Once upon a time, there was a Canadian bar band trio, who fancied themselves as the second coming of Cream and/or Led Zeppelin. Pounding out simple, heavy riffs and blues-like chord progressions, the Rush of old bore little resemblance to the band we all know and love today. Even so, "Working Man" is a radio standard that every classic rock fan can recognize in three notes or less (and did you know, that that three-note progression is identical to the riff used in Black Sabbath's "Black Sabbath"?? I forget what it's called exactly, but in my Musical Theory course in college, I learned that that's one of the most EEEEVIL sounding chord progressions in music...kinda freaked me out when the professor brought it up!) "What You're Doing" features a tremendous acid-rock bass riff (and has been covered by Skid Row), and "In the Mood" remains a perennial concert-closer to this day.

Incidentally, this is the only album to feature the band's original drummer, some diabetic guy named John Rutsey. Nobody seems to know what ever happened to him, however it IS known that John's brother was the one who came up with the "Rush" moniker, way back in 1968 or so. (Rumors that the name stands for an acroym of "Ruling Under Satan's Hand" are completely unfounded!!)

With the removal of Rutsey and the addition of drummer/lyricist Neil Peart, the band's classic lineup was in place, and would remain unchanged for the next THREE DECADES!!! (In fact, the only other band that has remained stable for longer is ZZ Top, formed in 1970 with the same three guys as today...but what the hell have they done lately?) This album marked a major transition in the band's sound, and while the heavy blues, cock-rock anthems still dominate (such as, well, "Anthem", which has been covered by Yngwie Malmsteen), Neil's fantasy lyrics are evident in the Middle-Earth inspired ballad "Rivendell", and "By-Tor and the Snow Dog", their first attempt at an "epic" piece. The title track is a bit of radio-friendly pap that still gets regular airplay on classic rock stations -- I liken it to Styx's "Lady", a minor hit that came out many albums before the band's mainstream acceptance...or as mainstream as Rush ever got, I suppose.

Incidentally, the band's real names are: Alex Zivojinovich, Gary Lee Weinrib, and...Neil Peart. :)

I call this one the "Geek Album", because if any modern progressive band released a record this cornball, they'd be laughed right off the planet! Still, it's just such a guilty pleasure, and many Rush fans (including myself) count this as one of their favorites. "Bastille Day" kicks things off with a roof-raising arena rocker, which was the band's concert opener for years, until "Spirit of Radio" took over. "I Think I'm Going Bald" is a silly little rocker, dumb but fun. "Lakeside Park" slows things down a bit with the traditional soft-rocker, though there's a bit of controversy over exactly where the "real" Lakeside Park is. :)

Then we get to "The Necromancer", a sequel of sorts to "By-Tor". Each section features a narration by Peart (I think), but dear me, the lyrics sound like they were taken straight from a bad Terry Brooks novel: "Only their thirst for freedom gives them hunger for vengeance." Yeeesh!! Not only that, the narration is so damn QUIET, you can barely hear it at all! (Does the remastered version fix that?) Still, when you're sixteen, and deep into Dungeons & Dragons and Tolkien novels, it's hard to resist. :) The whole second side is taken up with "The Fountain of Lamneth", which is really just six songs tied together by a common theme.

Now this is classic Rush! I knew I was on to something good when I first put side one on the turntable, and a few minutes into it, my mother started SCREAMING at me to TURN IT OFF! "Why?" I asked. Her explanation: "I will NOT have you playing a song that says, 'We are the Priests of THE DEVILS OF SYRINX!!!'" I tried to explain that that wasn't what Geddy was saying, but of course she wouldn't listen...on the other hand, isn't that what rock & roll is supposed to do? Piss off your parents?

Okay...the side-long title track is what finally cemented the band's reputation as epic sci-fi prog-rockers. Set in a world where music of all types is forbidden, our hero discovers an acoustic guitar, which he presents to the temple priests (idiot boy), who predictably smash it to pieces. I'm never too clear on exactly what happens after that...but ain't it cool how the song ends with Neil Peart's ominous voiceover: "ATTENTION ALL PLANETS OF THE SOLAR FEDERATION -- ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US." (Or something like that.) The liner notes dedicate the song to "the genius of Ayn Rand", proving that they can be just as pretentious as all other prog-rock acts of the Seventies. :)

Side two, on the other hand, is something of a letdown. "Passage to Bangkok" is a decent rocker, and "Secrets" is a pleasant, acoustically driven number in the vein of "Making Memories" from Fly by Night (and I always confuse the two, what with the "Sweet memories, flashing very quickly by" lyric) -- but "Twilight Zone" is just plain DUMB, "Tears" is a yawner of a ballad (check out Dream Theater's cover version for some desperately needed emotion!) and "Something for Nothing" just does nothing for me at all.

