Malignant Narcissist

I'm probably skewing things by not having heard all of his albums but Ziggy is the best of the bunch that I have heard. And it's one of Mike Portnoy's fave ever albums so I'm in good company!

Dunno' cos I fookin' luv it. I wonder the same thing. But obviously Rush fans come in all shapes and sizes, preferences-wise.

Brilliant as it is, it's not their best for me. I do like Circumstances and The Trees but they let the side down a bit compared to other albums in that 70s-80s era. I know some see The Trees as a monster track but I didn't like it on 1st listen. Like it a lot now. The kind-of-similar format was done better, imo, on the the title track to AFTK.

Superconductor - a true marmite song if there was ever one according to the feedback on some this forum. Oh, and I thought Neurotica was ok too! Red Tide Countdown Middletown dreams and Grand Designs are my favourites off Power Windows which seems to be at odds with everyone else. Kid Gloves and Afterimage Half the World is ok Armor and Sword, and, Workin' them Angels Peaceable Kingdom and Secret Touch And I prefer Different Strings over Freewill and Entre Nous (although I love the whole album). I know, I know, I should be ostracized for such behaviour!

Difficult one this. UFO circa Strangers in the Night is them at their peak. Mainly due to Rudolf's little brother's brilliance. I like Phil Mogg too although he's not in Dio's league. Scorps have been relatively solid all throughout though Roth-Scorps was good. Jabs-onwards was good, especially around Blackout which is probably my favourite Scorps albums and rivals UFOs best imo. However, UFO seemed to become stale over the years and have been just ok whereas Scorps have kept the quality up generally throughout. So Scorps for longevity. But UFO Schenker era is brilliant.

Woooh! Take a chill pill, it's only music man! You may be overestimating how upset I am about this :)...not that it's not excrement, but it's not that big of a deal, really. It does kind of put the lie to Neil's proclamations regarding the band owing it to their fans to continually strive for excellence, but again, it's ultimately their call, I can choose to buy or not buy anything they put out, they don't owe me anything. “Test for Echo was a strange record in a sense. It doesn’t really have a defined direction. I kind of felt like we were a bit burnt creatively. It was a creative low time for us.” - Geddy Lee Hard to argue with that. Maybe we can blame Geddy exclusively because he's usually the editor of Neil's 1st lyric draft. Who knows how much he "tweaked" Neil's work to be 'singable'. Or maybe it's tough of us to expect a band to keep up the high standards over the years especially when they're mucking about with different styles, equipment and maybe different songwriting approaches. Similarly to what some others have said on this site if my memory isn't failing me.

Woooh! Take a chill pill, it's only music man! You may be overestimating how upset I am about this :)...not that it's not excrement, but it's not that big of a deal, really. It does kind of put the lie to Neil's proclamations regarding the band owing it to their fans to continually strive for excellence, but again, it's ultimately their call, I can choose to buy or not buy anything they put out, they don't owe me anything. I know you're joking about all this to be clear. I was trying to banter 'very lightly' (unsuccessfully) without going down the rabbit hole of 'Hey, I quite like this song!' (which I'm now doing :o) Because then I get the jibes about how I'm not listening clearly to the lyrics like all the other clever Rush fans and I'm just blindly tapping my foot like all the other average pop-n-rock listening fans. :| But do I think a lot, like yourself, are having fun trying to come up with the worst description for songs that you probably just 'don't like that much' rather than 'loathe completely'. (Or maybe you/others do loathe some...) It's obvious the fun is these polls seems to be more about destroying the reputation of some songs rather than promoting some of their (very hidden??) values. Or something.

For most people, it will depend on how the 1st 2 tracks of each Side 2 match up against each other. For me, Circumstances and The Trees don't quite match up to Entre Nous and Different Strings. I had to learn to love the former whereas I loved the latter from the beginning. And they still remain the preferred. La Villa and Nat Science are monster tracks that most people love to varying degrees and over a large statistical sample of Rush fans would probably come out at a similar ranking. Ish. So Perm W for me.

