Rush: Classic or Dud?

"I'm not quite sure where I'll stop, but it'll probably be somewhere around Presto."

Personally Phil, I'm not so keen on Presto and Roll the Bones as I am on their "return to rock" album Counterparts. I think you'd find some songs you like on that one.

As for wanting more discussion of the music, buy the Popoff book!

You have a lot to look forward to. I recently played 2112 for my brother and his reaction was "wow, this sound like Iron Maiden, only it's from 1976."

I really like Presto. It was a little more back-to-basics without completely shedding the synthy stuff from the 80s. Counterparts/Test For Echo/Vapour Trails really did nothing for me, but Snakes & Arrows was a huge return to form.

i don't think they really captured what a cultural landmark album 'moving pictures' was. everyone in my junior high school had that record, not just the rush geeks, everyone. maybe it was a michigan thing, the same as the tragically hip selling out arenas once upon a time. but yeah they are some weird dudes, neil peart most especially, watching him made me feel really uneasy except for maybe during the mullet and handlebar moustache phase.

I finally saw it on the big screen tonight. It's gotten a second run at another cool indie theater in Portland.

Still the most profound part of the film for me is when they describe how 2112 set them free for the rest of their career.

Will be loading the first 12 albums (debut through Hold Your Fire, no live albums) into my iPod today. The Project Begins!

"My biggest complaint is that they could have spent more time on the post-Moving Pictures albums"

That's because if you watch the movie, most of the interviewees, especially Alex Lifeson, describe those albums as completely sucking, which, for the most part, they do. I'm glad after watching this movie that opinion has been vindicated, none of this "Grace Under Pressure and Power Windows are the two greatest albums ever made" challopsy bullshit.

I guess I missed the part where Alex Lifeson said "All the albums we've recorded for the last 30 years completely suck."

Not sure where anyone is saying that Grace Under Pressure and Power Windows are two of the greatest albums ever made, but they are both really good. So are Signals, Counterparts, Vapor Trails, and Snakes and Arrows. All the rest have their fair share of great tunes as well.

I don't think that Rush is trying to disown any of these albums. Their live show tends to have quite a lot of songs from the post-Moving Pictures era. It would have been nice to take a little more time with these past 30 years in the film, but it probably would have been a much longer film.

this reminds me to mention the major larfs in the restaurant when the waitress only recognized geddy lee
i liked that facet of the movie, the "look how NICE these guys are" -- i realize that doesn't have anything to do with the music, like at ALL, but i will listen to rush if i want to think about the music. i really liked the personal aspect of the movie.

i wanted to hug these guys at the end of the movie, i just LOVED them. i never knew much about them beyond their music, so it was all pretty new to me. i knew they were smart, Canadian, and pretty clean cut comparatively, but nothing more than that.

I guess I missed the part where Alex Lifeson said "All the albums we've recorded for the last 30 years completely suck."

^ You must have seen an edited version of the movie.

It would have been nice to take a little more time with these past 30 years in the film

^ no, it would have been better to have said what they did, that they made some serious mistakes in the '80s, and then beefed it up with more '70s stuff. If you dont think they were trying to back away from some of their '80s stuff, especially Lifeson, then please send me some of what you were smoking while you were watching it.

The part in the diner with Lee, Lifeson and the waitress was total gold.

i will stump for "hold your fire" too...i love 80s rush a lot. signals rules...tons of that stuff rules...i actually prefer their in thrall to the police/synth era stuff....(peart loved ultravox lol, that makes SO MUCH sense in retrospect)

but yeah i watched about half of this last night before i had to go to bed.

was sort of great too see all the different musicians that they touched....i suddenly felt a weird kinship to like, sebastian bach and vinnie paul, like i can relate to what they were saying about it....

rush is really the first band of nerds, like true nerds.

thought the early days stuff with rutsey was great, and i'm glad they didn't ignore rutsey, he gets kind of written out of their history sometimes.

really charming, can't wait to finish it.

also was happy to see a dude from death cab for cutie on there...because their song for the twilight soudntrack sounds SOOOO 80s rush, esp. the beginning. glad i'm not crazy for hearing that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DxUWGSiyt4

something about the vocal line at the beginning of the song...where he goes "when the sun in perched at its highest peak in the MID-dle of the day"

^^there is something distinctly Rush about how he emphasizes the first syllable of middle and takes it like a note higher than you'd expect, plus the guitar arpeggios under it are SOOO rush....but it's mostly in the intro not the whole song

Bill Magill will now be sad and cry about vampires ruining his rock experience.

