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First Exposure to Rush


winter17
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What was the very first time you heard a Rush song?

 

For me, I have two "firsts," so to speak.

 

When I was younger, about six, I played YYZ on the game Guitar Hero II. It became one of my favorite songs on the game, but I still had no clue who Rush was.

 

It was probably three years later, 2009ish, when my dad put Chronicles in the cd player in the car and turned on TSOR, saying "This is going to be on the new Guitar Hero (full circle, I guess)." My first thought was how in the world am I going to play this song, given that the first part already seems impossible. I ended up loving the song, and I listened to the rest of that side of Chronicles that day. That's how I was introduced to Rush, and it's become an obsession now.

Edited by ericmichael1116
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For me it was Tom Sawyer. I never knew who :rush: was, until I heard that song. After a while, though I hated the song for some reason, and I just recently discovered it again(like a few months ago), and I fell in love with the song again.

 

After that, I had to hear more :rush:, and that is how I became a fan.

 

Now :rush: , more specifically :Neil: , means the world to me.

Edited by GotNeilPeart?
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I heard Xanadu played over my bands PA and instantly fell in love. I remember the drummer saying "you'll love this band. The bass player is awesome and he's also the singer. They do songs about space and mythology." Two of my favorite things. I was hooked. :D It was right after AFTK was released. Edited by EagleMoon
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Side four of All The World's A Stage. As with EagleMoon, someone connected me with the band because they knew I played an instrument (drums, in my case). Working Man, especially Neil's solo, made me lean in like know other music had before. Then it was Archives, which I recorded onto reel to reel and played over and over and over...
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When I was in elementary school in southern California (Riverside) in the '70s, my closest buds and I bonded over The Beatles. They were everything to us. Then at the end of 1979 I moved way up towards the north end of the state, some 530 miles away. My aforementioned buds would write me letters, and they eventually began adorning the envelopes with "Rush" (whatever that was!), painstakingly drawn out in the Hemispheres font, in red. They said I just HAD to hear this band.

 

I never got around to it. But soon after we drifted out of touch -- in '81, I think -- I heard the DJ on my local rock station announce, "Here's the newest from Rush...Tom Sawyer." I pricked up my ears, and my musical life was changed forever.

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Late weekend nights I'd always stay awake for The Midnight Special and Don Kirschner's Rock Concert, and I'd feel as if I were the only person alive awake and seeing these bands ..

 

It was the A Farewell To Kings era videos that I remember seeing - Alex on the classical was probably the very first thing I ever heard from Rush ... This would be 1977, and I was 9 or 10 .....

 

Of course, I loved the guitar, but when I heard Geddy's voice, I knew I had another favorite band

 

Things took a turn to obsession in May of 1980 when I saw them on the Permanent Waves tour

 

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Edited by Lucas
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What was the very first time you heard a Rush song?

 

When I was younger, about six, I played YYZ on the game Guitar Hero II. It became one of my favorite songs on the game, but I still had no clue who Rush was.

Oy, I feel old!

 

Me and my buddies are 12-ish hearing TSOR on WPLJ or WNEW in NYC can't remember which but we're hooked! Soon Vee buys Permanent Waves and :rush: is discovered. I go on to buy 2112 and Fly By Night. Then Moving Pictures comes out, we each have our own copy and the world is never the same.

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Mr Babycat: I've got something for you to listen to.

Me: Really? What's that?

Mr Babycat: It's called A Show Of Hands. By Rush. You might like them.

Me: Who are they, then? Never heard of them.

Mr Babycat: 'Never heard of them'?!

 

He forgets we grew up in different eras, therefore listening to completely different things. He's heard of all the bands that pretty much everyone else here might well have seen. All I've heard is blinkin' pop music.

 

Anyway, he put the CD on, and that was it.

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I spent my early adolescence flipping around the radio dial. The era was 1980-1985 or so.

 

I'd hear songs and either like them or not. I loved every Rush song that got radio play in my area, and by the mid 80's that was a long list.

 

But it wasn't until the mid 80's that I realized that Rush played all those songs. I didn't pay much attention to the DJ's, or perhaps there were so many bands and so many songs played between that the label never stuck.

 

When I realized that Rush was responsible for so many songs I really loved I was hooked.

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Late weekend nights I'd always stay awake for The Midnight Special and Don Kirschner's Rock Concert, and I'd feel as if I were the only person alive awake and seeing these bands ..

 

It was the A Farewell To Kings era videos that I remember seeing - Alex on the classical was probably the very first thing I ever heard from Rush ... This would be 1977, and I was 9 or 10 .....

 

Of course, I loved the guitar, but when I heard Geddy's voice, I knew I had another favorite band

 

Things took a turn to obsession in May of 1980 when I saw them on the Permanent Waves tour

 

.

 

.

 

:) :) I used to do this too- the only one up in the dark house, sitting downstairs in front of the old RCA TV.

