For the first time in their forty year history, Rush was forced to cut a show that they had already started short.
It happened on July 10 in Quebec City where they played a big outdoor festival on Les Plaines D'Abraham (The Plains of Abraham). Drummer Neil Peart wrote about the situation on his website:
During the second set, just before we began The Garden, I started to see flurries of raindrops in the spotlight beams over the crowd. As we launched into the song, the wind gusted up, swirling rain all through the colored lightbeams flashing around the stage. Behind the vast crowd in front of me, lightning flickered in the distant darkness. Raindrops covered my cymbals enough to dampen their sound (literally and figuratively), and striking a crash cymbal sent a colorful fountain into the air. Of greatest concern were the exposed electronics—keyboards and foot pedals—and the delicate violins and cellos. (Later cellist Jacob told us, “If it had been anyone but you guys, I would have been off that stage.”) Just as we finished the song, monitor engineer Brent’s voice came over our ear monitors, “The show is over. A storm is right on us. Make an announcement, and get off the stage.”
Hard to believe that in almost forty years, we had never had to stop a show in the middle like that. Only once, a couple of tours ago in Chicago, had an outdoor show been called just minutes before we were supposed to go onstage. (We made that one up later.) But never once in all those years had we stopped a show in the middle—so we had no policy.
Peart goes on to say that, even though they played three-quarters of their show, their was still fallout as the storm veered off and other bands at the festival re-took the stages. In addition, the majority of the crowd didn't understand English in the predominantly French area, so they didn't understand Geddy Lee's announcement that they were cutting the show short due to the weather.
To read more about the incident and other events from July, go to Neil Peart's site.
Much more successful was the band's benefit for those hurt by the recent floods in Alberta. Rush played the Enmax Centrium in Red Deer on the night they were supposed to originally play the flooded Calgary and made the decision to make it a benefit, donating all of their proceeds to Alberta Flood Relief. In total, they raise $575,000, of which $125,000 will go to the citizens of High River who were the worst hit in the flooding, $400,000 to the Canadian Red Cross and $50,000 to local charities.
Source:
http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/2013/08/neil-peart-on-only-rush-show-cut-short.html