This page contains fan reviews and feedback, please feel free to share your views with others, you can either email us your views and we will publish them here or you can visit our guestbook or forums to share your views: 2112 at The Office April 18 2005
'SYMPHONIC SPLENDOUR' When a local Rush tribute (Anthem) arrived on the scene, then it seemed stupid to book an act that people would have to pay £5 to see. And that's the reason why 2112 had been away from the Office for the last 2 years. But as fate would have it, Anthem have been out of action since Christmas 2003, and their absence had increased the demand to see a Rush tribute once more. More bad luck seemed to be heading the way of 2112 when I found out that they had competition on the night of their show from The Force at Sleepers in Boldon, Unchained at Trillians in Newcastle, and F.M playing at the Water's Edge in South Shields. And on top of that the weather turned out to be atrocious! Torrential downpours and strong winds made the prospect of going out this night to be a bad idea. Yet 2112 do have a fan base, and some of these travelled from as far away as Glasgow just to see this group perform live. The turnout may not have been as massive as it had been for the likes of Shine On & Limehouse Lizzy, but 155 people still came through to watch them, and it was enough folk to create a decent atmosphere within the large upstairs room. The band had the added bonus of bringing along their own lighting engineer plus a lot of addition lights too. This young lad made the best of what the Office already had, and operated both lighting consoles to create the right moods best suited to the appropriate songs. And of course we had our regular sound engineer Barry who does all the 'big' shows at this venue. Barry did a superb job, and especially for the second set when the band sounded ridiculously good. 2112 opened up with the self-titled '2112 Overture' and got the proceedings well on their way with a brief instrumental intro. Then they broke in to the marvellous ‘Marathon’, which finally saw their vocalist appear on to the stage, and the group started to take shape with the addition of vocals and keyboards in the mix. For this occasion the band had arrived at the venue very promptly, and as such Barry had been able to give them a lengthy and fruitful sound check. The difference in sound compared to their last hurried visit was oceans apart. On that last fateful night it had been a case of "fix it in the mix", which is not the best way to get good results. This time everything had been checked over thoroughly, and the final mix was enormous. Maybe not as huge and impressive as Shine On had sounded, but considering that there was a 100 less people in the building then the volume and clarity was sufficient enough to keep these die-hard Rush fans very happy. And if the truth be known, I was raised on Rush when I was in my mid teens, and if anything had been amiss in the mix then I would have noticed it instantly. With that in mind I also know the songs back-to-front as well, and the band performed them fairly accurately. I'm not going to say perfect because these people are human and are simply NOT Rush! Rush just happen to be a trio of some of the finest musicians in the Northern Hemisphere, and to emulate them is not an easy task. So if you take that in to consideration then you start to grasp the fact that although it isn't perfect, 2112 still do an absolutely fabulous job, and probably get it 95-98% accurate most of the time. And on those odds then they deserve to be highly praised. Compliments must go to the drummer who did an astounding job playing those technically difficult drum parts created by master percussionist Neil Peart. I'm not a drummer, but I can certainly recognise a decent musician, and this guy really does the business. He's maybe a little more rigid than the real McCoy, but what he lacks in fluidity he makes up for with technical prowess. His massive kit takes up centre stage on it's very own self-contained drum-riser, and the square frame work around it holds all the various chimes and temple blocks etc. This is much more than just a mere drum kit as it even has synthesiser-activating drum pads, which were shown to great example during the drum solo. The whole kit & kaboodle must have taken ages to set up, but it looked & sounded magnificent, and the guy behind it all certainly impressed the hell out of me. Another technically difficult role was the bassist who had to manage his time playing intricate Geddy Lee bass lines, as well as tap dance on bass pedals and play the occasional keyboards too. Not as easy task by any standards, yet he made it all look very effortless, and he played far more accurately than he's ever done before. There'd always been those little errors that didn't quite work smoothly, but this time he had it sussed out, and those 2 years away from the Office must have made this group far more cohesive. The guitarist did a fine job, and especially on some of those tricky solo parts. His overall sound & tone was pretty much the same as an 80's period Alex Lifeson, although I felt the 70's stuff didn't have quite the same impact as the phrasing was different to the original recorded parts. The right notes and all the right keys, but not always the way it was originally played on the guitar. But yet again, his performance was far superior to his last visits here, and the whole band seemed to have generally improved. The singer too gave a great show. He has a lovely tone to his voice and his range is quite