Bill Magill will now be sad and cry about vampires life ruining his rock experience.

also,

i was first suprised to see trent reznor in it, but at the same time it made total sense, i think someone else upthread had the same experience

also, sebastian bach was SOOOOO cuet, he went out and bought the fountainhead when he was 12 awwwwww

Bach looked awful.

Bill Magill will now be sad and cry about vampires life ruining his rock experience.

― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, June 28, 2010 11:20 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I dont even know what this means. If you dont like 80s Rush, you dont like life? Guilty as charged, I guess.

bill don't hardman my naive love of canadian rock!!!!!!!!!!! okay???? not today man, i'm feeling all warm and fuzz abt rush!!!!!

Man, I love Rush, and I loved the movie. you guys have my take, no need for me to beat it into the ground.

I guess I'm just trying to point out that there is a difference between you not liking anything they've done since Moving Pictures and Rush not liking anything they've done since then.

What I got from the movie was that Alex Lifeson was unhappy with how much the synths were taking over their records around Power Windows and that he wanted the records to become more guitar focused, which is exactly what happened. I did not get the impression that he was saying all these albums he created suck and should be erased from everyone's memories.

He did not like those records. That's my interpretation of what he said. I didnt like them either. If you like them, that's cool.

Well, the band likes the period enough to still perform quite a few songs.

yeah they did between the wheels off grace under pressure last i saw them and the crowd was loving it

and that's like a weird album cut too, not like some huge single or something that people would expect or that the band would somehow feel obligated to play

Alex was just as guilty of diluting his guitar potency with fx pedals as Geddy was with introducing keyboards into the band, so for him to complain around the time of Power Windows is kind of like pot meet kettle. Anyway, it seems like around the time of Hold Your Fire they brought the guitar back to the forefront (though to say that they'd done away with synths at that point is kind of ridiculous). That whole part of the doc was kind of muddy with its intent, but I can put the pieces together of how things went down just by listening to the records.

see, i sorta love that era of alex's playing...very weird and fractured type stuff...one of the only OG classic rock dudes that seemed to take anything valuable from new wave/post punk....

they were using synths well before the that era anyway, this idea that using synths or efx is "diluting" Rush seems very odd to me, as if ppl think of Rush as some primal rock dudes like Motorhead or AC/DC or something

Oh no, you misread me (probably because I didn't elaborate). I love fx-heavy guitar, always have. I appreciate that he was all about textures for the Signals/Grace/Windows era. I just meant "diluted" in the traditional rock sense.

oh okay yeah cuz i have friends that play kinda weird rock now that cite the lifeson of that era as being sorta influential, because we all grew up in nowheresville midwest and that was as close to like "arty" guitar playing as we had heard in comparison to all the metal and classic rock dudes we knew growing up

textural is the perfect word for it

lots of his playing in that era reminds me of the comsat angels

This guitars vs synths polarity is weird. After borrowing a copy of Power Windows last month from a friend, I heard just as much RAWK moments on stuff like "Emotion Detector" and "Manhattan Project" as I would have pre-Moving Pictures. The songs are shorter, though, but denser, more muscular; lots of stuff going on in them.

listening to "Distant Early Warning" right now! this song rules...

Definitely Power Windows has lots of amazing high energy moments form all three of them, including some of Alex's greatest guitar work. I do think though that the synths on that record get a bit too busy and gitzy sounding at times to the point where they draw attention away from the guitar parts, so I can see why it would be a point of contention.

yeah "mystic rhythms" is a little overboard on the 80s production

I've seen this film 3 times now since I had a screener copy for reviews, and finally saw it in a theater last night and I have to sincerely agree with Moodles' take on this Bill.

