andrew28

I got the Fan Pack, so I had already paid for it ahead of time. I got the leaked version a day or two before the Fan Pack arrived.

Mine also has a poster with about a million names on it (including mine!). The one slight bummer is that my name is split onto two lines (my first name is the last word on one line and my last name is the first word on the following line). I'll be happy to sign copies for anyone out there who's interested.

QUOTE (Jomboni @ Jun 7 2012, 11:09 AM) Ok, I'll bite. I love the album, but it's not perfect. If these were fixed, it'd be a top 5 album for me: 1. There are notes that Geddy is just not hitting on the album. Not a lot, but they are there and they are noticeable (Seven Cities of Gold???). I wish he had come up with melodies that were more in his range. If he can't hit a note with multiple studio takes he's not going to hit it live. Also, how did the high pitched backing vocals in Wish Them Well make it past Neil, Alex, Nick and Rich and not get cut out? 2. A few awkward transitions in songs (coming out of the "blues" part in the title track, the weird 4 bar "honky tonk" part right before the last chorus in Carnies, coming out of the intro to Seven Cities.) There are a couple others but those are the ones that come immediately to mind. 3. Replace Wish Them Well with an instrumental! I agree with you on the transitions. There are some great verses, bridges and choruses, but often they come from out of nowhere and don't really match the rest of the song. For example, I love the intro to CA and I love the first verse, but it seems like it could have used a better transition. Then at around 1:30 it goes into a very heavy section, which IMHO screws up the song and comes from out of nowhere. Carnies is another example. The beginning of the song is very early Rush (brings to mind "Working Man"). I don't particularly love it, but then the chorus comes in and it's fantastic - but doesn't really match. It's as if they jammed and had all these great parts, and sort of botched the arrangements. It's still Rush and it's still better than 99% of what's out there, so I'm pleased overall.

The more I listen the more it occurs to me that I don't really love any one song from start to finish. There are some great sections, choruses and bridges, but a lot of the song are disjointed. Some of themtransitions are weak or nonexistent, too. I love the intro to CA, but the rest of the song disappoints. I love the chorus of Carnies, but it doesn't go with the rest of the song. Love the chorus of wreckers, but again, the rest of the song - meh.

My wife went to the Book Expo in NYC yesterday and got me a preview of the novelization of Clockwork Angels. She rules. http://i1264.photobucket.com/albums/jj483/drewpaul74/CA.jpg

Part of me wishes they hadn't released Caravan and BU2B early. They fit nicely into the context of the whole album, but I tend to skip over them when I listen because I want to get to the new stuff.

QUOTE (Snaked @ May 5 2012, 08:13 AM) If you choose to send an item to a venue here are a few rules to follow. 1. Send it far enough in advance to make sure it arrives before the day of the show, but not too far in advance that it gets tossed in a pile at the venue and forgotten about. 2. Be willing to lose whatever you send to the venue. There is no guarantee it will be returned to you, signed or not. 3. Don't send anything of significant value (re: rule 2) 4. A brief note is cool but don't write a chapter. 5. Remember, it's a crapshoot. You might win, you might lose. 6. Read rule #2 a few more times before you send off your item. and finally. 7. Don't forget to include your return address!!!! edit: I forgot to add that a SASE with proper postage is a realllly good idea. I would add to this, that you address it to Liam Birt, tour manager. That way the person in the mail room at the arena may think that it's actually something important (not to imply that your COS Gatefold LP isn't important). I've done it three times. The first, I got nothing back (sent an R30 Tour Book). The 2nd time I got the S&A CD booklet you see in my profile. The 3rd time I sent 2112 (with a silver sharpie) and Signals (with instructions to make it out to my brother). They did everything perfectly and even returned the silver sharpie. That's why they rule.

