, flowing kimonos still by freeze frame. It was cool as fuck then. When you’re 13 and your mom buys corduroy pants with pleats deeper furrowed than corn fields, blessedly smooth kimonos are cool. Literally and figuratively. 

My situation perfection: a Grade 8 boy with maturing zits. That rayon schoolboy look. Star Wars posters on most bedroom walls. Farrah Fawcett smiling down from the fourth. Punk rock just a phase scoffed at in back pages featuring Jimmy Page on every cover. Zeppelin was out of our league, so my best friend Al bought Rush tickets.

The narrower musical tastes of that shallower time squeezed us. ELO boring roller disco music. Eagles shitting on our ears from everywhere. Paul McCartney spreading wings to fly places we rejected. Bowie’s Diamond Dogs, a lone glittering beacon thanks to a friend’s hot older sister. But this, this was our moment.

Our moment to don the denim tuxedo and join all the identical young dudes. To saunter that two blocks from dad’s car to the main gate. Allowance money bought us oregano-cut weed sold by some smartass capitalist asshole. From near center ice we peered through a thick DuMaurier cigarette haze trying to count the pieces in Neil’s epic drum kit.

Three years from the next summer we’d be in Toronto to worship The Clash; me drunk and slamming in the pit, Al cataloguing every song from his seat. Rush fandom long hidden, like an embarrassing story from summer camp. My blue vinyl copy of Hemispheres sold to buy a Sham 69 imported U.K. 45 single. But on that October night Geddy, Neil, and Alex were the shit. A trio sounding like an orchestra. Not legends yet, but fully ours. Canadian royalty for men. A portrait of Queen Elizabeth II loomed over the visitors end. The only woman I saw at the show.

Rush remains Canada’s chief musical export these 50-plus years later. Suburban Toronto boys who made good. Lyrics allowing dumb guys to skip an Ayn Rand phase because Neil already suffered. I haven’t listened to “By-Tor And The Snow Dog” for 48 years but still know where the hyphen goes. “Xanadu” not some boring excerpt of a Coleridge poem but a mystical warning about the darker side of desire.

On June 8, 2026, more than 48 years later, I watched Anika Nilles drum those songs and more. Nervously, holding my breath, hoping she’d be herself yet also honour Neil. Every fuck yes from the crowd that first L.A. show a triumph. Rush had a female drummer. Anything was possible.

I watched more videos. Everyone filming “Tom Sawyer” zoomed to her kit before the legendary drum fill we could all hear in our sleep. Hammered into our brains by the music video shot at Le Studio in rural Quebec and replayed endlessly on MuchMusic. Hammered into our brains in every high school parking lot and Friday night party. Clapping for each toms fill. Screaming right on as she finished. The first show of the first tour in 11 years, the first since Neil died. Some of us are still here for it.

Old men air drumming once more, from Kamloops to Regina to Brandon to North Bay to Kingston to Moncton, remembering their childhoods, their children’s childhoods. First shows. Hidden transistor radio under the bedsheets late at night hoping to hear “Working Man”. Remembering their dads’ love of Moving Pictures. Remembering friends lost to time. Music teaches and heals in more ways than we realize.

Alan killed himself in the early 2000s, long after we lost touch. I cried then too, as I did in 2020 when Neil Peart died. My two Professors. Alan could trace the lineage of any 1960s garage band no matter how obscure, knew the discography of every Wild Billy Childish recording. He was a drummer too, used a simple psychobilly-suited kit. But Neil planted that seed. And Canada produced the best rock drummer in history.

He’d left Rush far behind as I had, buried among the detritus of Kansas albums, girls we’d both loved, torn cheesecake posters, and dusty roller skates. Parenthood was my gig in 2003. Music faded to background noise on grocery runs. I’d hear “Tom Sawyer” on the classic rock station and smile. Rush still deep in background, an early, distant but long-time friend.

June 8 2026 reopened a long-sealed vault. After being awed by “Cygnus X-1” that night music came alive. Anika and Geddy smiling at each other during “Xanadu” just now. Alex and that double-neck. The whole “2112” suite played by two 73-year-olds. I smoked my first joint listening to them play “Xanadu” that night in 1978.

I just smoked one, replaying the L.A. crowd screaming and clapping after she nailed the tom fills from “Tom Sawyer”, that anthem of my high school smoking area in Grades 9 and 10. I hummed “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais” instead, but could still air drum along with my metal and prog buddies.

I miss my friend and, turns out, I missed Rush. I miss Joe Strummer. Miss the time when all that mattered was the spirit of radio, listening to records with friends. Having that classic on vinyl. One came back, and now has again.

Chris Bridgen (he/him) still listens to London Calling a couple times a year and he still knows all the words to “Tom Sawyer”. He lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The last live show he saw was Nobro, a Montreal all-female punk band. He left 2/3 through, when his back started to hurt.