Rush, »The Spirit of Radio«
/// FREAKS AND GEEKS (“I’m With the Band”—Season 1, Episode 6)
The temptation in writing about a musical cue is to pick one packed with import and emotional resonance—a song that wrings waterworks from an already moving series finale, for instance, or one that adds sly subtextual heft. But having coincidentally tackled one of the latter for last year’s theme week, I thought I’d give weightiness a rest this time in favor of big, gigantic drum kits*.
“Teachers want us to work, and I say, “Fine, I’ll work.” But you’ve gotta let me do the kind of work that I wanna do. And for me, it’s my drum kit, man. This is my passion. This is the essence of who I am now. But before I had this, I was lost, too. You see what I’m saying? You need to find your reason for living. You’ve gotta find your big, just gigantic, drum kit.”
– Nick Andopolis (Jason Segel) to Lindsay Weir (Linda Cardellini) in the Freaks and Geeks pilot
There’s no lack of emotionally resonant musical cues in Freaks and Geeks, and it was in considering one of those—the brilliant, sweet, but already well analyzed scene of Bill Haverchuk (Martin Starr) enjoying a grilled cheese and a Garry Shandling standup routine to the Who’s “I’m One”—that I landed on Nick Andopolis thumping along to Rush’s “The Spirit of Radio.” It’s no mystery why Bill’s scene strikes a chord with me and so many viewers; the rise of divorce in the ’60s and ’70s meant that lots of us latchkey kids in the ’80s and ’90s (and perhaps later) found ourselves with the after-school cheese sandwich and TV show. But “I’m One” is the killer element for me there, not just because it’s a perfectly placed cue, but because Quadrophenia was the key album of my early teen years, a bridge between my Bill-like nerdy isolation and my Nick-like drums’n’headphones (and, honestly, equally nerdy**) isolation. Which also brings us to Rush.
Segel’s Nick and his buddies are approximately class of ‘82, and I was class of ‘92, yet somehow the cultural touchstones for aspiring rock drummers hadn’t changed much in those ten years. Nick begins his day with a friendly voice, specifically that of one Mr. Gary Lee Weinrib AKA Geddy Lee. But Geddy is secondary to Nick and to many Rush fans, because, virtually unheard of in rock (especially considering Lee’s distinctive, divisive delivery), the drummer, Neil Peart, is the star of the band. “Virtually” because, at least depending on where you put your focus, one could say the same of Keith Moon and the Who, particularly in their Quadrophenia prime.
"That’s, uh, 14 mounted toms, 8 floor toms, four splashes, two gongs, um ,10 cowbells, 4 rides, 5 snares, man, a rototom rack, and it’s all mounted on my infamous quadruple kickdrum system – 6 more pieces and I’ve got a bigger kit than Neil Peart from Rush."
While there are a number of reasons young drummers might gravitate toward these guys—Peart writes the lyrics and is equal parts flashy and precise, Moon is the Who’s de facto soloist and is equal parts flashy and flashier—the main one may be the size of their kits. Acquiring unnecessary gear is a rite of the young drummer experience. It takes time and practice to master, say, a triple paradiddle, but it only takes an allowance or an after-school job to deck your basic four-piece kit out with used and broken equipment to provide the illusion of sonic variety. Every drummer I knew in high school, talented or not, had a dedicated pseudo-timbale fashioned from a shitty, add-on snare that didn’t rate highly enough to merit replacing a broken bottom head. And, while there are professional rock drummers, Peart among them, who have used rototoms in serious capacities, I’m pretty sure they were originally marketed specifically at novice drummers as an inexpensive substitute for a rack of high toms, because, somehow, we all had them. (And they were always, always bought used, which makes me wonder if Remo only sold a couple hundred new with the intention of making cash on unusually-sized replacement heads). So, of course, Nick has all of this crap.
