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rftag

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About rftag

  • Birthday 05/05/1969

Member Information

  • Location
    NYC
  • Interests
    Scuba diving, travel, science, philosophy, wildlife, skepticism, belief systems, consciousness
  • Gender
    Male

Music Fandom

  • Number of Rush Concerts Attended
    9
  • Last Rush Concert Attended
    R40, Portland, OR, July 21, 2015
  • Favorite Rush Song
    Natural Science
  • Favorite Rush Album
    Permanent Waves
  • Best Rush Experience
    Seeing Rush live
  • Other Favorite Bands
    The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath (Ozzy era), Ween
  • Musical Instruments You Play
    Guitar, keyboards
  1. rftag

    CA

    I think it was their best album since Signals. I don't think it's a great album but it was very ambitious and a great accomplishment for the band at that stage of their career. In retrospect (which seems really obvious now but wasn't at the time) there were a lot of hints in the album that they suspected it could be their last. Lyrically there's definitely a lot of swan song signalling.
  2. rftag

    Live Overdubs??

    Not sure how much activity is on this site these days, and considering the last post to this thread was about 8.5 years ago I doubt anyone will read it, but figured I'd respond anyway since this is a topic there is a lot of misinformation about (perhaps it would be more sympathetically described as "romanticization"). There are a lot of persistent myths about Rush, most of which seem intended to foster an idealized image of the band. One of them is the idea that they either never did any studio overdubbing on their live albums or only did a teeny weeny bit. This is absolutely false. They did a lot of studio work on their live albums, and put in a LOT of studio time on ESL in particular. Martin Popoff talks about this in his recent Rush biographical trilogy. The crowd sounds are enhanced and edited as well.
  3. Vital Signs is definitely not heavy metal. Nothing on Moving Pictures is heavy metal.
  4. If you look at advertisements for Rush albums from the 70s, they were explicitly marketed as heavy metal, and referred to as heavy metal in reviews. Like a lot of bands of their age, they have been strangely inconsistent so far as they described themselves. Until around Moving Pictures, the members of the band described themselves as heavy metal almost exclusively. But after that, it would vary. In Martin Popoff's new book (Driven: Rush in the 90s and In The End), Geddy gets into this and at one point says something to the effect of "We're not prog, we're not metal; if I had to say what category we are, we're a hard rock band" (that's an almost verbatim quote). Of course at another point, speaking from around 2004, he describes the band as "progressive metal", and indeed the book describes them as such in the intro. The problem here is that exactly what is considered metal has changed. A band has to be quite metal today in order to be considered heavy metal. But that wasn't always the case. On top of that, Rush's sound mellowed considerably over the years. In the 70s, at least through 2112, they were by contemporary standards not only metal but very metal. 2112 is very heavy for 1976. From Signals until Roll The Bones, they weren't even hard rock. There's a really interesting early interview from early in Rush's first US tour in '74, in Texas, in which Neil at one point says something like "Yeah, Sabbath is heavy like us but they are slow and plodding and we're high energy" or some such. Early Kiss and Queen, in my opinion, were metal. At least a lot of the tracks. Certainly for the time anyway. The early Aerosmith songs "Nobody's Fault" and "Round and Round" would be considered metal even by today's standards (if you aren't familiar with them check them out on YouTube - heavy shit). That said, I don't think any of the bands listed, including Rush, are heavy metal bands, but all have metal songs, and some were uncontroversially classified as metal in the 70s. Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple were considered heavy metal at one point also and so were Thin Lizzy. These days not so much. Black Sabbath still are but many of them are now just considered hard rock and that isn't just my opinion either. Some early Rush could be considered proto metal these days but that's as close at they get. The later stuff is heavy but considering what's out there now it's definitely not metal. If grunge and much nu metal isn't really considered true metal then there's not way Rush is either. I don't really disagree with you. I think we obsess too much on genre. There's similar debates about what is or isn't "rock" or "blues" or "punk" etc. Nobody debates whether or not Judas Priest is metal or not, but there's lots of Judas Priest songs that aren't metal. I think "metal" should be thought of more as a style or sound that can be applied to songs rather than bands. Hell, some of Greta Van Fleet's songs are arguably metal.
  5. They’re taking Wofmother along for this reason I think. Yes, Wolfmother is opening. I have no idea who is in Wolfmother these days or what kind of music they're playing. They've had a lot of rotating members and style changes. At the height of their popularity they were sort of aping early 70s style Black Sabbath and dressing in Vietnam War era clothing. They had some good songs but the whole 1972 costume party thing was distracting.
  6. I had tickets to see this in June, but it just got postponed once again to August.
  7. If you look at advertisements for Rush albums from the 70s, they were explicitly marketed as heavy metal, and referred to as heavy metal in reviews. Like a lot of bands of their age, they have been strangely inconsistent so far as they described themselves. Until around Moving Pictures, the members of the band described themselves as heavy metal almost exclusively. But after that, it would vary. In Martin Popoff's new book (Driven: Rush in the 90s and In The End), Geddy gets into this and at one point says something to the effect of "We're not prog, we're not metal; if I had to say what category we are, we're a hard rock band" (that's an almost verbatim quote). Of course at another point, speaking from around 2004, he describes the band as "progressive metal", and indeed the book describes them as such in the intro. The problem here is that exactly what is considered metal has changed. A band has to be quite metal today in order to be considered heavy metal. But that wasn't always the case. On top of that, Rush's sound mellowed considerably over the years. In the 70s, at least through 2112, they were by contemporary standards not only metal but very metal. 2112 is very heavy for 1976. From Signals until Roll The Bones, they weren't even hard rock. There's a really interesting early interview from early in Rush's first US tour in '74, in Texas, in which Neil at one point says something like "Yeah, Sabbath is heavy like us but they are slow and plodding and we're high energy" or some such. Early Kiss and Queen, in my opinion, were metal. At least a lot of the tracks. Certainly for the time anyway. The early Aerosmith songs "Nobody's Fault" and "Round and Round" would be considered metal even by today's standards (if you aren't familiar with them check them out on YouTube - heavy shit). That said, I don't think any of the bands listed, including Rush, are heavy metal bands, but all have metal songs, and some were uncontroversially classified as metal in the 70s.
  8. Words fail. So sorry to see you go Neil.
  9. rftag

