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It was one year ago today that this got posted. Cool!

Not too long after S&A CD was released, they put out a 5.1 DVD of the album and it included the 'making of' piece. The 5.1 mix is wild, and the documentary is is really good. http://www.amazon.com/Snakes-Arrows-Rush/dp/B000OPOANE

One of the most insightful things I've read on this board in a long time. +1 increase in armor class! Kudos Coventry for pointing this out. Glad I didn't miss this one. Well said by both of you..... Good heavens, who is saying that the old school fans don't matter? I haven't seen anyone say anything like that. I've seen people say that old school fans aren't automatically RIGHT about everything Rush-related, but that's definitely not the same thing as saying they don't matter. Old school fans certainly matter, but they don't have any greater standing to pass judgment on any of Rush's works than newer fans. And newer fans definitely matter, because as much as "older fans kept the band alive as a viable artistic and entertainment commodity into the contemporary period" (whatever that means), newer fans have also kept the band alive as a viable artistic and entertainment commodity blah blah blah. This is one of the most irrelevant statements I've ever seen about any real or imagined idiotic and pointless rivalries between old school fans and newer fans. Especially since these days it's the great swaths of casual fans that populate the vast lesser sections of the arenas on the tours that are keeping the band commercially viable just as much as it is committed fans arguing about stupid unprovable matters of personal taste and opinion. When you go to parties, do you make a lot of friends? Or do you typically just play with the host's dog and/or cat? I apologize for introducing "one of the most irrelevant statements" that you have ever read about a "real or imagined idiotic and pointless" topic. Next time I will do a better job of toeing the party line. Please just forward the memo on that when you get a second. You know what is so great about this post? I can answer it directly. I met GeddysMullet twice. Once when my van was broken down in an Exxon gas station parking lot an hour before an S&A concert was supposed to start, and another at a tailgate party before the Time Machine tour. She might have also been at the bar before the S&A show at MSG, but I got a bit loopy and can't remember all of who was there. Anyway, she's fun as hell, her and her husband are extremely nice and about as friendly and outgoing as they come. So yeah, she makes a lot of friends. :) TRF people have been known to hang out on occasion. It's cool, you should try it. :cheers: For what it's worth, I believe both 'old' fans and 'new' fans each bring the band solid reasons for their longevity. I'm sure the band is happy for both.

It did okay. 164/173. The one's I knew I'd miss are: The Enemy Within The Body Electric Limbo I know the songs, but always draw a blank when I try to think of what they are called. The others I missed because I just ran out of time. Too many distractions while I was going through it.

Here is the full mapping of songs/times/events/sounds/sources. You may have to enlarge the screen a bit to see it well. I hope this is cool. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v502/paganoman/MegaMedleyProject-SoundMapping_zpsc6faa4ba.jpg

If I could afford this it would have been pre-ordered before I responded to this post. This looks incredible. My best wishes to the fortunate 5K.

54 times... damn!! :cheers:

Plus "that's nice" from Chain Lightning I was searching for this list of mine last night but could not find it. I think I lost the file in a hard drive crash I had last year. But I created a mapping of all time stamps per song with every sound effect I used for transitions between songs and little 'events' like you just mentioned. I really wish I had that file, because you would love where I took many of the sounds from. If I can find it I'll post, or perhaps I'll just create it all over again. btw... your (and everyone) interest in this makes me feel great. thank you!!

Here's the track listing of what's featured: Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres: A Farewell To Things 2112: Overture 2112: The Temples Of Syrinx La Villa Strangiato 2112 - Interlude I Bastille Day Necromancer: Into The Darkness Excerpt Xanadu Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres: Prelude Cinderella Man Vital Signs Bytor And The Snowdog Before And After 2112 - Interlude II A Farewell To Kings Red Barchetta The Fountain Of Lamneth: In The Valley The Fountain Of Lamneth: No One At The Bridge Here Again The Camera Eye The Analog Kid YYZ Cygnus X-I Natural Science 2112: Grand Finale

Thank you all so much! :cheers:

Goober won't like it no matter what. Even if he did soften up towards it, he'd never admit it. He's got too much invested into hating it. Any being that visits the Moon will know that man once walked it. Layers of rock millions of years old tell us of what the land was like in measures of geological time. Once the human race is gone, we'll only be known for plastic as it never biodegrades. And Goober will be remembered for hating Vapor Trails. It's that significant to him.