phenomenal with it reaching some very high registers. Geddy Lee is the Rush vocalist (as well as being the bassist) and his voice is very distinct. It's got quite a unique style, and there are not many people out there who could get anywhere near to sounding like him. Yet this chap did a fantastic job, and at times sounded incredibly like the real singer. His lower register was his only downfall, and when he sang deeper vocals on songs like 'Dreamline' then you could hear his pitch waver a bit. During the second set I got Barry to increase the amount of echo on his voice, and it soon started to take shape with his singing picking right back up again. It's a hard role to fill for a male singer to have such a high vocal range, and then to adapt it to Rush's material, but this guy made the grade. The 4 of them together do make a pretty good team, and overall they manage to master the strikingly unique facets of Rush’s abilities, and them bring back together to sound very much like the real band. That surely has to be the number one priority of any tribute act, and if you can more or less sound like them, then that's the main part of the battle won. As for the songs they chose to play, I felt the band made a good choice, although they did centre most of it around one major period. You must remember that Rush have been around for over 3 decades and have recorded 18 studio albums. Even though a lot of the older Rush fans love the 'All The Worlds A Stage' period of the band, 2112 skated past that era with only the briefest tip of the hat. It was only represented by the 2112 intro, and a small section of 'Bastille Day' played in a medley form. The main bulk of the material covered was from 'A Farewell To Kings' through to the 'Hold Your Fire' albums, and only 'Dreamline' represented anything from the last 16 years of the band's career. I personally am not a great fan of the latter part of Rush's existence, and I also think that the group lost their major appeal once they brought out the 'Presto' album at the very end of the 80's. But the main chunk of songs from the 1977-1987 'silver' era of Rush that 2112 chose to play, made up a splendid selection of some of the band's finest compositions from that time. The songs ranged from 'Closer To The Heart' right through to 'The Mission', and incorporated a lot of the fan's other favourites in-between. Of course there was 'Spirit Of Radio', 'Tom Sawyer' & 'The Trees', as well as epics such as 'Xanadu' and 'La Villa Strangiato'. All of the best loved 'live' Rush songs got a chance to be aired during this show, which lasted well over 2 hours. The name of the band may be a little misleading as 2112 don' dip their toes much in the lake of classic tracks from Rush's first 4 studio albums. But from those records released after that (and especially Permanent Waves & Moving Pictures) then the group come in to their own and do represent a marvellous period of music where the technical prowess of the band set new standards. Rush are not an easy band to form a tribute act around, and I think that these 4 brave men from Bradford have done a fine job. The whole notion of what constitutes a 'tribute' is pretty much up for debate these days. Some people have high expectations of a 'perfect' copy of the real band and basically want to see an EXACT replica, whereas others are quite happy as long as the music is performed accurately enough. If you're content with the latter category then 2112 will fit the bill more than adequately. This was definitely the finest show that I'd seen from 2112 so far. The band are a much tighter outfit, and god knows you need to be when playing material that is this clever. There were plenty of musicians in the crowd that night, and I know that some of them would have been nit-picking minor faults, but for the Rush fans that have travelled to see this band play then they would have been well impressed. Perfection for imitating a major group of this technical standard isn't realistically possible, but 2112 are about as close as you're going to get on these shores. The band Anthem have finally got their act back together and are playing at the Office on Friday the 10th of June. 3 quarters of the group were in the audience on this night, and now they know exactly what they have to aspire to. It's not an envious task setting yourselves up as a tribute band, and people often do expect too much at times. Yet I felt that 2112 did a truly amazing job, and I look now forward to Anthem's return to the Office with great anticipation. Yours, absolutely loving live music that you don't get to hear every weekend, ... Colin Smoult. 18 / 4 / 05
Nick Bradford
I thoroughly enjoyed the Convention - my 'Force 10' were brilliant." John Gilchrist Choppington, Northumberland
"The band 'Force 10' were immense. Hopefully you will be able to book them for next year?? Also a list of their gigs would be really helpful 'cos we don't get any Rush tribute bands in Glasgow. We gotta travel!! No complaining there though, when I get to hear bands like Force 10." Carole Brown Glasgow
"We managed to down a good few pints and so the highlights of the evening were: 1) the raffle (didn't win this time, again), 2) the brilliant tribute band 'Force 10', what a show - including a rare audience participation in 'The Sphere' - but what was the singer doing with that mike stand? (never seen Geddy do this…) Anyway, still a good show." Mark V. Lilly Doncaster
www.2112tribute.com
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2112
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