    Permanent Waves

    PeW is my favorite Rush album as well, but I actually think the one skip-over track on the album is "Different Strings". Not a horrible song but in the context of PeW in my opinion it's filler. It's noteworthy for being perhaps the only song Geddy wrote the lyrics for (I'm not aware of another but perhaps he wrote some lyrics for the debut album?).
  10. So there's this new movie coming out, one night only, some time in August, which appears to be about the R40 tour but with commentary by Rush rock star fans and supposedly some nowhere else to be seen stuff, etc. I have to admit, I'm probably going to see it in the theater, because it's the next best thing to a Rush concert we are ever likely to see again. But, as much as I love Rush, I kinda feel like a tool doing it, because it's such an obvious cow milking cash grab. Thoughts?
  11. Ida Mae was the opening act at my show also. Husband and wife from the UK.
  12. My feint hope is that Geddy and Alex will indeed do something together at some point with a supporting tour, and do some Rush songs as part of it. Hopefully any new material they might produce will itself be worth the price of admission. That is the closest we will ever get to seeing 'Rush' again. But I don't consider it something likely to happen. I'm just glad they're enjoying their retirement and finding new ways to occupy themselves which they seem to be delighted with. Good for them.
  13. No, I'm with you on this, They are awesome. I've bought tickets to another show. And Josh is great on stage. He has a great stage presence and seems like a really cool guy; you forget about the cheesy attire real quick. Still, I hope the wardrobe mistakes go away at some point. Soon, The other band members don't dress that way BTW.
  14. Yeah. I have said the same thing elsewhere on this forum. It's the only thing I HATE about the band. It's like he's dressed up for a late 60's themed costume party.
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