The sound on this live album is extremely raw and energetic -- hard to believe that only three guys could be this LOUD in concert! A couple tracks go on a bit long ("In the End", particularly, is quite a bore), but the guitar/bass interplay in "By-Tor" and the drum solo in "Working Man" make up for it. Dunno why they left out two parts of "2112", probably because Alex hadn't yet invented that guitar stand for the acoustic parts. "What You're Doing" was omitted from the original CD release, due to time constraints -- thankfully, the remastered version resorted it to the proper track listing.

The first of two "heavy prog" albums, this was where the band really gets into high gear with the fantasy themes. The title track works as a "prologue" of sorts, opening with the lyric: "When they turn the pages of history, when these days have passed long ago/Will they read of us with sadness for the seeds that we let grow?" (It even ends with the words "closer to the heart," pretty nifty huh?) "Xanadu" follows with one of their most majestic, atmospheric pieces ever -- I actually tried to learn this sucker on guitar but had to give up, since Alex pulls chords from all sorts of bizarre places! "Closer to the Heart" may be one of their most "pop" songs, but lyrically contains quite a bit of fantasy imagery: "The Blacksmith and the Artist reflect it in their art...You can be the Captain, and I will draw a chart." It's also co-written by some guy named Peter Talbot, a rare contribution from outside the band. "Cinderella Man" doesn't really fit the theme, but I like it for the manic-depressive theme. :) "Madrigal" is a bit of a bore, but after that we get "Cygnus X-1", a tripped-out, phantasmagoric voyage to the center of a black hole in some distant galaxy...awesome stuff!

This album is one I taped off the radio, so I never bought it on crappy vinyl (and in fact, it was like the 2nd or 3rd CD I ever bought.) Oftentimes I would put on the headphones and just let myself fly to the music...without the aid of drugs, I should point out. :) This one definitely ranks up there as one of my favorite Rush albums of all time, even better than Signals, perhaps.

One of the last early Rush albums I purchased, and I had no idea what I was missing...if AFTK was epic, this one is purely transcendental, reaching the ultimate peak of their progressiviosity. (Hey, did I just make up a new word or what?) The key track, obviously, is "Hemispheres", a side-long magnum opus that far surpasses any work the band has done before or since. Though listed as a sequel to Cygnus X-1, it's really a completely different animal, telling the tale of some ancient people deciding between the rule of two Greek Gods, Apollo and Dionysus (literally, a battle between the left and right "hemispheres" of the human mind...which explains that pink brain on the cover, but NOT the naked guy standing on it! What's up with prog bands and naked men, anyways? Yes released Going for the One this same year, so naked male butts must have been the trend back then...)

This masterpiece is complimented on side two (to use an outdated crappy vinyl term, hehe) with two more fantastic songs -- "The Trees", a fairy tale with a modern message, perhaps the best set of lyrics Neil Peart has ever come up with. This one leads into the monster instrumental "La Villa Strangiato" (literally, "the strange house"), which Alex Lifeson wrote based on a series of nightmares he had, mixed with a few cartoon themes. Both of these remain popular concert tunes to this day (whereas, "Hemispheres" was only played during the tour for this album...why oh why don't they resurrect it??) "Circumstances" is the odd man out, which despite having some very nice lyrics ("I feel the gloom of empty rooms on rainy afternoons...Innocence gave me confidence to go up against reality") doesn't really fit the rest of the album either musically or lyrically. Kind of an odd man out, if you like...