Pardon me if I missed this amid the 50 or so pages in this string, but do you think that the spoken word section in the middle that talks about "....I'd do it all over again..." are Freddy Grubers? In the press release, Neil attributes that line to Freddy (who said it when he was reminiscing among friends and former students). It would be cool if that gathering of folks had been recorded/documented and Neil added it to the song to honor Freddy. Just a thought. I'm sure some here will disprove it some how ("I isolated the spoken word part and ran it through a filter, then played it in reverse, increased it to 353 mhz and then re-reversed and I can say with 98.0889% certainty that the voice is none other than Terry Brown.")

QUOTE (danielmclark @ Mar 29 2012, 11:00 AM) Talk about fantasy land, I think it's ridiculous to think that it takes a full year and an untold large sum of money to record a freakin' album. If bands want to be full time musicians, then be full time musicians. When they were young and hungry, Rush put out 8 studio albums and 2 live albums in seven years, and they are widely regarded as the best work of their career. Who has that kind of work ethic these days? And I don't mean the old timers who have earned the right to go a few years between releases and put on massive tours, I'm talking about the up-and-comers. The acts that have only put out an album or two and then wait 4 years to put out another. "We were hard at work!" - no, you weren't! Not for four fking years, you weren't. It should take a month to record an album. Maybe two if you're having trouble with it. I hear a lot "we put out an album, went on tour for 10 months, then had to spend 6 months writing..." what, you can't write on the road? Seems to me, that used to be the norm. As for costing a ton of money - really? The band already has their instruments, so not counting the cost there, you can record an album for under $20,000, and that's being loose with your money. Technology the way it is now, you don't need to spend $50,000 an hour getting into the best studio in the world. With a little more work (there's that word again) you can put a kick-ass album out on a shoestring budget. I don't have a lot of sympathy for anyone that makes a boatload of money, and even less for people who make a boatload of money playing music. I have a lot of respect for people that can be that creative, but when you're making music your job, you should treat it like a job. While we all love Rush and put them on a higher pedestal, they are just like most bands, in that they realize that the money is in touring, not music sales. I don't have the numbers, but I would venture to guess that 20 years ago bands made half their money from album sales/contracts with record companies and half from touring/merchandise sales. These days, I would think that it's probably an 20/80 split. Granted, Rush does still produces new music, however, it's just not worth it for them to put out an album every six months or a year, when they can just tour and make more money. Also, when Rush (and other bands) was releasing an album album every year, they were still proving themselves to their audiences. Now, they don't have to. The number of fans they would gain from a new release is minimal at best. This isn't a knock on the boys, it's just the way things are.

What a cool guy. Aside from being a Rush fan who went out of his way to say they belong in the HOF, he was incredibly nice to that tool of a fan.

I'd say RTB or Counterparts, only because I've always had a hard time differentiating between the two. They're both ok/good albums, but neither one really stands out and songs from each album could easily fit on the other without really making much of a difference.

I was there. We were in the back on Geddy's side, not great seats, but just happy to be there. If I remember correctly, it was right after John Entwistle died and they dedicated "Between Sun & Moon" to him.

This may be stating the obvious, but I think it really depends on the song. I think he sounds amazing on "Presto" where he's not required to go falsetto on high notes. On songs like "Marathon" he does struggle a bit.

QUOTE (kevorkazito @ Nov 10 2011, 06:37 PM) This thread gave me some "off-topic" deja-vu about walking a dog and meeting someone famous... I was walking my parents dog about 7 years ago and this dude walks up to me and asks what kind of dog it was. I told him I didn't know and then he mentioned a breed and I said "that's it". Then, I look at the guy and I recognize him... I say to him, "are you an actor?" He said "yes, we are filming a couple of blocks from here...". We trade pleasantries and part ways... curious? It was the guy who played the NBC president who fell in love with Elaine on Seinfeld. But meeting Geddy, that would be great. I think he's the coolest of the triumvirate when it comes to interfacing with the public/fans. That would be Bob Balaban. He's in a lot of Christopher Guest's films.

Jealous. I ordered mine online from BestBuy two weeks ago and it won't be here till next week. When I've pre-ordered stuff in the past, it would typically arrive on the release date, or at worst the day after. I hate Best Buy.

