Mike Mettler

“We’ve got about 6,000 songs to play for you tonight,” Geddy Lee said to raucous cheers during the first set break at Rush’s return to Madison Square Garden last night. Well, give or take some 5,974 other choices, the Canadian trio powered through 26 tracks at the NYC stop of the Time Machine 2011 tour. The set has remained the same since the two shows I saw last summer (Jones Beach in July, PNC Bank Arts Center in September), but hold your fire—the musicianship and vigor never waned.

When Robbie Robertson met Jimi Hendrix in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1966, Hendrix (then going by the name of Jimmy James) was intent on learning about a subject crucial to his future as an artist. “He only wanted to talk about songwriting,” revealed Robertson. “Because I was playing with Bob Dylan then, he thought I might know something about those secrets.” What was the best advice Robertson shared with Jimi? “If everybody is writing about one particular thing, then I would not go in that particular direction, because it’s crowded over there.

In anticipation of the 30th anniversary reissue of Rush's truly seminal Moving Pictures as both CD+DVD (April 5) and CD+BD (May 3) deluxe editions, with PCM 5.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround-sound mixes by Richard Chycki, I'm dipping into my personal Rush interview archive to present a truly exclusive, incremental look at how the band's attitude toward bringing its vaunted studio material into the surround-sound arena has literally changed from "no" to "go" over the last decade.

"Who is Don Draper?" That's the opening line-and the crux-of Mad Men's Season 4 arc, something that show creator Matthew Weiner confirms multiple times over the course his welcome appearance this three-disc Lionsgate Blu-ray set's commentary tracks.