I found a couple of podcasts on the Stern website talking about how decisions were made with the new Rush Pinball machine.

Stern
Stern
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The band was intimately involved with the process. What I found interesting is how music was chosen. Alex, Geddy, and Ed Robertson put together a “setlist” of songs. Ed is a pinball fanatic and helped steer their final choices toward ones that are the most appropriate for a pinball machine.

There are about two hours of Rush music in the machine’s audio library, with songs like:

  • Headlong Fight
  • Far Cry
  • One Little Victory
  • Working Man
  • 2112
  • Tom Sawyer
  • The Spirit of Radio
  • Freewill
  • Cygnus X-1 (Book One: The Voyage and Book Two: Hemispheres)
  • The Big Money
  • Subdivisions
  • Limelight
  • Fly By Night
  • La Villa Strangiato
  • Bastille Day
  • Red Barchetta

Here’s the best part in my opinion:

The songs are all the FULL tracks and Ed was pretty much responsible for that. Rather than just “Temples” the entire first side of 2112 is included. Same thing for all 18 minutes of Cygnus X-1.

The reason is even though they’re really long songs, the music publisher considers it a single track and only one licensing fee.

One small downside: the “Attention all planets of the Solar Federation” pilot voice is included, but it’s not Neil’s voice. In reading the conversation, it sounds to me like his voice IS included within the song but new voice tracks were recorded for isolated game effects.

Check out this transcript from the Stern Insider's podcast:

Rush_Pinball_with_Ed_Robertson

The first preview of play is Friday night at 6pm Central, and you can watch it on Twitch from Pinball streamer Dead Flip.

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