— Orlando Sentinel, Aug. 10, 2006

NOTICE OF CIVIL ACTION

Filed by: STEPHEN SCHNEIDER, 41, of Winter Park, Fla., a writer and armchair musicologist hereinafter referred to as “the plaintiff”; against

ALEX ZIVOJINOVICH, GEDDY LEE WEINRIB and NEIL PEART, 158 (collectively), of Toronto, Canada, hereinafter referred to as “the defendants.”

Plaintiff seeks financial restitution for decades of grievous personal injury and loss of mental liberty caused by the defendants, including but not limited to the following:

In the years 1968–present, the defendants did recklessly and with malice aforethought subject the plaintiff to prolonged, profoundly unpleasant blasts of musical self-indulgence, forcing him to reside in an auditory environment defined by high-pitched squeals, overly busy bass and obnoxious paradiddles that seriously stunted his emotional and physical development. (Doctor’s report available on request.) Effects were particularly deleterious in the plaintiff’s late-teenage years, when he was attempting to position himself as a semiprofessional musician and had to endure repeated arguments between his drummer and bass player as to whether their band should perform “YYZ,” “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” or both. Related damages included the frittering away of perfectly good group money on roto-toms instead of more practical professional expenses, like eyeliner.

Beginning in 1976, the defendants polluted the plaintiff’s social sphere by inspiring a nation of teens to make a stab at reading Ayn Rand, thus ensuring that plaintiff would have to spend innumerable hours debating the principles of objectivism with philosophically inclined junior auto mechanics at bong parties. In addition, plaintiff alleges that the nonsense lyric “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice” placed his entire generation in a cognitive feedback loop it took several years’ worth of pricey college tuition to erase.

In 1982, plaintiff bowed to peer pressure and purchased the defendants’ Signals album, only to discover it was already in his collection under the title Ghost in the Machine by the Police. Plaintiff seeks damages for emotional distress and $21.98 reimbursement for 8-track tape (adjusted for inflation).

Plaintiff also holds all defendants accountable for Zivojinovich’s concurrent decision to trim his hair and take to the stage in matching red-tie-and-blazer ensemble, making him essentially indistinguishable from all five of those assholes in Styx. Resulting confusion translated into deep depression for the plaintiff, who had been led to believe via defendants’ previous behavior that real rock stars would always resemble Veronica Lake dressed for a guest shot on Space: 1999.

Acting in cooperation with the estate of celebrated American author Mark Twain, plaintiff demands that defendants undertake (entirely at their own expense) a public-education campaign to dispel myths they may have inadvertently spread about fictional character Tom Sawyer. The campaign will affirm once and for all that the real Sawyer did not “get high on” anybody nor invade anybody’s space, and that he might well have rented his mind to a God or government had the price been right.

Belated censure is due the defendants for their 1974 decision to oust original drummer John Rutsey after only one album, instantly creating a nugget of trivia that would lend the plaintiff’s duller, more insufferable peers a perceived edge in basement bull sessions without ever once affording him a pie-winning question in Trivial Pursuit.

On behalf of entire state of Florida, plaintiff holds that the defendants induced area physicians to file overlapping OxyContin prescriptions on their behalf, then illegally transported said pharmaceuticals across state lines under the pretense of “holding” them for Blue Oyster Cult. (NOTE: This portion of suit repurposed from “Schneider v. Rush, v. 1.0,” filed October 2003.)

Plaintiff holds defendants fully responsible for injuries he sustained during a 2003 brawl at a Holiday Inn Express in Vero Beach, when he drunkenly accosted members of a Rush tribute band, accusing them of “wasting their lives” and taunting them that they had just been “smoked” by a Honeymoon Suite copy act in a New Year’s Eve battle. Defendant tumbled down a stairwell and his nose was broken as he tussled with sheriff’s deputies, who only called off their attack when informed that they were backhandedly defending the honor of Rush.

The plaintiff contends that, had the defendants pursued a more suitable calling like bricklaying, the world never would have had to put up with Triumph. We seek monetary damages in duplicate and the destruction of all known recordings of “Magic Power.”