Jump to content

Dscrapre

Members
  • Posts

    760
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Dscrapre

  1. They said the tour would have killed him. His diabetes was pretty bad and he wasn't taking care of himself at home. Road life would have absolutely killed him.

     

    He was a very good drummer. They did not have Neil to compare him to yet.

    Rutsey? A very good drummer?

     

    I would say so. Just from a playing standpoint, he's the kind of drummer that a lot of people would want. He had solid time, he could groove, and he didn't overplay. That's like, the trifecta of good drumming traits. I think that he probably could've had a decent career in drumming if he would have kept it up.

    He could only groove to the simplest rock music though. I remember reading an interview with Geddy where he said Alex and him tried jamming Anthem with Rutsey and he couldn't groove to it whatsoever. He did play well on the debut, very respectable. But I wouldn't go so far as to say he was "very good".

     

    John Bonham is "great", Rutsey was very good.

     

    Fixed.

     

    I guess I should say very good at what he did. He was 20 years old and his chops were not at the level of Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson. If he had stuck with music I'm sure he would have been an accomplished drummer. Maybe they just didn't agree on the groove Anthem had.

     

    Yeah, being able to naturally groove to Anthem is not really what I would call a litmus test for drumming quality at all. That song is right in Neil's wheelhouse. Not a whole lot of conventionally good drummers, especially in the 70's, could have cut it on a track like that.

     

    Besides, simple rock is what most people want. Look at AC/DC! In a band like that Rutsey would've done just fine.

    • Like 1
  2. They said the tour would have killed him. His diabetes was pretty bad and he wasn't taking care of himself at home. Road life would have absolutely killed him.

     

    He was a very good drummer. They did not have Neil to compare him to yet.

    Rutsey? A very good drummer?

     

    I would say so. Just from a playing standpoint, he's the kind of drummer that a lot of people would want. He had solid time, he could groove, and he didn't overplay. That's like, the trifecta of good drumming traits. I think that he probably could've had a decent career in drumming if he would have kept it up.

    • Like 5
  3. Anyway, I know one of the sets, Chromey, was purchased by a fan and I believe he takes it to events and lets fans take their picture and kind of "play" it for a few seconds, Rush also has a huge storage facility somewhere in Toronto and I think a lot of their old instruments are kept there.

     

    The guy who has the Neil's First Rush set is a really great guy named Dean. He tours the set around with the proceeds going to the American cancer society. I managed to actually see it three times and played all of those times.

     

    As for playing it, he gives you about 2 minutes, which is definitely enough to bust out a decent solo if you're so inclined. He doesn't seem to worry about anybody breaking anything. Hell, after I got done playing it the last time he actually asked me to play again, and I hit hard!

    A great experience.http://i58.tinypic.com/s48bh0.jpg

    • Like 1
  4. "sucks bumholes"...? Talking about the album that has Ceiling Unlimited and Earthshine? I remember buying Vapor Trails at the record store, opening it outside at a bench, putting it in my discman, and walking back to work. One Little Victory I had already heard on the radio. When Ceiling Unlimited came on I stopped dead. People had to go around me and I didn't care. I may have been hit by a bus or something, I can't remember. I didn't care. All I knew was that my Rush was back.

     

    Ceiling Unlimited is top tier Rush in my book. Tremendous song. Much of VT is in the same boat for me. Earthshine, Vapor Trail, How It Is, Secret Touch, Freeze are all classics to me.

     

    I love Vapor Trails. Ceiling Unlimited is good, but the lyrics keep me from considering it to be great. What does that mean, "ceiling unlimited"?

     

    WEBSTER

    ceiling unlimited (noun) : a cloudless or nearly cloudless sky : a sky less than half obscured by clouds at levels lower than an arbitrary fixed altitude

     

     

    When you think about the rest of the lyrics especially "the time is now again" sections, it paints an excellent picture of Neil's state of mind at the time.

    • Like 1
  5. "sucks bumholes"...? Talking about the album that has Ceiling Unlimited and Earthshine? I remember buying Vapor Trails at the record store, opening it outside at a bench, putting it in my discman, and walking back to work. One Little Victory I had already heard on the radio. When Ceiling Unlimited came on I stopped dead. People had to go around me and I didn't care. I may have been hit by a bus or something, I can't remember. I didn't care. All I knew was that my Rush was back.

