OPO: Rush "The Trees" vs. The Cure "A Forest"

Unfortunately the official video for The Cure's track is not on YouTube and I don't know how to link a Daily Motion video here.

But it's here if anyone wants to see it:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x28l2l_the-cure-a-forest_music

I love Rush but this is a grossly unfair match.

Yeah, seriously. Not even a top tier Rush track, IMO.

I might take "Lovesong" over "The Trees" but "A Forest" has never left much of an impression on me + the instrumental breakdown in "The Trees" is great.

tough one, I like both of these. The Cure track is probably better, but I don't feel right voting against Rush.

i saw this live about 10 days ago. listen to Robert's voice at about 3:45, how is it still that good?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqRqQho2TIc

Haven't watched the original video in ages, maybe since it came out. For a second I didn't believe it was really Robert. At one point did he perfect his full on goth rat's nest?

Rush easy

the thing that ruins "a forest" is the way he gives up the game / shows his hand at the end, lyric-wise.

i don't know this rush song, need to investigate rush in general.

the rush song is peak Ayn Rand for Rush, the conclusion is hugely cringeworthy, but it doesn't matter because they go through three time signatures in the first minute-plus and the instrumental interlude is just righteous as hell

"A Forest" is all about the chord progression/bassline. and the echoey guitar filigree. atmosphere.

it's a toss up as to which group's vocalist i enjoy less

the lyrics to the trees are some anti-union or anti-socialist or anti-equality bullshit

Yeah, the lyrics are pretty unfortunate but it gets my vote regardless.

Boy, do I ever dislike Rush.

the lyrics to the trees are some anti-union or anti-socialist or anti-equality bullshit

― akm, Thursday, 2 June 2016 04:44

We discussed this a few months ago. It's a popular misconception that it's a political song but Peart said the image of trees fighting amused him and he just meant it to be a simple silly thing with no message.

Yeah, right.

loooooooooool yeah

i don't even believe Peart has ever said that with a straight face, they've always been open about the Randian phase and just accepted it and moved on.

coming soon: "2112" was a pitch for a movie franchise

still voted Rush, obv

I should stress that even as a fan of both I'd rarely vote Cure over Rush, but Rush's two-album full-prog phases isn't my fave. And really, I'd dig "The Trees" more if it did not appear on the same album as "La Villa Strangiato."

Playing "La Villa Strangiato" now, as awesome as ever.

Oh phew, I thought you were saying that you love Rush but hate "La Villa Strangiato".

The Peart interview where he said that "The Trees" was not intended to make a social/political statement is here:

Did that particular song's lyrics cover a deeper social message?

No. It was just a flash. I was working on an entirely different thing when I saw a cartoon picture of these trees carrying on like fools. I thought, "What if trees acted like people?" So I saw it as a cartoon really, and wrote it that way. I think that's the image that it conjures up to a listener or a reader. A very simple statement.

I'm not a 'death of the author' guy but I also don't think we have to be completely limited by what the writer says. I can believe that he did just think of it as a goofy song, especially since, as NV notes, he has never denied being into Rand at that time. It still does seem to suggest a particular viewpoint regarding unions and egalitarianism, even if it was unconscious, though. Another interpretation could just be that it was sort of funny that the trees were so busy fighting against each other that they didn't notice the people coming to cut them down. I don't know if the law would be described as "noble" then.

i'm a context guy. i might prefer the single version of "a forest" over "the trees" not least because of the arch way geddy sings "saw!" at the end there almost ruining it for me (why not go a little subdued with with the ultra-trippy "la villa strangiato" right up next?), but i lean toward "the trees" over the seventeen seconds version of "a forest" cuz of how that takes a bit too long getting going. hmmmmmm

Regardless of intentions I never thought it sounded like it was an anti-maple song with a line like "And they wonder why the maples Can't be happy in their shade?" Never really sounds like it's taking a side.

could possibly be a maples = Canadians, oaks = Americans angle there too

I love the long intro on 17 Seconds. The rest of the song is the same as the single version.

RAG: yeah, that's fair. You could argue that the oaks are also at fault for not sharing with the maples before it had to come to a struggle.

It seems that at some point I read someplace that the analog could be taken that the Maples could be Quebec and the Oaks the rest of Canada.