Of the characters on a TV show about the insecurities and embarrassing emotional developments of suburban teens, Nick may be the most consistently cringe-inducing. He has the affect of a good-natured stoner, but his romantic urges are perpetually a hormonal swing away from embarrassing and creepy. Even among his burnout friends, he’s the one most destined for disappointment, lacking Daniel’s charisma, Kim’s tenacity, and Ken’s wit. Tragically, he’s our (and earnest, gifted Lindsay’s) hint that things don’t just work out for everyone. Without talent or drive, idle ambition can’t be mined for long-term happiness. But in this scene, we get to see Nick at a moment of empowerment, because beginning rock drummers have a special relationship with headphones.
Aspiring guitarists, bassists, keyboardists, and the rest have the option of playing along with their favorite albums and songs, but it’s impractical to let the headphones drown out your own performance. For drummers—for whom hitting the right objects, the right way, at the right time is key and for whom hearing the other instruments is the biggest issue—turning up and drowning yourself out a bit is often a necessity. It’s a great confidence builder, even without Nick’s strobe lights and dry ice. Nothing boosts the ego like not having to hear exactly how thoroughly you fucked up that fill on your poorly-tuned drums in an echoey basement (in fact, in most basements, even a reasonably good drummer with a well-tuned kit sounds just slightly better than Nick in this clip).
Nick’s moment of empowerment is undercut almost entirely when the POV shifts. Up until this point in the series, Nick has told us about his love for drumming, but we’ve never seen him play. As we see him ritualize his practice routine with Permanent Waves 8-track and stage affectations, we laugh at his self-seriousness, but we’re largely with him on the actual playing until we switch from Nick’s perspective to his dad’s. It only takes a couple seconds—and this is during an easy part of the song!—that Nick’s entire obsession is reframed as hopeless.
So, aside from the requisite beginning drummer Neil Peart obsession, why Rush and why this song? Years of classic rock station ubiquity may obscure this, but “The Spirit of Radio” was pretty weird for Rush at the time. Despite some of the band’s most delicious riffs, it’s pop-leaning in its way (complete with a Simon & Garfunkel-referencing reggae section that now sounds inextricable, but must have baffled some fans looking for more “2112” or “The Trees”). As a combination of straightforward bits with killer fills that can be simplified if necessary and a few challenging turnarounds that can be glossed over until you’ve gotten your chops down, it’s a terrifically fun song to drum along to.
It’s also a cynical diatribe against music industry corruption that, like “Radio Radio,” squeezes such joy out of hitting its target that it might be mistaken for a celebration of it. Which, in addition to Peart’s mighty triplet rolls and immense drumkit, is probably what Nick most responds to. And even as he might imagine himself becoming part of rock music’s creative class with Rush, aligned against “all this machinery making modern music” (which Nick, if thinking about the words at all, might mistake for the synthesizers that Rush would embrace on albums to come), he’s disabused of this notion later in the episode when he fumbles in his tryout for a marginally talented, regionally successful band.
"I play so much better when you’re around. Hey, I wanna play it again, put more dry ice in the bucket!"
– Nick to a worried, burdened Lindsay at the end of “I’m With the Band”
Nick finds some consolation after his disastrous tryout when Lindsay semi-unwittingly designates herself as his girlfriend, and he resigns himself to playing music with his less musically ambitious friends (Daniel wisely suggesting they aim at some more manageable Iggy Pop and Ramones songs). As the season progresses, Nick never quite kicks the Peart obsession even as his dad sells his drumkit and he gets a primer on jazz drumming from Lindsay’s dad. In the finale, he proves himself a talented disco dancer, which may be the ultimate commentary on his prospects as the next Neil Peart. Ever tried dancing to Rush?
Dave previously wrote for us about Jeff Buckley and Bruce Springsteen.
* Despite my naming my primary Tumblr in tribute to Nick’s philosophy of percussion and life, I don’t believe I’ve ever written a post about Freaks and Geeks before. Weird, huh?
** Freaks and Geeks fans tend to play the Sex In the City game with their high school selves (“I was a Lindsay with a little bit of Neil and Ken thrown in,” etc.), but I find that the show complicates this by virtue of allotting its admirable and relatable traits so equitably. In broad terms, though, I was far more geek than freak and, more specifically, a band geek, which means the character I’d have had known best socially is probably Ken’s tuba-playing girlfriend, Amy.