Major style shift here, as the band abandons the mystical/medieval themes and side-long songs for more standard AOR tracks like "Spirit of Radio". Well, I guess "Jacob's Ladder" is a bit mystical, with it's moody ascending bass riff and all. "Natural Science" is the token epic here (pared down to a mere nine minutes, the fucking sellouts) and it's about evolution, or something. Oh, and a bit of personal trivia about "Different Strings": one day I was listening to this album while reading a fantasy novel that I've forgotten the name of, and the hero was getting ready to battle some evil dragon just as the lyrics chimed in, "Who's come to slay the dragon, come to watch him fall?" Trippy, eh? No wonder I worship these guys as gods. :)

I do have a gripe about "Freewill", however -- in the song, Geddy clearly sings, "If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice," but the lyric sheet prints the words as, "you CANNOT have made a choice"! I'd say that puts a completely different spin on the song, doesn't it? So which is it? WHICH IS IT???? Apparently, I'm not the only wondering this, because I found this interesting little tidbit in The Rush FAQ:

"Scary, egocentric individuals", huh? No wonder Peart never does interviews...anyways, the FAQ had an addendum that apparently the Canadian pressing got the lyric sheet right, which is what got Neil all confused. Still...

This was the album where I first became aware of Rush's existence. I was in 8th grade, and just getting into the habit of watching Casey Kasem's "America's Top 40" every week, and Casey introduced this album (which debuted on the chart at #10 that week) with the video for "Tom Sawyer". My first impression was, "What a whiny-voiced, big-nosed singer!" It's true, for people who've never heard the band before, Geddy's voice does take some getting used to. (The nose is a lost cause, however.) Since then, I've had about a million conversations with people trying to figure out what the song actually MEANS. One friend of mine was convinced that the song was about Satan, citing the line "Maybe as his skies/eyes are wide" as evidence (since Satan's eyes are "as wide as the sky," according to him.) In any case, the lyrics were co-written by some guy named Pye Dubois, which makes this only the second song co-written by someone outside the band. Ain't it interesting, how both of them (along with "Closer to the Heart", see above) became their biggest hits?

Next up is "Red Barchetta", based on the science fiction story "A Nice Morning Drive" by Richard S. Foster. Ain't it nice how the band credits the writers who inspire their work? "YYZ" follows that with a nice instrumental, though not their best...and in case you were wondering, "YYZ" is the airport code for Toronto's international airport. (On the other hand, why Toronto got that code as opposed to TOR or something that actually makes SENSE is anybody's guess!) "Limelight" is one of the band's simpler songs, and I'm rather sick of it after hearing on the radio 10,000 times...

Then we get "The Camera Eye", the last of the band's 10+ minute epics. And boy is it a monster! I just love the modern sound they capture with the keyboard riffs and atmospheric guitar licks, totally expanding on the evocative lyric, "The focus is sharp in the city." Did I mention that city infrastructure is one of my favorite subjects? I've got about six tapes full of The History Channel's show "Modern Marvels", which I curl up with every so often, and this song definitely catches that vibe. ("Ehh, whatever!" you're probably saying right now...) "Witch Hunt" follows with one of the most evil guitar riffs the band's ever come up with, and since I got this album after buying Signals, the "Fear Part III" thing really threw me for a loop. (The song's been covered by Paradigma, incidentally...oh and I totally forgot to mention that "YYZ" has been covered by Dream Theater.) As for "Vital Signs", all I'll say is that the drum sound during the first verse is the LAMEST EVER...

...oh, and I completely forgot to mention (and don't think it's really necessary, but just noticed I referred to it above and don't feel like changing it) that on the original CD pressing, "Tom Sawyer" started a half-second late, which for some songs wouldn't be too big of a deal, but that initial BYYYYOOOOIIIRRRRNNNNGGGGGG simply *defines* the song, am I right or am I right?? And would you believe, the greedy fucks at the store I bought it from REFUSED to take it back as defective, and told me to mail it to the manufacturing plant (in West Germany!!) and ask for a replacement?!!?? Yeah, RIIIGHT. Ultimately I wound up selling it off and buying another copy from a friend who was liquidating his entire CD collection to raise money for a trip to Europe; the rear sleeve was missing, and for that reason I was going to buy the remastered version (making it FOUR COPIES I'd have bought of this album, including the vinyl, which has GOT to be a record of some sort!) But since the remastered rear sleeve shows nothing but a simple track listing printed in red on black, what's the freakin' point??? When it comes to RIAA conspiracies, you just gotta put your foot down somewhere!