Alex does make it clear that he was unhappy with the synths backing the guitars into the corner throughout the 80s. And he does imply that Hold Your Fire was the straw the broke the camel's back. Otherwise, I wouldn't say he really disowned anything and the do represent all of their albums live.

they not the.

then you learn the weapons and the ways of hard knock school
put on your kid gloves put on your kid gloves
then you learn the lesson that it's tough to be so cool

OKAY I FINISHED THIS AM AND HOW COME NO ONE ELSE IS FREAKING OUT ABOUT DRUM ZEN MASTER FREDDY GRUBER??????????

i swear to god that was like a christopher guest thing

OK, I managed to solve the mystery of Why Was Alex Lifeson's Argument With His Parents Filmed?: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0269104/

Come On Children was a documentary about Canadian youth directed by Allan King. And here I thought some of Lifeson's pals just wandered into his house with a Super-8.

The original reality tv!

Yeah, what a bizarre and useful bit of archival footage to have. Only in Canada!

i'm starting a religion based on the teachings of freddy "the yoda of drums" gruber and you are all invited:

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

Freddy obviously likes to hear himself talk, but as a drummer, I can absolutely see what he's getting at.

i'm sure that he's great, and yeah it makes sense it's just his delivery is soooooooo much like a christopher guest movie

hey does anyone know anything about max webster?

There's a gigantic Canada Day Rush celebration over at Hellbound.ca today:

http://www.hellbound.ca/

It turned out really well. Thanks to Nate for chipping in!

Great feature! Thanks for including me.

On another note, there's a Mini-RUSHCON in Las Vegas this August. Aaaaaaaaand, it's at Hooters :(

can you imagine the patience it would take to sit thru a lesson w/freddy gruber? I think I like neil peart more now after that

"Grace," "Power" and "Fire" ironically feature some of Lifeson's best guitar playing, IMO, a nice showcase for his lead rhythm player duties with some awesome solos tossed in. But yeah, when you combine synth washes with guitar designed to sound like synth washes, you're bound to get lost in the mix a little.

Saw this interview online:

In recent years, your albums have gotten a lot more guitar-oriented. The ’80s got a little synthy.

Yeah.

The transition, if you want to call it that, to more guitar-oriented albums — where does that come from?

It’s probably a reaction to what we were doing in the ’80s, when we started incorporating keyboards into our sound. It was still a very new thing, and that’s what really connected to us. But I think, once we got though the ’80s, we realized we went as far as we could with that. The real core part of the band is really in the three pieces — and really in the guitar. And in looking back, strictly for scheduling purposes, we put the keyboard down before we put the guitar down. So that made things a lot more restrictive for me and I had to work around a sound spectrum that was already occupied by keyboards. And I think, as a reaction to that, in the ’80s I went for a much wirier, thinner, clear trebly active pickup sound. In that period, I think that was just a response to the density of what the keyboard was doing.

Around the early ’90s, though, we all made this conscious effort to step away from keyboards, especially Geddy, which you would think would be unusual. But I think he’d had it and felt very confined in his area of the stage with keys and stuff. I mean, even with stuff we’re writing now, I have been the one kind of introducing some keyboard lines. Part of that reaction was replacing keyboard stuff with guitar parts — Vapor Trails, for example, has so much layered guitar stuff and it’s fun to do. And even Snakes and Arrows has a lot of layering and it’s great fun to do, and I love listening to it and I love doing it. But it makes it harder to really not depend on a lot of triggers and samples and stuff like that playing it live. But as I was saying, even now, where I want to bring some more keyboard back in, I am getting a lot of resistance from Geddy.

hey does anyone know anything about max webster?

― Q and Not Gucci (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

I saw Max Webster open for Rush in '79, but sadly I can't remember a single thing about them.

"The real core part of the band is really in the three pieces — and really in the guitar."

Thank you.

Total agreement. I wasn't a big fan until I saw them live and realized that Alex Lifeson is the secret weapon.

yeah but bill his view is a lot more nuanced and measured than your ALEX LIFESON PERSONALLY TOLD ME GRACE UNDER PRESSURE SUCKS ASS AND HE WANTS TO DESTROY EVERY KEYBOARD EVER MANUFACTURED GUITAR GUITAR GUITAR I KUT YR HEAD OFF WITH MY FLYING V!!!!!

I'm kind of surprised that Alex wanted to bring the synths back and Geddy shut him down.