Song of the Day: "Natural Science" and "Animate" (Rush), covered by Pierre Martin

I ran across Mr. Martin's YouTube channel a few nights ago. Don't remember what I was looking for, but his was the third rendition of "Natural Science"--and, I'd say, the best.



I went through his uploads list, watching him play most of Rush's fan favorites--"Cygnus X-1," "One Little Victory," "The Camera Eye," and seriously got tears in my eyes from some of it. This guy's GOOD, with an excellent grasp of the basics and a lock on Neil Peart's drumming style. It seems like he's chosen the more technically challenging songs (that's the thing about Rush--their songs range from kind of challenging to pretty challenging to holy-crap-how-can-three-guys-play-this-live?! Makes it a lot of fun to play on a good day and a trainwreck on a bad one).

It helps that he's got a much smaller kit than Peart; you can see what he's doing from the single front-view camera (Neil's kind of hidden behind a wall of cymbals and drums).

Out of all of them, "Animate" is the one that's been stuck in my head for the past few days:



Love that ride cymbal on the upbeats.