Bangster of Goats

Bows its head and prays to the mother of ALL the cheese... ALL THE CHEESE!

For me, it's Signals. I prefer analog synthesizers to digital and samplers, and Signals is the peak of analog goodness from Geddy. GUP, PoW, and HYF sound great of course (and those albums still have some analog in them, particularly Taurus pedals: love that Taurus drone on Territories.) but Signals is the one for me. Love the lush sound of Subdivisions and the Minimoog solos on Countdown.

Haha, yeah... it's hands-down one of Rush's worst songs, and the cherry on top is the awful video complete with Ged and Al on the wrong sides of the stage... The one blight on an otherwise great album.

Color of Right and Carve Away the Stone are my favorites from T4E. They redeem the album and atone for the sins of Virtuality and Limbo. ;) Color of Right is one of my favorite sing-along Rush tunes. It almost sounds like a song that would belong on Presto, with its melodic vocals and atmospheric background synths, but with having much bigger sonic balls, heh.

Horrible Wal basses, obviously you know nothing about what makes a good bass guitar and good tone, they are incredible instruments, each one hand built with the best woods and crafted to perfection! It's a shame Geddy has stayed with Fender for so long and has to put his bass through endless effects to get the tone that he desires but most of us think is unnecessarily harsh and brittle! Yup, incredible wood quality aside, Wals have some seriously awesome pickups and electronics. Sooooo versatile. I too wish Geddy would pick them up again... or at least SOMETHING else... I'm a little burned out on the processed, buzzy, Fender sound. But, it's Geddy's choice in the end...

An album of all-new instrumentals? Oh hell yes! Otherwise, meh. Along that note, I wish they would do a film score or two. I remember someone asking them on Rockline (or some other show) years ago about doing film scores and Geddy and Alex were kinda like "hmmm...!" and I could hear the gears grinding in their heads. ;) Just no freaking Michael Bay movies.

I seem to like the songs on T4E that everyone else seems to think is garbage: Color of Right and Carve Away The Stone. My two favorites off that album actually. The title track kinda drags a little, but I like it. The rest of the songs I'm OK with, EXCEPT... Virtuality and Limbo. Limbo is an excellent sleep aid. It just goes on and on and on and never really goes anywhere but in circles. And lyrically, Virtuality sounded outdated and hokey even in 1996. I've always felt that Limbo should have been jettisoned and Virtuality should have been stripped of its lyrics and made the instrumental instead (perhaps with a couple more added sections.) And the production is a step back from Counterparts. It's a bit muddy and fuzzy.

Broon and Collins for the win. I have mixed feelings about everyone else.

MP, PeW and Signals are my top 3, and Presto is a huge sentimental favorite, so no question here...

One of my very favorites, probably #2 or #3, swapping places with Permanent Waves depending on my mood. (MP is #1 obviously.)

A lot of Rupert Hine's productions have that thin, tinny sound. I have some old albums from the FIxx and Saga that were produced by him, and they have that "Presto sound" to them. It's crip and clear and you can hear all the instruments, but dang, just no ballzzzzzz. :)

It's my favorite of the '90s era. Roll The Bones ranks pretty low on my personal chart, and T4E isn't so bad, but it could have used some more editing and tightening-up (Limbo is a great sleep aid.)

Two years on (damn where does the time go) I still think it's a crackin' album. Was listening to it today as a matter of fact. I'm not a fan of the mix and master (the older 'single' versions of Caravan and BU2B sound crisper and clearer... whadya do Nick?) buuutttttt... meh. I try not to let that get to me, but it does fatigue my ears after a while. The one-two-three punch of the title track, the Anarchist, and Carnies still kicks my ass. I'm a little puzzled by some people being a little turned off by BU2B2. It's essentially an "intermission" of sorts, a transitory piece. I kinda wish there were more atmospheric bits like that throughout the album. This is a pretty obscure reference I'm about to make, but Planet P Project's album Pink World (a concept double-album) has a few short atmospheric BU2B2-esque tracks between some of the primary songs that recall previous musical themes and lyrics, and I think it works great.

