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In 2005, the progressive/hard rock band Rush (consisting of bassist-singer Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer Neil Peart) marked its thirtieth anniversary by releasing R30 , an elaborate "live-plus" DVD package. Earlier live projects from the band in the late 1990s and 2000s acknowledged an international fan community beyond its primary audiences in the United States and its native Canada, including followings in the UK, Japan, Brazil, and Germany. Together, these projects also served as anthologies of the band's extensive output-eighteen studio albums from 1974 to 2004 (with a nineteenth studio album released on 1 May 2007)-and R30 further includes such bonus materials as photos, souvenirs, band-member interviews, live song videos, and additional live and/or televised song performances.
Rush's thirtieth anniversary tour consisted of fifty-seven three-hour shows in 2004 in the United States, Canada, the UK, and continental Europe. Around the same time, the band released a tribute studio album of eight rock songs that its members had played as young musicians in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The tour presented live performances of four of those songs: the Who's "The Seeker," the Yardbirds' "Heart Full of Soul," Blue Cheer's version of "Summertime Blues," and Cream's version of "Crossroads." The tour shows also opened and closed with a pair of humorous TV-like video segments featuring veteran comedic actor Jerry Stiller. The cover songs...