Had to go to my daughter's middle school about a month ago for a meeting. I'm in the parking lot and walking past this Jaguar. The guy had his windows down and on his radio is playing the ESL version of Bangkok. I walked past but had to turn around and give him props. I said "Excuse me. Major Rush fan here. That's awesome." He just laughed and said "cool". We're forever bonded now. Cosmically even.

Okay, so… This takes me back to when I was about 6 or 7 years old to a memory that makes me laugh every time I talk about it. My Mother’s cousins Madeline and Rollie and their son would come out from Brooklyn to visit us every now and then, and usually spend the weekend. When they would stay, the kids would line up our sleeping bags downstairs in the living room while the grownups slept upstairs. My family has its share of people who are funny as hell, and Rollie was one of the funniest. The man has a natural way of being hilarious and being a practical joker. If I remember correctly, I recall him telling a true story where he was actually a hostage in an armed robbery years and years ago, and during the ordeal he kept the guy(s) with the gun laughing. "I like you", I think the guy told him. So yeah, Rollie is a very funny man. He also is a very early riser. So on this one morning in 197something, Rollie wakes up my 2 sisters, myself, and his son Tommy. It had to be around 4:30 AM and still dark outside. He tells us to grab our musical instruments and follow him upstairs. Apparently he had the idea of setting up a band in the upstairs hallway and wake everyone up while we played. So my sister grabs her flute, and my other sister grabbed a tambourine or something. I think Tommy had a trumpet of some sort, I can’t remember. But I had one of those kid-sized toy drum sets and Rollie thought it was a great idea to bring them up too. He asked if I was going to be able to carry them up the steps, and being the big strong kid I was I told him yes! So the others head on up the stairs in front of me with their hand-held instruments, and I start dragging this drum set up the stairs. It occurred to me by the second step that to a kid my age toy drums are big and heavy, and there were 11 more steps to go. But I toughed it out, and one step at a time got them all the way to the last step before the top. Then they slipped out of my hands. The drums rolled down the entire staircase, crashing left and right against the side walls. The noise was unbelievable. The banging and the thudding and the loud cymbal crashing… it seemed endless. Finally they landed on the tiled hallway floor with a sound louder than anything else. I remember all of us being silent as the drums dropped down the stairs. Or maybe they were yelling the entire time and it was drowned out by the sound of all the crashing. I’m not sure. But then all the bedroom doors flew open and my parents, my grandmother, and Madeline came running out in total horror. I wish there was a way to describe the looks of sheer terror on their faces, and the screaming. OMG the screaming. They must have thought someone died. There was complete panic in their faces along with their disheveled hair. Except for my grandmother's. Her hair never moved. The image is forever burned into my brain, and it has to be the funniest memory I have. If Rollie’s plan was to jolt everyone awake, it worked. But I think he got so much more than he imagined.

The last chorus of Show Don't Tell always rocked me up, big time. Throughout the song each chorus is played differently, with the last one having Alex play fully open and kicking ass. I love Alex's progression during this song, and Neil's killer fills to close it out.

I love this kind of stuff. I'm grabbing my original releases from the basement this morning to check out Signals and MP. :cheers:

Can someone describe to me how the HD tracks sound in comparison to the original CD? I'd love to hear a sample. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m87_oxc1vj0 Okay... I want 'em.

Can someone describe to me how the HD tracks sound in comparison to the original CD? I'd love to hear a sample.

This is exactly what I was going to list when I read the thread title.

Very moved, and brought back many memories of when I lost my mother. I wish you and your family the best.

I've been listening to VT for years without the headache or the ear-ringing, and less the mid-level white noise mess that plagues the original release. It was a homemade remaster which greatly reduced the amount of clipping and thundering wall of noise, and allowed the listener to actually hear the music. With this new remix, we may be getting a new level of clarity and detail. But we also need to be prepared to get a set of songs that will have a completely different sonic feel. All of those personal favorite moments of emotion, kick, punch, or other nuances tied to the original mix could be to be taken away. The Retrospective 3 remixes did just that, and they are terrible. I'm trying to find excitement in this remix release, but I'm just not there. Personally, I was hoping to have everything I love about the original mix to be kept intact and still be able to experience a cleaned up sound. That will more than likely not be the case. I hope I'm blown away and proven to be worried for no reason. Perhaps David Bottrill latched on to the original core of sound and the output stays true to what VT has meant to me for all these years. Time will tell, I guess. What did you think of the HD Tracks remasters? You know... I'm old and out of touch. I had no idea what HD Tracks was until today. Are they good? I'd like to check them out, but have not yet.

