Relayer2112

How about Jethro Tull's "Teacher" or "A New Day Yesterday"?

I would have liked to hear an early to mid 80's version of Rush attempt a cover of The Police's "Message in a Bottle" or "Spirits in the Material World".  I know those are a little later on your 60/70s timeline, but they were clearly influenced by this stuff when some would say Rush was at their peak.

On 5/9/2025 at 7:51 PM, ytserush said:

That was a bit like being on tour with them. Must have seen about 75 percent of the gigs that way.

Yeah...spoiled the surprise of the set list for me but I didn't care.  I believe they had three setlists that tour and, luckily, we got the setlist I was rooting for in Philly (the one with Natural Science).

10 hours ago, Leanne said:

I was at that Tulsa show and it was amazing!

It was...just imagine that it was the first time they played "Jacob's Ladder" live

I love both of these guys but, ultimately, Steve wins out because he was much more than a blues player.

16 hours ago, GabesCavesOfIce said:

Wow 10 years from the opening R40 show.

 

Biggest news is will JR return to report if he ever got those clothes stains cleaned from the mess at Tulsa 

That was certainly a fun Spring and Summer.  Each night was an adventure trying to find the best periscope feed to catch a glimpse of the show.

15 hours ago, lerxt1990 said:

Troubled life and one of the numerous kid stars that let us in on the fact that theirs lives were not all great :(

Back then, plenty of child actors were used and then completely discarded by the studios once they hit puberty.  Bobby Driscoll of Disney's "Treasure Island" fame is one of the saddest stories.  

I'm not a huge fan of anything of Rush's after "Test for Echo" and, to be honest, I don't even really care for that album all that much.  For me, Neil's lyrics got a little too "introspective" when they returned for "Vapor Trails" and that continued until the end.  Not surprisingly, and who could blame him?  I just don't think it did their music any favors.

That being said...I'll leave off anything they did after TFE as I find all that stuff mostly sub-par.

They were young and dumb..."Need Some Love".

Worst lyrics overall..."Dog Years"

Worst chorus..."Neurotica" (This song has a nice riff and could have been great).

What were they thinking?..."I Think I'm Going Bald".

Lyrics are too personal..."Tai Shan" (Musically...I don't think this song is that bad).

Bad production..."Face Up" (This song has plenty of energy but, to me, the production makes it come across as bland).

Phoning it in..."You Bet Your Life" and "Everyday Glory".

Bad lyrics in general..."Virtuality" and "Totem".

Jeremy Lin

It has a couple moments here and there but I find it mostly uninspiring.  That's based on one listen.

Van Halen...hands down.  "Fair Warning" was as raunchy as they would ever get.  I like AC/DC a bit but I find their music a little too simple.

I think the problem between Pete and the baseball "powers that be" was the changing of his story over the years.  I think if he had come clean from the get-go, then baseball may have forgiven him as he got older.

I'm guessing Sharon Osbourne is their manager.

I'd get Barenaked Ladies.

I love 90125, but if I was forced to rank Yes albums, I think I'd need to rank the "Trevor" albums as a separate entity.  90125 would certainly be ranked at the top of the "Trevor" albums (the rest aren't even close).

90125 has a magic to it that lasts from beginning to end.  I don't think there is a weak track on it.

Listening to this album never fails to immediately transport me back to my American Legion baseball picnic in the Summer of 1984 when I was 18.  That must have been the day when I realized that this collection of songs was pretty darn special. 

That Yes lineup, unfortunately, was never able to capture this magic again.

I always wondered what the purpose was for some of the changes to "Natural Science" that they made to the live version (did they start playing this again on the T4E tour?).  Geddy sings the lyric prior to "Hyperspace" a second time and, I believe, they skip the 2nd guitar solo.  I assume skipping the guitar solo was simply to make the song shorter, but never understood the repeated lyrics.

I voted for the same player Alex would vote for...Jimmy.

I think from a funny perspective, the Scorpions original "Lovedrive" artwork (which was banned in the US) is one of my favorites.  The Scorpions had a knack for offensive album covers there for a while, I'm sure they inspired Spinal Tap's fictitious "Smell the Glove" cover.