As with All the World's a Stage, initially I refused to buy the CD version of this live album, since it cut out one song, "A Passage to Bangkok". And while both omitted songs were included on the greatest hits package Chronicles, like HELL I was going to waste my money on THAT! Good thing I waited, too, because the remastered version restored the proper track listing. See? The record company profits by giving the fans what they deserve...

In any case, I hardly ever listen to this album, and I'm at a loss to explain why. The song selections feature a rich cross-section of the band's last four albums, which definitely were the band's best ever (and by the way, did you notice that Rush *always* releases a live album after four studio albums? No more, no less.) On the other hand, when I want to listen to these songs, I pull out the studio CDs. Not that there's anything really lacking in the live performances -- in fact, the "Broon's Bane"/"Trees"/"Xanadu" suite completely blows away the studio recordings.

This was the first Rush album I ever bought, in the fall of '83, and at the same time I got a package of Rush crappy vinyls -- Moving Pictures, Permanent Waves, and 2112 -- from the RCA record club. (The nice thing about those "packs" the club would offer, is that you could choose them as one of your free selections when you join the club, so you could get up to 18 free selections instead of six! Not that it matters now, being crappy vinyl and all...) I listened to all four records in one sitting, and...how can I explain this? You remember what it was like getting laid for the first time? Something like that. At the time, I was deep into being a major Genesis fan, which had been building up slowly over the course of a year -- Rush blew them away in one night. (Did I mention that I worship these guys as gods?)

As for the music...well, the sudden direction change must have been a huge shock to current Rush followers, as all the tunes are drenched heavily in keyboards and shit. Not that it bothers me, of course. "Subdivisions" starts out with a maudlin tone that perfectly reflects the suburban monotony & mass conformity that I grew up with -- it remains one of my favorite songs to this day. "The Analog Kid" offers up some beautiful imagery: "The boy lies in the grass with one blade stuck between his teeth/A vague sensation quickens in his young and restless heart..." "Chemistry" is kind of a bore, but "Digital Man" is a fantastic song, featuring a blistering bass riff...oh, wait a minute..."Analog Kid", "Digital Man"...NOW I get it!! HAHAHAHA!!!! "The Weapon" continues the "Fear" series with a hypnotic mix of guitar & sequencers; the hook-laden "New World Man" actually reached #32 or so on the Billboard charts; but the pièce de résistance comes with the final two songs: "Losing It" indelibly describes the bittersweet sorrow that comes with aging, and "losing" the creative abilities you once had (a bit of foreshadowing for Rush's career, perhaps?), and the sadness evoked in that song juxtaposes brilliantly with the awe-filled joy of "Countdown", a tribute to the first Space Shuttle launch. (Interesting how Rush went from songs about science fiction to science FACT, eh?)

By the spring of '84 I was a slavering Rush lunatic, so this album was awaited with much anticipation. I remember like yesterday the first time I heard "Afterimage" on the radio while driving to school -- I knew I would not be disappointed! Two songs in particular contain strong emotional quotients; the first, "Red Sector A", paints a chilling portrait of life inside a concentration camp, and by the way, did you know that Geddy's parents were Holocaust survivors? Well, now you do. (I was about to add that perhaps those experiences added extra passion to the lyrics, but of course it was written by Peart, not Lee, duh. Although Geddy certainly sings it with passion...) The second, "Between the Wheels", is a cynical yet hopeful song about the future of mankind, which in 1984 (the height of the Cold War) could have ranged from peaceful prosperity to total nuclear annihilation. (Although I doubt the Russians ever considered FLYING AIRPLANES INTO BUILDINGS...oops, sorry for the digression.)

"Distant Early Warning" was the main single, becoming a long-running concert standard, and the video even gained significant airplay on MTv (although the cute little boy riding the missile "Dr. Strangelove" style is NOT Geddy's son, as erroneously reported earlier!) "The Body Electric" is a total geek song about an escaped android named "1001001", and people who dislike this album (of which there are many, apparently) usually point to it as one of the low points on the album, but fuck 'em all, I really like it. (I guess it IS kinda dorky, when you think about it, though.) I reserve my low marks for "Enemy Within" (a disappointing conclusion to "Fear"...or should that be "beginning"?) and "Red Lenses", which briefly replaced "YYZ" as the bookend for Peart's concert drum solo. (Rush sure has a lot of songs with "Red" in the title, don't they?) "Kid Gloves", the most overlooked song on this album, features some splendid guitarwork by Lifeson, and is considerably more upbeat than the overall dark tone of this record.