High Water, Carve Away The Stone, and Out Of The Cradle are great album closers and I love each of those songs. No sarcasm, I'm just kwazy I guess!

I've always had a weird soft spot for this album. It's probably my favorite of the first "era" of Rush that ended with the release of ATWAS. I like Lamneth better than 2112 too as far as epics go. For some time I thought ITIGB was really silly, but it's grown on me in recent years. I think it would be hilarious if Rush dropped that on people in a future live set. I can see them really hamming it up in modern-Rush-humor-style, and let Alex go nuts on the fadeout section. Coincidentally, I first bought the vinyl copy of this album on May 24, 1985. Listening to it that day, when I got to Lakeside Park, I was like "haha, cool..."

And Stupidconductor is just all wrong. Ugh. One of Rush's true stinkers. I think I've said this a billion times, but a guy I knew years ago said Superconductor sounded like a car battery commercial and that's stuck in my mind since then. ;) And the video takes it to the next level of suckage, hell Geddy and Alex are playing on the wrong sides of the stage even! ;) (I otherwise love Presto.)

I was gonna start a thread on this...absolutely my favourite Rush song of the nineties, alongside Carve Away The Stone (another eyebrow raising choice). A pure 10/10 Rush oddity. Carve Away The Stone is my favorite off T4E. I know, I'm crazy.

Clearly, they mark the location of future robot eggs.

I remember that! It struck me at the time how it seemed something weird was up, how they were kinda cagey in talking about the book.

how does this happen? Clearly there must have sessions where they wrote and rehearsed the songs before they recorded them. Geddy didn't realize before the recording process that the key they wrote the songs in was really high? I love the vocals in Hemispheres but they would have to drop the tuning if there was ever a chance of performing any of it live. According to Geddy, Hemispheres (the whole album) was basically written in the studio. They had nothing going in (though it might be fair to assume they probably had some instrumental bits and pieces roughly worked out from sound check jams and such.) So yeah, they work out this awesome 20-minute piece, record it, studio time's ticking away and they've gotta get back out on the road soon and Geddy's now ready to do the vocals and... uh oh! The experience of recording Hemispheres was a turning point for the band in a few different ways. Not only did they decide to chuck the epic-length songs, but they also decided from that point on to slow things down a bit and do more pre-production work before going into the studio proper. ;)

I found my copy a couple days ago and thumbed through it. The pics are still gold, but man, lots of cringeworthy moments in the narrative. Like where he describes how Geddy had a pre-release rough mix of Hold Your Fire on cassette for him to listen to... that was the beginning of the end right there I think. ;) The copyright date is 1988, right after Hold Your Fire, which is when the sh!t went down. Guess he got that book out just in time before he got on the band's bad side. ;)

RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE!! Yeah I have a copy of Visions I bought back in '92 I think. Absolute gold at the time because biographical info on the band was so scarce then. Horribly written though! Could've used a proper editor to eliminate some of the awkward writing and "Look at me, I'm so cool I'm hanging with the band and you're not" tangents.

After some tentative steps in Fly By Night, I do think Rush started finding themselves in earnest on CoS. I, too, like it better than 2112 actually. ITIGB (which I've actually come to like) is the weakest song on the album, but to me it's still stronger than both Tears and Lessons from 2112.

I got the ESL video before the Fly By Night album, and I remember wondering wtf that growling noise was during By-Tor. My first thought it was Geddy doing it on his bass since there were a couple quick shots of him playing while the growl was especially evident, but soon I realized he was playing a real bassline aside from the growl. Then I figured it was something taped playing through the sound system (which was correct) since it couldn't possibly be Alex or Geddy going it live. Later on, I got Fly By Night and heard the growl there, and I just figured it was some crazy Alex overdub stuff and didn't really think much more of it for many years. But then later on I read it was Geddy playing a highly effected bass after all, so my first impression all those years ago turned out to be on the right track. ;)

Someone needs to tell those other two guys that they need to let Alex lay out like that on their next album dammit!