Performer: Rush
Songwriter: Graham Gouldman
Original Release: Feedback
Year: 2004
Definitive Version: none
I was pretty isolated from
the outside world when I spent the fall of 2004 at Torch Lake, but I wouldn’t have
had it any other way. It was the culmination of my favorite year, but it still
was lonely at times. Any mail was greatly appreciated, and it definitely was
appreciated when a puffy package addressed from Dave showed up that contained a
copy of Feedback (for archival purposes, of course).
I’m not a huge fan of cover
tunes per se, and it seemed odd when Rush broke out three of them at their R30
show in Columbus earlier that summer. (This was one of the three.) But there
was something about this particular song that grabbed me and stayed with me.
When I made a mix CD to take with me to Cooperstown in February 2005, this song
made the cut.
My three-week stay in
Cooperstown, which I’ve mentioned briefly and will talk about at length later,
was in a word magical. I mean, how can anyone NOT want to get up in the morning
to “go to work” when the work involves walking through the Baseball Hall of
Fame? That’s what I did for three weeks: Every day I drove into town—I stayed
about four miles out of town—I parked where I could for free all day and then I
hiked the few blocks to the Hall.
To get to the Hall library,
you had to go through the Hall—a change from when I last had been in 1999. All
I had to do was tell the guy at the admission desk that I was going to the library,
and he let me through. (Needless to say, but I will anyway, the crowds aren’t
very large at the Hall of Fame first thing in the morning in February.)
I had a lot to do at the
library—literally hundreds of files to go through in only a few hours—so I
didn’t dawdle. But every morning I stopped at the Johnny Bench and Babe Ruth
plaques to pay proper homage. How could I not?
But, like all magical
things, my time in Cooperstown had an expiration date. I booked a three-week
stay at Countryside Lodging (since renamed), and as March closed in, it was
time to go. On the one hand, I didn’t want to leave. On the other, I had
accomplished my research goals, and I had only so much money to spend on room
and board.
I left on pretty much the
same type of day as when I arrived—bright, sunny and cold—and drove back to
Cleveland. I again stayed with Jim and Denise for the night, just as I had on
my way up. They hadn’t even bothered to change the sheets in the guest
room—there had been no need!
The drive from Shaker
Heights, the suburb where Jim and Denise lived, to downtown Cleveland is an
interesting one. As you leave Downtown along Chester Avenue, you pass some
pretty sad neighborhoods, barren lots and abandoned houses. It gets progressively
better—working-class, then working-class but thriving. At University Circle
where Case Western is, the street turns tree-lined and the neighborhoods
upscale. You veer to the right at Cedar Road, and all of a sudden you’re on a
street lined with decades-old mansions.
It’s every strata of wealth
in a six-mile city-street drive. As I left that Sunday, heading downtown to
drop off the books I borrowed from the Cleveland library three weeks earlier, I
had this song on my car stereo.
Now, this close to home, I
was eager to arrive. After being confined only to phone calls for the past
three weeks, I was looking forward to seeing Laurie as soon as I could—as long
as she would have me back again.
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