After having the longest run of top-notch classic albums of any band I know, it was inevitable that Rush would slow down eventually. This album is still a fine piece of work, technically speaking, but the emotional resonance just isn't there anymore. Well, I guess "Marathon" does deliver a few shivers, what with the choral-heavy ending and all, but it hardly does anything for me now. "Territories" and "Mystic Rhythms" are both technically proficient, but "Manhattan Project" sounds overworked, and the lead-off single "Big Money" is just plain dumb. Fun, but dumb. (And with a band like Rush, "fun" will only take you so far!) Worst of all, the remaining three tracks come damn near close to pure filler material. Overall, it's a good album, and worthy of the Rush moniker, but it's definitely a harbinger of things to come...

The simplistic artwork on this one should have immediately cued me in that something was terribly amiss. In a word, this album STINKS. Of the whopping 10 tracks here, only "Prime Mover" can be favorably compared to the Rush standard, and while "Second Nature" and "Turn the Page" are also quite good, that's about it! "Mission" and "Tai-Shan" are particularly excreble, and on "Time Stand Still", the band committed the scandalous act of featuring that awful Aimee Mann singer (of the no-hit-wonder band 'Til Tuesday) on co-lead vocals, the first time in history anyone other than Neil, Geddy or Alex appeared on one of their albums! (That song definitely has "commercial sellout" written all over it, and the video was incredibly lame as well...I cringe every time it makes the rounds on VH1 Classic.) I guess "Lock and Key" is okay, but "Force Ten" manages to be simpler and stupider than "Big Money", which is quite a feat! (And the band still insists on playing that one in concert, the losers!) As for the remaining two songs, "Open Secrets" and "High Water", I can't quite recall what they sound like, so mark them down as merely unmemorable. I guess this isn't the WORST music Rush has ever come up with, but it's certainly right down there near the bottom. This is also the last Rush album I ever bought on crappy vinyl.

Ever notice that Rush always releases a live album after four studio albums? Unfortunately, this one had the misfortune of following the sucky Hold Your Fire, so it's a foregone conclusion that this one would suck as well. Even worse, a number of really good songs played on this tour got cut completely -- where's "Territories"? Or "Prime Mover"?? Or even the fantastic "2112"/"La Villa Strangiato" medley?!??! (They were included on the videotape version of this album, but what good is that gonna do ya?) The slick overproduction drags things down even further. *Definitely* a tour where finding a bootleg recording is a vital necessity!

This one's actually a fairly good effort, though at the time I considered it the band's "swan song", just before they descended into complete mediocrity. Not every song is spectacular, but some interesting rhythms pop up in "Chain Lightning", "Scars", and "Superconductor"; even the slower songs "The Pass" (a song about suicide) and "Available Light" capture a bit of that emotion that's been absent for the last two studio albums. I'm not particularly impressed with the funky "Show Don't Tell", and the chorus of "Red Tide" ("This is not a false alarm, this is not a test") is extremely dorky even by Rush standards. The good news is, none of these songs completely SUCK, and the album overall has aged well. Certainly a rough diamond in the wasteland of the band's late 80's/early 90's career...and I would've been happy if Rush had made this their final album, but.......

One bit of trivia/controversy I remember -- the band wanted to put the songs in a specific order on CD, but that meant the cassette and crappy vinyl formats (which in 1990 were still quite viable, believe it or not) would wind up with two grossly disparagent side lengths, something like 22 and 29 minutes...which, on vinyl, would make one side of the record sound distinctively LOUDER than the other!! (For those born in the CD era, it's kinda hard to explain -- the normal max side length was around 23-25 minutes, but you COULD go longer if you used special mastering equipment and made the grooves much smaller...at the expense of overall quality. Gawd, I feel like an olde fogey when ah starts talkin' to the young'uns 'bout th' mechanics of vinyl n'all...now git me mah pipe an' slippers, thar's a good boy!)