Woooh! Take a chill pill, it's only music man!

The wrong is strong in this post.... Wow, I'm agreeing with you! :o ;) I don't remember having a disagreement with you?..... No disagreement as such, I'm only joking. It's only a few times you've been quite positive in your dislike of the odd tune which I've liked. See hl water's album ranking thread - where very few people seem to agree on all the tracks all of the time.

The wrong is strong in this post.... Wow, I'm agreeing with you! :o ;)

As I have a 2nd hand car that still has a CD player, I can and do still play CDs. I have a usb port that I must try but have never got around to using it. Must try it some time.... But as to what CDs I have in the car:- all sorts and probably too many! I cycle round the favourites of the moment such as the Rush, Van Halen, Tea Party, Black Sabbath etc whatever I'm loving or trying to play on the guitar. But I also like a bargain at the charity shop and have bought a few CDs from artists I've heard about but never really heard - so I've got things from KT Tunstall, Blinkin Park, Green Day, Gerry Mullgan, World Music Variety CD etc etc and I usually have a stack of these bursting out of the parcel shelf or under the passenger seat. Which really annoys the wife when I drive her anywhere (she normally takes the bus to work).

Well, if Geddy, Neil and Alex go from liking Cream, Led Zep, Humbe Pie and the Who and then decide they like Ultravox, Talking Heads, The Police and goodness knows who else in the 80s (probably Duran Duran judging by Alex's haircuts during that time!!), what do you think's going to happen to their music!! It's a miracle it stayed as prog-rock-lite as it did!! And I'm talking as someone who likes all their albums and doesn't bitch about this song or that song being a pile of dung or whatever like some who will remain nameless (probably not for long by some other members!). Surely, they're just having a larf slagging off some of these songs. "Aren't you?!" - pointing the virtual finger at them. "Oh no, we're not! These songs upset our sensibilities to the core!!" Yeah right. C'mon, you're all just treating this as a bit of fun. Surely. And Half the World is not the worst on this album. One person doesn't like and everyone follows them like sheep. It might not be the best but it's def not the worst. Imho.

Probably because it's the best song on the album. :o :no: :finbar: :smash: :moon:

Iron Maiden - The Trooper (well, trying it. The galloping verse part is actually the hardest for me to pull of consistently than the quick hammer-on/pull-offs!) UFO - Only you can rock me Monster Magnet - Crop Circle Manic Street Preachers - Your love alone is not enough and A Passage to Bangkok by some little known Canadian band

Cold fire and Alien shore are the best rockers on here. Animate and Cut to the Chase aren't too bad either. Double Agent has it's moments. Nobody's Hero is a decent lighter song but these get short thrift by Rush fans it seems (see Madrigal, Different Strings etc). Leave that thing alone is a reasonable instrumental but YYZ or La Villa it ain't. The rest are reasonable average songs just behind the rest maybe not out of place on Presto or Roll the Bones but would rate high-up on those albums. But what do I know?! The grumpy gits on here say it's all a pile of ..... but then they've stopped liking anything since the last bar of YYZ!

Yeah they weren't innovative but what they did, they did well. When they settled on their heads-down boogie hard rock n roll, they did it well in the early to mid period. Maybe ploughed that Georgia Satellites/Creedence kind of furrow musically speaking. Bit with a bit of Brit humour and perspective. It wasn't sophisticated per se but they did it well and Francis Rossi seemed a reasonably good lead guitarist. And he, Rick Parfitt and the original Alan Lancaster came up with some good tunes at times and were reasonably good singers. The Live 77 period album is probably highlighting them at their best. Big Fat Mama and Just Take Me are, to me, examples of them at their early high-energy best before the 'hit' period. They had some catchy hits after that but lost their songwriting edge later on and became a bit boring. Not sure what the later albums were like.