I keep reading that on this board but I've never seen it anywhere else. The song makes no sense to me if you interpret it that way, nor have I ever known of Peart to make public comment on Quebec/ROC issues.

ts: romantic allegory v sociopolitical allegory

I love Rush but this is a grossly unfair match.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, June 1, 2016 3:26 PM (Yesterday)

i know, almost makes you feel for the cure

It's one of the last songs I'd choose from early Rush but "A Forest" is obviously a masterpiece.

lol, i meant they're going down in woodsy, crackling flames

This thread made me listen to Rush for the first time in my life. I'm with the Cure on this one.

Am I alone in thinking that RS looks awful these days? I hate to be a square and demand he cut his hair, but I don't think his late 80s look works anymore..

coming soon: "2112" was a pitch for a movie franchise

http://www.horrorafterdark.com/wp-content/uploads/2113.jpg

Am I alone in thinking that RS looks awful these days? I hate to be a square and demand he cut his hair, but I don't think his late 80s look works anymore..

Ha, just let him have it. At least he's slimmed down in recent years. He was ballooning for a while there.

I believe the last time he had a relatively short do was in the post-Head on the Door, pre-Kiss Me days. So, In Orange-era, '86-ish. So yeah, it's been about thirty years.

i just checked that Peart interview, it's from 1980. i figure back then he's more likely to have been guarded about his politics, and read his comments in that light. "The Trees" still seems so pointedly, nakedly allegorical to me that i don't buy his "just a goof" comments at all. it might be clumsy, or not fully worked thru - as is all allegory imo - but i don't see any way that it isn't inspired by a "tall trees"/Ayn Rand kinda logic.

just to reiterate, it's still infinitely better than The Cure

haha

I love both of these songs, but today it's The Cure.

Oh how they danced, the little children of Stone'enge. The Cure by about a million miles.

Peart, like most smart and sensible grown-ups, is clearly embarrassed by his precocious kid stuff. No way Peart c.now would cop to "The Trees" being an Ayn Rand inspired allegory for the Quebecois separatist movement (which, coincidence, was iirc peaking around the time Rush recorded "The Trees."). By calling it a goof he's dodging but at the same time not lying. I wonder if Robert Smith is embarrassed by anything the Cure has done? His consistency has certainly worked in his favor, plus, unlike Rush, it's his more recent stuff, not his early stuff, that's most embarrassing.

I refuse to vote in this.

for sure, josh. even though my favorite cure album, their eighth, was released a decade or so into their *career*, robert peaked way earlier than rush and has declined in critical attention steadily since. rush's long, long climb to (begrudging) critical acceptance is pretty much unprecedented, except for maybe the dead? "the trees" comes from the peak of their aesthetic appeal, for me at least, hemispheres. it is more awesome by association imho than "a forest" even if i've known them both by heart for years, the same way i'd take "fascination street" over "subdivisions". it's opening time, conform or be cast out!

Oh how they danced, the little children of Stone'enge. The Cure by about a million miles.

The interview was from 1980, two years after Hemispheres.

How does the song work as an allegory for separatism? Separatists don't form a union and demand equal rights; they want to leave the forest altogether. And why would maples represent the people who wanted to separate from Canada? Peart could be clumsy but not that clumsy.

xp to Josh

The union thing is the only thing I can see as maybe possibly coming from a Randian place.

A real objectivist tree song would be about a lone tree standing proudly in a clearing with other sneering trees surrounding it in the distance, leaning against each other for support and believing in gods and finding a way to destroy themselves as the tree in the middle survives and sees other far away individualist trees standing by themselves but smiling at each other in mutual respect.

Interesting that Peart mentioned Delany as one of his inspirations.

When I was a kid I always scanned "The Trees" as being about groups spending so much time bickering among themselves that they don't notice the external threat coming to wipe them all out. Reading the lyrics now, I wonder if this is where the screenwriters of "The Happening" got their idea.

The union thing is the only thing I can see as maybe possibly coming from a Randian place.

The song came from a Randian place, Neil Peart's head.