Young Black Teenagers sampled Tom Sawer in 1992 on the song "Time To Make the Dough Nutz."

I love that it alternates odd time signatures throughout the chorus. I think it goes back and forth between 7/8 and 5/8. Every time I listen to it, I count along (yes, I'm a nerd).

I went to Emerson College in Boston and she was a professor there. I never had the pleasure of being in one of her classes, but my friends who did spoke highly of her.

Very well done. Kudos to you.

QUOTE (RUSHHEAD666 @ Jul 7 2010, 07:28 PM) As a matter of fact, since this is a "Time Machine" Tour I was hoping Neil would have left his electronic kit at home. I was hoping he would have used a setup similar to his MP setup (with all the chimes and bells and crotales, etc.)

I wear them all the time now at shows, and like others have said in this post, they actually make the shows sound better. IMO, they seem to filter out a lot of that low-end muddiness that seems to plague so many live shows.

QUOTE (LeaveMyThingAlone @ Jun 10 2010, 11:42 AM) QUOTE (lonelymoon @ Jun 9 2010, 07:36 PM) On another level, it's hard to believe that this is the same band that wrote YYZ, or Freewill, or Spirit of Radio. It is nowhere near that level of composition and production and any honest person with a pair of ears can tell you that. I still find it perplexing that these guys would not sit down in the studio and say, "okay, we have all the money we need. we are just doing this for the love of the music and we can afford all the studio time in the world. Let's take our time and make something really good for our fans. Let's make sure these songs have great production, arrangements, a blistering guitar solo, great hook riff, hummable vocable melody. Let's top Tom Sawyer or Closer To The Heart, because after all we have 30 years more experience at writing rock songs and enough money to take our time and develop and revise ideas." (S n A was 3 years ago.) Instead this stuff sounds like a cut and paste jam although yes, flashes of the old glory are evident... but I think they are just too rich now to care enough anymore. Alex writes a riff in a hurry and emails it Geddy so he doesn't miss his tee off time on the golf course. That sort of thing. Maybe the lesson is that rich jaded people don't have much left to say. Alex is trying to hard to be super-heavy. He is still in the throes of a midlife crisis and doesn't want to be like Eric Clapton playing the geriatric-shuffle version of Layla. It's like he's telling us, "forget my bald spot: I crank a heavier, more badass riff than I did in '76 on 2112. He needs to give his head a shake. I would put this into the "you just can't please all the Rush fans" category. There have been many threads and topics brought up regarding studio time in the past. You say the band needs to spend more money and time on what they're recording and make something really good for the fans. Well, the songs you mention like YYZ and CTTH were done when Rush might spend a couple months in the studio and were popping out albums to the tune of one a year. They weren't overthinking. They just went in and jammed them out A lot of Rush fans complained that the band has lost their spontenaity (sp?), and now spends too much time in the studio trying to make it just right. Weren't they in the studio like 9 months for Snakes? And a year for Vapor Trails? Calling Caravan and Bu2B a cut and paste job is just...I dont get it. I think these songs are so good and Caravan, in particular, gives old school Rush fans what they've been craving for so long. It's weird, wacky, progressive fun..you call the solo sloppy, but Alex is as concise and good as they get....this solo has a very funky sound intentionally. As I said, reading through this thread, they will just never be able to please everyone. I think because they released these two songs by themselves (instead of as part of an entire album) they are being viewed under a microscope. I'm sure if they had released Tom Sawyer and Vital Signs a year before Moving Pictures came out, they would have receive a lot more scrutiny (not that I'm saying Caravan and BU2B are equivalent to TS and VS).

Initial thoughts: The opening riff of BU2B reminds me of "Don't Care" from Alex's Victor project. LOVE the sound of Neil's hi-hat in the opening of Caravan. So crisp and clean. I know it's a minor thing, but as a drummer, it's the first thing that struck me.