If you haven't seen the movie "Fanboys", which the above clip is taken from, I highly recommend it. If only his Rush collection was records instead of cassette tapes...
I recently won a lot of Rush records on ebay, all quality shit. Rush is one of my all time favorite bands and this goes a long way to completing my collection of all their vinyl releases(I'm pissed that "Test For Echo" never got pressed onto some wax).
1987's "Hold Your Fire" is not one of the band's better albums, though it fairs well in comparison to the two it came out between(1985's "Power Windows" and 1989's "Presto"). The mid to late 80s saw Rush stray from their prog rock glory days into a more pop sound. "Hold Your Fire" has no epic masterpieces or impressive concept tracks; instead you find a lot of keyboards. I like this album, especially the opener "Force Ten", but a lack of prog and a lack of Alex Lifeson's guitar put this toward the bottom the band's discography.
"Hemispheres" is quite possibly the pinnacle of Rush's career(though I love "A Farewell To Kings" equally). Released in 1978, it was the band's last album of that decade and the final part of a trio of near perfect prog rock albums. This album has it all, an epic song that takes up the entire first side, shorter songs chocked full of riffs and intricate melodies, and of course the impossibly complex instrumental "La Villa Strangiato". More than 37 minutes, and only 4 songs! If you like progressive music you need this album. The gatefold displays the artwork really well, something that this band has always done. It also came with a poster, which was still intact when I bought it. I'm amazed that 34 years later and this poster has never been hung up.
The first live album in the band's career, but certainly not the last, "All The World's A Stage" shows the band's young and unpolished live performance. I'm a big fan of the first four Rush albums, and all the songs played here are from those("Rush", "Fly By Night", "Caress Of Steel", and "2112"). Recorded at Toronto's Hassey Hall in 1976, this show was clearly for a hometown crowd. The energy from the crowd and the band is almost tangible when listening to this album. The set is long, taking up 2 LPs, and filled with all the choice cuts from that period. Hearing "2112", "By-Tor And The Snow Dog", and "Working Man" played in their entirety is a treat. Not the best performance ever, Geddy Lee hits a few wrong notes and at points I think I hear Neil Peart miss a beat, but that's part of the charm.
Ah yes, "2112"! This is when Rush started to get crazy, and awesome. Side A is the 20 minute long title track, which in 1976 must have blown people away. Nothing really like this had been done, sure Pink Floyd and Yes were doing similar things but not on this level. Side B has the classics, "A Passage To Bangkok" and "Something For Nothing". The first foray into truly epic prog rock for the band was clearly successful.
The band's third album, "Caress Of Steel", is in many ways the end of their first era. Released in September of 1975, just a year and half after their first album and 7 months after the second, this hints at what was to come very soon. The two epics, "The Necromancer" and "The Fountain Of Lamneth" show the band starting to branch out from their Led Zeppelin worship stage. That said, those songs don't quite reach the transcendence that the next few albums' epics did.
The first album ever released in the 80s, on January 1st of 1980 in fact, is "Permanent Waves". While it is widely known for it's major radio hits, "The Spirit Of Radio" and "Freewill", the album is one of transition for the band. Rush went in a very different direction than they had charted with the three albums preceding; one that included a variety of influences. From the pop sensibilities of the two hits, to the reggae of "Spirit", to the synth leads of "Natural Science, the listener hears a different Rush. However, these influences have not altered the band's core sound much(yet). "Permanent Waves" is still Rush and still awesome, just more accessible.
"Signals" is the band's 1982 love affair with keyboards. Really the first time that fans found more keys than guitars, and a lot of people didn't like that. You can imagine this album as "Moving Pictures with even more keyboards". The classics, "Subdivisions", "The Analog Kid", and "New World Man" are definitely in the higher end of Rush songs. The rest of the album isn't quite as good, it gets a little too keyboardy for me, but still a solid album for sure.
What a shame this album is! "Grace Under Pressure" was released in 1984, when new wave was blowing up the charts. Rush took influence from that kind of music going as far back as "Permanent Waves", but it really took the driver's seat here. Two songs do this style extremely well, "Distant Early Warning" and "Red Sector A", unfortunately the rest is just decent. Of all the albums in Rush's long career, I find that this one is in the bottom of ones that I regularly listen to. Oh and the record is totally fucked, you can see a big chunk missing. Oh well, I ended up getting it for free.
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