See, for me, OU812, was the pinnacle of the Van Hagar period. And I'm focusing on the music rather than the vocals per se. 5150 had it's moments but was tainted by the poppy Why Can't This Be love. (You're right, John Peel, Van Halen imitating Buck Fizz indeed). Then OU812 came along and had some great EVH guitar and riffing. The hard-rocking side of VH was back! Cabo Wabo, Black n blue, AFU, Source of Infection - all hard, dirty VH much like the Roth period. Finish what you started was a little of that VH sound experimentation that we've got to hear over the Roth years and had a good riff. When It's Love was one of their best 'Radio' hits without sounding sell-out. And the seemingly obligatory keyboard foray for Eddie in Mine all Mine sounded mean as well. For me, this was much more like it. Closer to the Roth sounding days of fun, hard-rocking, dirty-brown-sounding VH. 5150 was more polished but still had a bit of grit to it occasionally. But For Unlawful.. was good but was too polished and radio-friendly for me. They were moving more into a mainstream Hagar sound. I liked most of the stuff but it was starting to lose that edge and some of the songs were starting to sound a bit bland. I only have 1 Hagar solo album, I never said goodbye, on LP which I haven't heard for a few years and I remember it being quite good but still safe-sounding mainstream rock. But some odd stuff I've heard from him seemed very AOR at times. So yeah, f**k was ok and Balance wasn't bad either but even more safe sounding. Give me OU812 and 5150 any day (minus Why can't this be love!).

There is a tipping point obviously. I mean, I listen to the lyrics 2nd 'usually', and they make the difference between 2 musically-similar-in-quality songs. But some songs are let down admittedly. In the Mood is one example where the words spoil it for me although I like the music whereas I think I am going bald, for example, is ok because I know it's meant as a bit of joke towards their friend Kim Mitchell. There are many songs that have 'sounds' as part of a chorus or lyric (Prince said something to the effect that the vocals were just an instrument) such as the lazy/typicall 'Uh Uh/ah ah' choruses you can sometimes get. And sometimes they don't bother me and sometimes they do. And I have a friend who said a similar thing about needing to connect with the words in a song before they would like it. So I know people are focusing differently on these aspects. It's just for me, I'm not listening to most Rush songs in that way because even the 'least-best' of Neil's output is better than 99% of the dross out there. And the least-best always sound pretty damn good (in comparison) which allows me to focus on the music, But then again, these polls encourage people to focus on the minutiae of these songs so it's no surprise we have these debates. And that's what _hl_water_ is after, isn't he! ;-)

Surely the lyrics are just the icing on the cake when judging songs. Doesn't the music come 1st? I don't love the music/melody of the 'uh uh' bit in the Between Sun & Moon but I'm not judging the lyric overall. The words or meaning or kind of secondary. Aren't they? I think the frustrating (or fun, depending how you look at it) about these polls is that it's putting a lot of focus on why songs are 'not (as) good' rather than the positive aspects. And those who love a good whinge are just lapping it up....oh, hang on! What am I doing.... :facepalm:

The recent On the Rocks was good. Great lines from him.

Sigh....c'mon guys n gals - unless you think the whole album is a pile of excrement, the songs here are admittedly relatively close in quality but are some of you really sure that Alien Shore is the worst at this point?! It's better than at least 4 and maybe the best left! But what do you you know! :rage:

Why sit on the fence eh? :P

For some reason I read Destroyer which is one of my favourite Kiss albums whereas Dynasty is definitely not. Only know the Bowie album a little bit but the songs I have heard are pretty good. Ziggy's my favourite from Bowie although he's done nearly a million albums and I've only heard a few. Had a passing listen to his later ones and some sound quite good. But some of the other's I've heard are not up to much. Kiss have had their highs and lows too. Dressed to Kill is pretty good as well as Creatures of the Night. But sophisticated they aint. And Bowie wins hands down for integrity. Although Kiss (at Gene Simmons' hand) win hands down for selling out :D at every possible opportunity and being in a decent Scooby Doo film!. I've enjoyed Kiss's best music more than Bowie's best so I'll be the lone wolf cheering them on. Just for a larf. Plus they took a fledgling Rush on tour with them so they get some small kudos for that too.

1979 - Sleep Dirt - Frank Zappa