Ehh...hardly ever listen to this one, which makes it very hard to judge. "Dreamline" is one of the better leadoff tracks in some time, with a cool bassline in the chorus (except it sounds totally ridiculous out of context, hence the reason why I took over a year and a half to buy this!) "Where's My Thing?" is a wonderful instrumental, sounding for all the world like the lead-in to a radio interview show (and labeling it as "part 4" of the "Gangster of Boats Trilogy" suggested a repeat of the "Fear" retrogression, but sadly, they didn't continue with it.) But the remainder of the songs are completely unremarkable and unmemorable, and about the only thing I can remember is Geddy's HORRIBLE attempt at rapping in the title track! Cute album cover, though.

Eckk. Ack. Blecch. This isn't even mediocre Rush. It's more like some third-rate grunge band co-opted the Rush name. The only halfway decent song is "Animate", which features a cool rhythm and would have been right at home on Presto. But from there it descends into a pathetic mishmash of grunge, heavy metal, and country rock -- even the instrumental, something the band usually excels at, comes off as contrived and boring. By far the biggest offender here is "Nobody's Hero", a whiney, gut-churning paen about some gay guy dying of AIDS (who may or may not be Freddie Mercury, I've got conflicting reports on that.) Hey, enough of that shit, I'm sick of it already!!

What's *really* mystifying, however, is the fact that many Rush fans on the Internet consider this as one of the band's BEST albums...I know of at least three people who use the handle "Coldfire", named after the crappy song on here! What the fuck are these people smoking?!?!?

Waited almost 2 years to buy this one -- since their last album was so bad, I feared how much worse they could get! But really, this album's something of a nice surprise. It's not Signals by any stretch of the imagination (the lyrics remain way too vague to be on par with their earlier works), but the musicality is more solid than anything they've done in a long time. Lots of hard guitar riffs, melodic arrangements, and signature Rush chord changes, with virtually no keyboards to speak of. It's like the band had spent the last ten years searching for a modern sound, and finally found it! Easily the best thing they've done since Power Windows, or at least Presto.

The band's fourth live album, and the third to contain "Stage" in the title. The most ingenious thing about this set is the packaging, how they managed to get all 3 discs into a box the size of a single jewel case! Though I shudder to think what havoc the tight sleeves will wreak upon the discs in the future...but enough about that. The first 2 discs are from their 1997 tour, with a few songs from earlier shows seamlessly mixed in; would like to have heard more Presto and Signals era songs (instead of all that Roll the Bones & Counterparts crap they felt obliged to pile on), but at least you get some rare tracks like "Analog Kid", "Natural Science", "Limelight" (not rare at their shows but somehow never appeared on a live album before), and, most importantly, the COMPLETE version of "2112"!! The 3rd "bonus" disc comes from a show on the Farewell to Kings tour, and is notable for some more rare live tracks, plus numerous performance errors. :-)

I think this CD has set a record for the most emails asking me what I think about it in the few short months since its 2002 release. What do you people think, that I'm made of money or something?? I'm so broke these days, I can hardly pay attention...and considering my buying habits for Rush CDs over the last decade, it would be a freak occurrance if I bought the damn thing before the final episode of the Lord of the Rings movie was released!! However, you all lucked out, as I went to the used store one day specifically looking for a used copy, and lo and behold, there one was. So what's my verdict? Well.....

...well, first I gotta explain (for the half dozen people who don't already know, at least) that this is the first Rush album in six years, as the band was put on extended hiatus after the personal tragedies suffered by Neil Peart. To recap, in 1997 his daughter was killed in a car accident (the SAME DAY as Princess Diana, in fact) and, a year later, his wife died of cancer. Ouch. For a long time, there was a serious question whether Neil would ever be himself enough to play drums again, let alone record an album. (Remember, he still writes ALL the lyrics.) So it was good news for fans when in 2001, the band finally started rehearsing together again, and began putting together material for a long overdue "comeback" album.

Now, what I was most interested in hearing was how the new song lyrics would relate to Neil's tragedies, and I expected the overall tone to be extremely DARK...or, on the other side of the coin, uplifting and redemptive. The answer turned out to be neither. Only "The Stars Look Down" hints at the specific events themselves, and the lyrics are far too vague to be taken as anything but your basic "we all live, we all die, yada yada yada." (In fact, the only lyrics that can be cohesively tied to ANYTHING specific is that "Peaceable Kingdom" is about 9/11.)

