Weatherman

I'm gonna disagree with virtually everyone on this board. PW is bottom 5 for me. THE REASON It's the sequencer. I don't know what godawful thing Ged was programming, but it hurts my ears. It makes Grand Designs almost unlistenable. Manhattan Project (a great song) sounds like it was recorded on a children's Casio keyboard. Several parts in Marathon make me wince. Middletown Dreams, Emotion Detector -- ugh. If they'd rerecorded the synths, I'd probably like it more. THE GOOD STUFF I love the way Alex is always trying to break his way through the synths. He's like a kid trying a bunch of things during a party to get attention. Ged ripping on the Wal bass rocks. Neil is brilliant, but that's like saying water is wet. It's really just the synths. Bottom 5 for me.

Agreed! I enjoy it. It's got a strong late 90s vibe, which is okay with me. It reminds me of Roland Orzabal's solo album, Tomcats Screaming Outside, or Emiliana Torrini's first album. Alex feels absent. That honestly coulda been any guitarist. Even me lol.

It's not a great album, but it's a great final album. The only one who did a swan song better was Bowie. Blackstar is amaaaazing.

Here's another pair: O: Closer to the Heart It was nice the first few times I heard it, age 16. And it's fun to play the opening riff fingerstyle on steel-string acoustic. Do I like the song? Meh. Not really, certainly not for repeated listening. You can tell the band were sick of playing it live, e.g. Alex's bizarre rants in the middle. U: The Weapon Neil's astounding drum pattern. Neil's incredible lyrics. Alex's amazing arpeggio. Ged's perfect synths. I even like the synth wash/guitar solo, especially when it kicks in at 4:56. We even get a little bass solo in the fadeout, to remind you that Geddy is in fact holding a bass guitar too. It's brilliant. For me, it's top 5 in their entire catalog, unfortunately buried and forgotten at this point. (U2 has a song like that too: So Cruel. Absolutely gut-wrenching and brilliant, written 30 years ago, forgotten within a year and never performed live.)

Would NOT like to leap and spin in the air with a guitar on my shoulder. Good way to mess up your knees!

I love this BUT Every time I watch a new Alex interview in the last two years, it feels like going to a wake.

Cuz it's a cheap form of songwriting. My younger cousin is a bassist, and when I told him that I never really cared for the RHCP because of Anthony Kiedis' so-called "vocals", he brought up the exact same complaint. "Yeah, all Kiedis does is double the guitar or bass with his mouth." Counterpoint makes good songwriting, and it's harder to build that when two or three members of a group are copying each other's parts. Or, in Geddy's case, when he's copying himself lol. I can't think of any other examples from their discography like that. On the bright side, I do really like Geddy and Neil's parts in the first 4 measures of the Freewill instrumental bridge. Can we just isolate those parts? LOL

Didn't somebody on this forum start to catalog his opinion of EVERY SINGLE RUSH SONG? With a long entry for each one?

O: Freewill Vocal melody doubling the bass melody in alternating 6/8 and 7/8 time sig. Completely spastic flurry of 16th notes in the solo. Blech. U: Lock and Key Probably their catchiest chorus, and really interesting instrumentation (for them). It should've been a bigger hit. About the song, Neil said, "[i play] a solo while Geddy and Alex keep time behind me. That's fantastic, a beautiful exchange of roles: a drum solo in the terms of a guitar solo, where the rest of the band supports, Geddy and Alex playing the actual rhythmic pulse. It allows us to try out a new suit, to take on a new interrelationship between us." http://www.2112.net/powerwindows/transcripts/19880800rhythm.htm

Should we make a list?

It's funny -- musical power trios rarely last long. Even when popular, they have short lifespans. Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, Nirvana, Sublime, etc, etc etc. More than I can name. Either one dies, or they split up for better gigs, or sometimes they add members (as Rush was tempted to do). The exceptions: Green Day, Primus, and of course Rush. They all clocked 30+ years. Muse is almost there too. Don't forget Budgie! And ZZ Top! Right! Good catch. My third favorite power trio! And I never got to see them play live... My second favorite is John Mayer Trio, but they barely play together, which supports my theory about trios. My favorite trio were these three smart guys from Toronto. Can't remember their group name. ;-) I just remembered that Green Day now tours with additional musicians, so they can't be called a trio anymore, not live.

Well, it looks like Sue Saad lasted 6 more years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Saad_and_the_Next

Definitely YYZ. The opening "ding-dingdingdingdingding" sounds just like Beaker.

This. Same reason why he loved writing books so much too. He basically loved designing things in private. Not improvising, not "swinging", not "finding the pocket" onstage for a killer groove with Ged. Just composing his ideas in private. That's all he really wanted to do.

...and when he learnt to 'swing' through the Freddy Gruber thing his drumming and Rush's music suffered. Yeah, isn't there a story when they all reconvened after his lessons and tried to play together (maybe in the TFE sessions) but couldn't? Alex said, "I don't know what you're doing anymore," or something like that. Personal note: I'm a novelist and writer, and sometimes the reviews of my books will directly contradict one another. It's like Goldilocks and the Three Bears: literally "This book moved too slow" vs "This book moved too fast". In short, there is no satisfying everybody, so might as well just satisfy yourself, then see who likes it. Which is EXACTLY how Rush did it.

Complaining that Neil lacked swing is like finishing a brilliant mystery novel and complaining it lacked romance. An artist cannot be all things to all people.

It's funny -- musical trios rarely last long. Even when popular, they have short lifespans. Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, Nirvana, Sublime, etc, etc etc. More than I can name. Usually they break up, or sometimes add members (as Rush was tempted to do). The exceptions: Green Day, Primus, and of course Rush. They all clocked 30+ years. Muse is almost there too. You missed the longest lasting trio of all, ZZ Top. Formed in 1969 and the original 3 guys lasted together until the death of Dusty Hill this year. And now it's most likely Zebra. Same 3 guys since 75. Next I think would be U2. U2 is a quartet.

It's funny -- musical power trios rarely last long. Even when popular, they have short lifespans. Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, Nirvana, Sublime, etc, etc etc. More than I can name. Either one dies, or they split up for better gigs, or sometimes they add members (as Rush was tempted to do). The exceptions: Green Day, Primus, and of course Rush. They all clocked 30+ years. Muse is almost there too.

Dunno, but the BEST opener was definitely Eric Johnson on the RTB tour. I paid full money to see him play three more times in the years that followed.

Well, it IS an "overture". The guys were halfway into classical territory when they named it.

Impossible to see how Alex would've played the backwards solo on Chain Lightning live. Even more impossible is the idea of 2010s-era Geddy hitting those high notes in Available Light.

I heard that album too. It's called 2113, and it features a naked man hiding in dark cave on a planet in the far recesses of the Solar Federation. He's burning a guitar to stay warm. Then the priests of the temple of syrinx land in a spaceship, cuff him, and escort him to prison. After many years in solitary confinement, he dies. But he kept his individuality, so it was all worth it, you know? ;-)

SO MANY 40th anniversaries. We're only on ESL, folks. Just wait for Signals 40th... I hope they do something huge with it. BTW despite being a huge Rushhead I've never seen the ESL video. I'm waiting, so that I have something to look forward to...

It's my favorite of all their live recordings. This is when they sounded their best. Who was Andrew?

You can hear the grunge influence on them post RTB. My theory: After Nirvana exploded, Alex didn't want to be the last guitarist left at the lunch table still using single-coil. He went too far the other way, and that my children is how the beer coaster known as the Vapor Trails CD came to be made.