2112 - why the album is fresh 40 years on

_“We don’t want to change what people think about rock & roll, we just want to show them what we think about it.” – _Alex Lifeson, 1976

Today is the 40th anniversary of the release of Rush’s iconic album 2112. 2112 was Rush’s fourth album and came out in 1976 after the modest success of Fly By Night and Caress of Steel in the previous year and changed everything for the band.

 

2112 in itself tells the tale of individuality being quelled by the establishment in a dystopian future some 50 years from now. It is very representative of the Cold War era and inspired by Ayn Rand.

A lot has been said about this, but today I don’t want to change what people think about 2112, I just want to talk about what it means to me.

In 2011, Sucker Punch came out and had a marvelous remixed soundtrack including a reinterpretation of Where is my Mind, the Pixies original of which capped off the glorious ending to Fight Club. When asked about his choice of soundtrack, the now much detested Zack Snyder says:

“If you go with the original song, you just get the moment. But if you go with covers you also get all of the baggage you bring to it. I like the baggage. It kind of resonates and rings across time, it’s not just of the moment.”

I loved Sucker Punch and its soundtrack and I loved it even more when Snyder told me why he made his choice.

Around the same time Ernest Cline came up with Ready Player One. RP1 has everything to keep you interested the Metaverse, MOOC, a young underdog protagonist, numerous videogame and pop-culture references and finally a beautiful homage to Rush that got my heart racing. The baggage was special.

The prescient Spielberg has bought the rights to RP1 and production is underway with a target release date of summer 2018. In all likelihood this will end up being some kind of 3D IMAX movie targeting young adults with strategic product placements and tie ups with Nintendo++ for all the gaming references.

But could it be more?

The Metaverse gets more real by the day and almost everything else that RP1 describes exists here and now. Forget the theaters and forget a tie-in video game (not everyone wants to play).

I am hoping instead for a world in 2018 where, wearing a VR headset, I will get a chance to emulate Parzival extracting that 1974 Gibson Les Paul-in-the-stone and playing Discovery. Wouldn’t that be something?!