And what's up with naming one of the songs "Part IV of Fear", after all this time?? If they really wanted to be tricky, they should have called it "Part VIII" or something...

And the music? Well...here's the thing. It's definitely a logical progression from Test for Echo, a couple notches heavier and more complex, and it's so guitar/bass-oriented that Geddy isn't even CREDITED with keyboards anymore, and it's all quite, quite good. On the other hand, there are NO HOOKS in any of the songs...which means, after listening to this album six times, I *still* can't recall how any specific song goes. (They just don't stick in the mind, see? "Hooks?" "Stick in the mind?" Even Test for Echo had "It's my turn to drive, oh oh it's my turn to drive...") So much for the song-by-song commentary, then. :) Maybe in ten years, I'll think of this album in the same way that I think of Presto or Roll the Bones today -- which in itself is an odd thought, since ten years ago, I didn't expect Rush to still be touring and putting out albums!!

disc one:
1. "Tom Sawyer" (5:04)
2. "Distant Early Warning" (4:50)
3. "New World Man" (4:04)
4. "Roll the Bones" (6:15)
5. "Earthshine" (5:44)
6. "YYZ"--instrumental (4:56)
7. "The Pass" (4:52)
8. "Bravado" (6:18)
9. "The Big Money" (6:03)
10. "The Trees" (5:12)
11. "Free Will" (5:48)
12. "Closer to the Heart" (3:04)
13. "Natural Science" (8:34)

disc two:
1. "One Little Victory" (5:32)
2. "Driven" (5:22)
3. "Ghost Rider" (5:36)
4. "Secret Touch" (7:00)
5. "Dreamline" (5:10)
6. "Red Sector A" (5:16)
7. "Leave That Thing Alone"--instrumental (4:59)
8. "O Baterista"--drum solo (8:54)
9. "Resist"--acoustic version (4:23)
10. "2112" (6:52)

disc three:
1. "Limelight" (4:29)
2. "La Villa Strangiato"--instrumental (10:05)
3. "The Spirit of Radio" (5:28)
4. "By-Tor and the Snow Dog" (4:34)
5. "Cygnus X-1" (3:12)
6. "Working Man" (5:48)
7. "Between Sun & Moon" (4:51)
8. "Vital Signs" (4:59)

HEY, WAIT A MINUTE!! It's only been one studio album since the last live album, and Rush only puts out a live set per every FOUR studio albums...it's, like, carved in stone somewhere. What in holy hell is going on?? Are the persistent rumors of an imminent breakup true? Well, their excuse is that it's just the audio soundtrack to the Rush in Rio DVD, and live videos have never followed any real pattern. In any case, at least it eliminates my need for any bootleg from this tour. :)

Plus, there's some major differences here. First of all, it's a complete show from Brazil, not a cut-and-paste job from various shows (and even separate tours) like they've always done before. Second, the mix job is MAD RAW, sounding almost like a high-quality soundboard boot, unlike the pristine, nearly sterile production work they've done on live albums since Exit...Stage Left. Truly, Rush has never sounded this down & dirty before, and it's quite a trip! The closing medley of By-Tor/Cygnus/Working Man is definitely the highlight here, and "New World Man" is a SWEET inclusion, as it's never appeared on a live album before. The rest of the setlist contains no real surprises -- lots of V.T. songs (of course), and "O Baterista" is just Neil's wacky drum solo -- indeed, certain classics like "Closer to the Heart" were added special for the band's first South American performance. And the crowd is VERY enthused, singing along through ALL of the songs, even "YYZ"! I'm not making this up!

The last two songs on disc three are labeled "The Board Bootlegs", taken from earlier concerts on this tour, and don't appear on the DVD at all, apparently. Good thing, because I would have been LIVID to miss out on "Between Sun & Moon", being dedicated to the recently dead John Entwistle and all. ("Who?" Oh shut up...) It's also never been released live before, nor has "Vital Signs" which I'm less thrilled about. The sound quality on these two songs is even MORE rough than the Brazil show, if such a thing is possible. But hey, as a ROIO collector I listen to them and say, "Whoa, killer A+ sb quality d00D!" So there you go, score one for the record company doing it right!