Pump up song extraordinaire! With my friends Jeff and Shane, we went to see Rush on the Moving Pictures tour in April of 1981 at Kemper Arena. Tickets were $10, if you can believe that, a steal even in 1981. It was a Friday night, a beautiful spring evening. Magnificent show to say the least. Magical. These three men were, and still are, absolute masters at what they do. We loved Rush. Shane’s older brother Kyle, now a most excellent physician, was almost a god in our eyes back in the 1979-1982-ish time frame, but not because of his academic prowess or his desire to cure the sick. His two claims to fame for us rested solidly on the facts that he, one, almost flunked out of college because he and his friends were making a “monster movie” out in the country instead of going to class, and two, Kyle could play the 2112 Overture on his guitar by heart.
I was so fired up, especially when Rush played Red Barchetta. The animation video you see was projected on a 25-30 foot screen behind the stage. It was cutting edge animation straight from the basic Atari race game. So cool. The song played in my head all night long. We walked on air back to the car in the free parking lot four blocks away, down by the old stockyard bottoms. We sang and tapped the heads of the cows as we passed them line up at the fence of the stockyard waiting to be loaded out come sunrise. The next morning Jeff and myself competed in our home track meet, The Washington Relays. I took the meet championship with my best throw ever in the shot put that day and Red Barchetta became one of my favorite pump up songs for life.
“I strip away the old debris that hides a shining car. A brilliant red Barchetta from a better varnished time.”
“Drive like the wind, straining the limits of machine and man.”
THE COACH HAYS 