 

I listened to WDVE a lot in Pittsburgh and they played the heck out of Fly By Night when it came out. I was hooked! :) Moving Pictures meant a lot to me when it came out as my husband and I had moved out west and it made me feel less alone, somehow. Kids started to arrive after that and I lost track for quite a while. When I came back, my band was still there, still relevant, and still sounding fantastic! Of course, it's Rush ! :heart: :heart:

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At school at the very beginning of 1980. These kids were listening to Permanent Waves on a ghetto blaster in one of the interconnecting corridors (so the sound didn't travel to the main buildings). And I thought wow and was hooked. The acoustics in the corridor were great too. Later maybe a week or so or maybe it was a week before, i can't quite remember now, I heard someone else playing ATWAS on a tape recorder in one of the physics labs. I didn't realise it was the same band at first, but when i did it was very like the moment later in the year when I realised that the guy who wrote Salem's Lot was the same guy who wrote The Shining!
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I loved The Midnight Special and Don Kirshners Rock Concert. It felt kind of rebellious staying up to watch them late at night.
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I just randomly bought Moving Pictures and loved it.

 

But I remember in school, in the village I live in there was a rocker dude a few years above me who used to wear a MP shirt and was into all sorts of bands I now find "normal". I was into modern rock and metal but when I was ready to explore the past I remembered his striking shirt and also articles where members of bands including Mastodon (who I love) praised them endlessly.

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I believe Fly By Night was the first Rush song I ever heard. I had an older brother (he was all of twelve years old at the time) who turned me on to them with large portions of the FBN album, as well as 2112 and A Farewell to Kings. That was in 1979. Big part of the soundtrack of my youth, they were- Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures, and Signals most of all. My brother started playing the drums because of Neil Peart, and I started playing them because of my brother.

 

I saw them live for the first time in 1990, about a month before my 17th birthday, and I can't even say that seeing them live 'sealed the deal', because it was already sealed before then. But I'll never forget that first show- it was just an unbelievable experience.

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Rush first exposed themselves to me in a back alley behind the Wal Green's ... Oh, wait...

 

Had a friend in HS who idolized them. He made me a mix tape (ha!) and that was it. I knew Tom Sawyer and Closer to the Heart and Working Man. So then I got Chronicles - it had just been released, talk about a timely release. Unfortunately the "new" album at the time was Presto, and I figured, well ... At least their old stuff is cool! (Thankfully over time that album has grown on me and Rush started rocking again.)

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A friend's brother had ATWAS on 8-track. Knowing I was interested in drums, he said: "Check these guys out." I made a bootleg of it on my crappy cassette machine and absolutely loved it.

When I had enough money, I went to Zellers (Canadian dep't store). They didn't have ATWAS, but Moving Pictures had just come out and was on sale for 4 or 5.99. I brought it home and loved every second of it. Great songs, great playing, great sounding recording. You could hear the instruments bouncing off the studio walls (the "soundstage"?). Maybe it made such an impression due to the crappy sonics of my homemade bootleg!

1981...oh lordy.

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My sister bought music to impress the cool kids. I never witnessed her listening to any albums she bought. In her collection was Fly By Night. I was about nine years old when I discovered it and always thought the owl on the front cover was cool, but the guys pictured on the back cover looked funny.

 

A few years later I heard songs like "The Spirt of Radio" and "Tom Sawyer" on the radio. I bought Moving Pictures. I was in awe. I eventually went back and listened to that "owl album" and fell completely in love.

Edited by ReRushed
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When we had family get togethers, my older cousins would always go into one of their bedrooms and listen to music. At the time, I was about 9 or 10. 14 year olds don't need 10 year olds cramping their style. I had always heard my cousins talking about Rush. I had to find who or what this Rush was.

 

At night, I would lay in bed and listen to my clock radio for a little while. One night, right after a song finished (a song I liked), the DJ came on and said, "that was Rush, with Fly By Night." That was the band that my cousins always talked about?!?! I asked for Fly By Night for Christmas. Christmas day, I played it from start to finish. Like ReRushed, I remember thinking about how weird the guys looked on the back cover. Anyways...I was just blown away by Bytor and the Snowdog. I played that song over and over. Not too long after that, Moving Pictures came out, and I fell in love with that record, and my love for the band continued to grow.

 

As years went by, and I was 20 and my cousin was 24, hanging with me was no longer an issue. :LOL: We were at a wedding and started to talk about Rush. My cousin then invited me to go with him to see the Presto tour. We saw every tour together after that, until he moved to Switzerland. :(

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The Trees.A friend and future flatmate who had a huge and varied album collection knew I liked all things heavy played me this then La Villa .I thought the lyrics to the Trees were silly and they were up their own bottoms for doing an instrumental of self indulgence.I was only 16 with a lot to learn.
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Mid 80s, my brother's mate gave him some C90s of assorted HM albums. There were a few tracks from ATWAS stuck on the spaces at the end of the tapes.

I heard Anthem while sitting in the back of my dad's car one day. I was intrigued, got home and took the tape indoors. Play, rewind, play, rewind etc. Totally hooked!

Oddly all I had seen of the band was the photo on the back of the 2112 sleeve. I just assumed the guy in the middle with the big moustache was the singer/guitarist. Gave me a very unusual initial impression of Rush :LOL:

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I saw a kid at school with a Rush t-shirt. I didn't know what Rush was. I thought why are you in such a hurry? A few months later I heard Tom Sawyer on the radio for the first time.
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