     

    Ceiling Unlimited is top tier Rush in my book. Tremendous song. Much of VT is in the same boat for me. Earthshine, Vapor Trail, How It Is, Secret Touch, Freeze are all classics to me.

    • Like 4
  6. I'm really kind of glad that I'm not an audiophile. I've been reading a lot about "bad production" and Clockwork Angels being "muddy" and a "sonic mess" and other such phrases. I'm reading about a "lack of separation" and a wall of noise. I'm so glad I can put it on and not "hear" any of that. I just hear a f***ing good album. Can I say "f***ing good album"? Love it. Face-melting glory. No mud, no mess, no fuss, no muss. Just killer rock. Diggin' it to my dying day.

     

    Hey...what's the deal with the ***? That's not what I typed!!

     

    I thought the album sounded pretty good... until I spent some time away from it and started listening to a lot of other music. When I came back to CA, I immediately could hear how awful the production was. Everything is all on top of everything else, there is no definition to any of the sounds and much of the album is a sonic blob. I ended up actually liking the original production on Vapor Trails more than CA.

    • Like 1
  7. Here's an entire scanner sourced bootleg from the Test For Echo Tour (this bootleg happens to be the night where they filmed the ill-fated Different Stages DVD) where you can hear Alex singing gracefully, particularly during the songs Dreamline, Stick It Out, Driven, Nobody's Hero, Freewill, Roll The Bones and Force Ten.

     

     

    He doesn't have a "lead singer" voice, but his background vocals sound just fine. He's a way better singer than I'll ever be! I think that Alex should get put a bit higher in the live mix. That way they can rely less on the prerecorded Geddy choir.

  8. Most of the complaints I see here amount to nothing more than a failure to see the forest for the trees. Getting all anal about miniscule details is a waste of time. Alex is a bit sloppy? So what? He's always been a bit sloppy live, there is evidence of this throughout their career. Everybody slobs all over ATWAS's knob all of the time and look at how "sloppy" that performance was! They are at a point of their career where they are playing more tightly and more cohesively as a unit than ever before. So what if Alex flubs a few notes here and there, or if Neil isn't playing every single tom hit in the Freewill drum fills. They are human beings not jukeboxes. These things happen in live performance. The band still sounds good as a unit which should be the most important thing.

     

    It's slightly off topic, but I feel relevant: I think that some fans like to believe that Rush were the greatest, most technically proficient musicians in the world at some point. They never were. They're a rock band who plays music that happens to be more complex than most other rock or pop music played on the radio. This isn't Mozart.

    • Like 3
  9. His hands are uncoordinated & the playing is sloppy & slipshod.

     

    He was also "sloppy & slipshod" at Pinkpop in 1979.

     

    And?

     

    You seem to imply that him being sloppy is some recent development. Every performance I've seen of La Villa Strangiato has had "sloppy" moments. He's been playing like that forever.

    • Like 1
  10. But you could argue that Alex and Neil aren't quite as good as they once were.

     

    I don't get that feeling from Neil at all. Watching him play back in the day is almost painful. His technique was so stiff and he just pounded directly through his drums. He's gotten so much better in terms of economy of motion. Now he's better able to get volume through technique instead of brute force. His soloing is not quite what it used to be, but that has more to do with the composistion of his solos than his technique.

     

    Alex is still a strong guitar player. Maybe a little less precise than he once was, but I sometimes like that. I'm not loving all of his studio work on Clockwork Angels though. He's still a world-class performer live.

     

    To say that they are playing "badly" though is just simply untrue.

    • Like 3
  11. For the most part they still put on a solid show. Ged's voice isn't what it once was but he more than makes up for it with his great and still improving bass playing abilities. Al and Neil still sound very good as well. I know I wasn't around for the 70's and 80's tours but I've heard various bootlegs and all of the official live stuff from that time. They've definitely still got it,.
    • Like 1
  12. Can everybody just put Spaghetti Lee on their ingore lists already?

     

    This.

     

    Seriously, do the mods on here actually ever ban people? I haven't read a single thing out of this guy that was even slightly constructive.

    • Like 1
×
×
  • Create New...