The song came from a Randian place

sorry, I can't help but hear Rihanna singing this

When I was a kid I always scanned "The Trees" as being about groups spending so much time bickering among themselves that they don't notice the external threat coming to wipe them all out. Reading the lyrics now, I wonder if this is where the screenwriters of "The Happening" got their idea.

you're looking at the ILE American elections thread, aren't you?

I am, to my eternal sorrow

i just checked that Peart interview, it's from 1980. i figure back then he's more likely to have been guarded about his politics, and read his comments in that light.

I disagree, actually. He openly thanked Rand in the liner notes to 2112 and their indie label was called Anthem Records. I think it's likely that he would have been upfront if he was consciously intending a political message. RAG is OTM: Rand is all about defiant individuals and certainly this is the case with any of the more explicitly Randian Rush songs/albums (definitely 2112 and "Anthem", even stuff like "Tom Sawyer" and "Red Barchetta").

Hadn't he wised up (or grown up, whatever you prefer) by 1980 though?

I can imagine him being a bit less upfront about the Rand stuff by 1980, I think he'd had plenty of abuse/lols over it by then.

Moodles take on the lyric was always the way that I interpreted it... the Maples = Canadians/Oaks = Americans angle. To be quite honest with you though, I don't really listen to Rush for the lyrics, as great as some of them are.

The thing about Peart with Rand, though, is that afaict, he only ever approached her as a sort one-against-many/rage against the machine/I will not conform sic-fi inspiration (that of course being the theme of countless sci-fi/dystopian stories rarely linked to Rand). It's the assholes who lately invoke Rand in pursuit of political asshole libertarian policy that ultimately give her a bad name (aside from all her other innate BS), but again, as far as I can tell, Peart's politics have never been conservative/restrictive/reactionary or anything. He's just a rugged individualist who rides a motorcycle. I've brought it up before, but at least a couple of songs on "Power Windows" are inspired by John Dos Passos, for example, ideologically not in line with Rand (though at one point an unlikely cohort of hers, I think). I think he's always called himself a social libertarian, or something like that, meaning no restrictions on personal freedoms/rights but maintaining the social safety net of modern (Canadian) neo-socialist society.

And xpost tbh, as this is not one of my favorite Rush songs and never has been, I don't think I've ever paid attention to the lyrics one bit. I've always been put off by its Ren Faire melody. It's dumb, and makes me think of "Brave Sir Robin" from the "Holy Grail."

when i was in fifth grade (early 80s) i went to this academic games thing in georgia for a week. we took a chartered greyhound bus to get there (overnight) and wedged between the seats i found a c-60 with < R U S H > printed all \m/ on it. and the first song on it was 'the trees'

And yes, Josh, Robert Smith is embarrassed by some of the things The Cure has done. Particularly early songs like 'Object', 'It's Not You' and 'World War' ... he didn't particularly like 'Let's Go To Bed' while he was writing it, either, but that one grew on him.

The middle section/instrumental break in 'The Trees' is one of my favourite Rush moments, fwiw.

" I wonder if Robert Smith is embarrassed by anything the Cure has done? "

well they call "Killing an Arab" "killing another" now, which is fucking stupid

At least he didn't call it "Killing An Arab In A Totally Non-Racist Way"

The song was revived in 2005, when the band performed the song at several European festivals. The lyrics, however, were changed from "Killing an Arab" to "Kissing an Arab". Smith added a whole new opening verse when the band performed it at the Royal Albert Hall, London on 1 April 2006 as "Killing Another". The "killing another" lyric was also used during the 2007-2008 4Tour. The band performed the song as "Killing an Ahab" with lyrics inspired by Herman Melville on 2011's "Reflections" tour.[citation needed]

"Kissing an Ahab" would be the best option imo

apparently the US version of the "Standing on a Beach" compilation came packaged with a sticker requesting radio stations not to play the song:

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/21/arts/rock-group-accedes-to-arab-protest.html

It would have been awesome if he changed all the words to "Killing an Arab" to the whale's perspective for "Killing an Ahab."

Hasn't Trump used it yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsW9BTukpw

Unfairest matchup. Also this is my favorite Cure song ever, soooooooooooooooooo.

Unfairest matchup. Also this is my favorite Cure song ever, soooooooooooooooooo.

― Matt M., Thursday, June 9, 2016 10:10 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^

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Correct results.

Ladies and Gentlemen, ILM

Travesty