Have any of you seen the Hipgnosis documentary on Netflix?  Although I don't miss vinyl, I miss the days of real album cover art.

17 hours ago, Weatherman said:

Interesting. I went the opposite here. 

I discovered them as songwriters: my classically-trained professional pianist cousin gave me MP and said "study these guys, they're amazing". 

So I learned to play guitar by learning Alex's parts. I never idolized them

UNTIL

My first concert, Roll the Bones tour. Alex was flipping incredible. I remember watching his fingers on Spirit of Radio and going "ohhhh he's better live than in the studio, shiittttt". Then they became larger than life and pretty much stayed that way, in my mind. 

If you want to hear how human Alex is, listen to the following...I don't mean this to put Alex or anyone else down.  What I idolize about Alex (Ged, John and Neil also) is that he took his desire to play and would not be denied.  Years of struggling, knowing that there were players out there who were better than him, yet still becoming a rock god to many.  His greatest talent was/is playing the right notes at the right time to make a song meaningful and memorable.  He always did just what each song needed...no more, no less.

I'll go back to what Charlie Watts famously said which paraphrased was "25 years in a rock n' roll band equates to 5 years of playing and 20 years of hanging around".  Needless to say, the members of Rush had a lot of free time on their hands over the years.  I think it's hard to witness what your peers are doing and not try different things just out of plain boredom.  Given that, it's not surprising that Geddy's book delves a bit into the hard drugs that were being used by both band and crew.  Was I overly surprised about the amount of drugs being used...only to the extent that they had to know that it affected their performances negatively.  

I'm just glad that Geddy's book spared us all the tales of womanizing that went hand-in-hand with the drug use.

21 hours ago, chemistry1973 said:

Interesting. I found the Popoff books extremely detailed regarding the band’s processes in the studio. I’d call those books pretty definitive if you wanted to learn more about Rush’s creative approaches.

 

I used to think Popoff was a dopey hanger-on. But those three Rush books are excellent. 
 

Now ALEX needs to write a book.

They do have more detail than Geddy's book, which is why I was disappointed.  The detail those books provide is more about technical details such as the production and engineering.  I know that those tasks are extremely important to the end product.  I'm just more interested in the inspiration behind the bass line or riff or drum pattern that was the seed.

I think the only thing I get out of Geddy's book regarding this is that he and Alex evidently wrote a lot of their earlier songs on acoustic guitars and that "Making Memories" was written in the back of a station wagon.  How Geddy remembers that, but can't remember that they had played "Jacob's Ladder" in concert prior to R40, I'll never know.  

17 hours ago, Rush Didact said:

 

As far as I know, contemporary interviews and tour books are the only places Neil ever discussed the recording of studio albums.  He rarely mentions them in his books and wasn't given to reminiscing later on...

I guess that makes sense...there probably isn't any of us who want to rehash our work lives for 30+ years.  That's probably why there isn't a whole lot of detail about it.  Clearly they struggled at times in the studio and the songs we hear are not the result of divine intervention, but of painstaking trial and error, not to mention the long hours.  I wouldn't want to revisit that either.

2 hours ago, Rush Didact said:

 

How are those books?  Particularly the second two?  After listening to the guys on the Something for Nothing podcast interview him, it really put me off buying them.  The guy hates everything from Signals through Test for Echo.  It really made me question how he could write an objective history of the band, given that he has no interest in half their albums.  (And especially because the albums he hates are the ones I love the most.)

I enjoyed them quite a bit and flew through each of them.  Again, a little disappointed in the details about the music creation process in the Popoff books and was hoping that Geddy's book would fill in the gaps, but it does not.

I would guess that many memories of the writing/recording of their earlier albums are simply lost to time.  Not sure if Terry Brown has any books about his time with Rush or not. 

I've always enjoyed reading Neil's tour program notes in which he described the atmosphere of their recording sessions, especially those at Le Studio.  I don't know if any of Neil's books provide any more detail.

14 hours ago, goose said:

I get what you're saying, and it wore thin after a while.  That said, the early chapters are great.

Agreed...I enjoyed the early chapters much more as they tended to focus on the importance of the music and what drove him to become the musician he ended up being.  His writing about his parents was very poignant also.

I think I enjoyed Martin Popoff's books better.