I've been listening to VT for years without the headache or the ear-ringing, and less the mid-level white noise mess that plagues the original release. It was a homemade remaster which greatly reduced the amount of clipping and thundering wall of noise, and allowed the listener to actually hear the music. With this new remix, we may be getting a new level of clarity and detail. But we also need to be prepared to get a set of songs that will have a completely different sonic feel. All of those personal favorite moments of emotion, kick, punch, or other nuances tied to the original mix could be to be taken away. The Retrospective 3 remixes did just that, and they are terrible. I'm trying to find excitement in this remix release, but I'm just not there. Personally, I was hoping to have everything I love about the original mix to be kept intact and still be able to experience a cleaned up sound. That will more than likely not be the case. I hope I'm blown away and proven to be worried for no reason. Perhaps David Bottrill latched on to the original core of sound and the output stays true to what VT has meant to me for all these years. Time will tell, I guess. I have to guess that Bottrill was brought in because the band thought the Chycki remixes sounded just how you described -- they lost that angry sonic energy of the originals. If they were happy with the way Chycki approached those remixes they probably would have let him finish the album. If the Bottrill remixes clean up the sound without losing the angst, we'll look back on all this and think, it was smart the way they did it -- remix two of the songs, clean them up and make them pristine, and let them sink in for a while before committing to remixing the whole album. And, of course, get some proper feedback from us. ;) That said, I thought the Chycki "OLV" remix was pretty good, but the "Earthshine" one lost its balls. I think I've got my negativity about the remix out of my system. I need to focus on the possibilities of what it may sound like. May it be awesome. :haz:

The article says remixing: "The band had recently been overseeing a remixed version of our Vapor Trails album, from 2002, as we had never been happy with how it turned out. I found that trying to listen to those songs again was too upsetting, taking me back to a mindset and emotional state that hadn’t been good to live through then, or to relive now. I had to “recuse” myself from those judgments, and the Guys at Work understood, of course." They might just be at the Mastering portion of the project. Agreed. It looks as if they were remixing the album, not just remastering it. I'm not excited about that at all. In my opinion, the Retro 3 remixes SUCK! The feel, the punch, the emotive power, and the raw edginess was totally changed on both OLV and ES. I dread imagining what that same treatment would do to the remaining songs on the album. The original mix of the album kicks ass, and should not be touched. I've said this many times before around these parts that it has already been proven a remastering of the original mix can be done successfully. A remastering was done in someone's basement years ago, and the songs sounded so much better without having to touch the mix. I would like to think a professional engineer with all the latest professional equipment at their fingertips would be able to remaster VT brilliantly. This entire remix idea will never make sense to me if the entire album will be like the Retro 3 failures. Well, in that case, there's always the new iTunes remaster, which I think sounds amazing. So now we'll have the original remastered properly, PLUS an entire new remix. Pick the one you like best! I don't have iTunes. Why couldn't that be packaged and sold on CD?

I've been listening to VT for years without the headache or the ear-ringing, and less the mid-level white noise mess that plagues the original release. It was a homemade remaster which greatly reduced the amount of clipping and thundering wall of noise, and allowed the listener to actually hear the music. With this new remix, we may be getting a new level of clarity and detail. But we also need to be prepared to get a set of songs that will have a completely different sonic feel. All of those personal favorite moments of emotion, kick, punch, or other nuances tied to the original mix could be to be taken away. The Retrospective 3 remixes did just that, and they are terrible. I'm trying to find excitement in this remix release, but I'm just not there. Personally, I was hoping to have everything I love about the original mix to be kept intact and still be able to experience a cleaned up sound. That will more than likely not be the case. I hope I'm blown away and proven to be worried for no reason. Perhaps David Bottrill latched on to the original core of sound and the output stays true to what VT has meant to me for all these years. Time will tell, I guess.