Apollo

Thanks for mentioning that, for some reason it didn't occur to me I should book a hotel pronto, even if tickets fall through I can always cancel later. Remember that everyone, book hotels now!

S&A's music was weak and the lyrics were repetitive as many others have said. It is my least favorite Rush album ever, I listened to it maybe 3 or 4 times and see no need to listen to it ever again. CA was not perfect but had a lot of really good songs. I don't think the overall concept worked very well but CA's good songs (about 70% of the album for me) IMO are the best they've done in 20 years.

Also check out the Manchester June 1977 show, By-Tor segueing to the Necromancer was really cool and I don't know why they never did it again. But back to the thread, ATWAS is still one of my all time favorite live albums, it really captures the energy of the show. I listened to some of ESL last week and was reminded why I rarely listen to it, it just sounds way too clean and I don't know what they were thinking doing fadeouts of crowd noise between the songs. I wouldn't call ESL clean,i'd call it murky and muffled like some ones stuffed a pillow over the recording mike.I had a bootleg from the same era that literally lept through the speaker ,especially on Natural Science. As for the fade outs it was a done thing on live lps at the time.Ted Nugents Double Live Gonzo suffered from it.It was mistake as ruins the live expierence.I think if they did that with ATWAS if would have been sacrilege You're right, clean is probably the wrong word for ESL, I meant how there was basically zero crowd noise but is recorded poorly as well. I really wish ESL had been recorded like the St. Louis 1980 bootleg which is outstanding and has tons of energy. ftr I knew what you meant, ESL has too much tampering and not enough fixing. I hate the way the VHS copy has Neil talking in between songs and they cut to weird images.. and no drum solo :( No drum solo? Where can I get my hands on this??? Mine is like that too, but it's on DVD. I bought my VHS at Woolco in the 80's. If I still had it I'd probably send it to you Len. Actually I wouldn't mind watching it again because over the years I've realized that the sound quality on VHS with a 4 head player is actually pretty good imo. Eaglemoon we got ripped off on that DVD! There's more than enough room for the drum solo on that disc! You guys, I think the DVD and VHS (and laserdisc) are identical, they all had Neil talking in between songs and no version has a drum solo. I found the talking annoying personally, but it was how concert videos were done in the early '80s, at least it's not near as bad on ESL as it is on Genesis' Three Sides Live.

Also check out the Manchester June 1977 show, By-Tor segueing to the Necromancer was really cool and I don't know why they never did it again. But back to the thread, ATWAS is still one of my all time favorite live albums, it really captures the energy of the show. I listened to some of ESL last week and was reminded why I rarely listen to it, it just sounds way too clean and I don't know what they were thinking doing fadeouts of crowd noise between the songs. I wouldn't call ESL clean,i'd call it murky and muffled like some ones stuffed a pillow over the recording mike.I had a bootleg from the same era that literally lept through the speaker ,especially on Natural Science. As for the fade outs it was a done thing on live lps at the time.Ted Nugents Double Live Gonzo suffered from it.It was mistake as ruins the live expierence.I think if they did that with ATWAS if would have been sacrilege You're right, clean is probably the wrong word for ESL, I meant how there was basically zero crowd noise but is recorded poorly as well. I really wish ESL had been recorded like the St. Louis 1980 bootleg which is outstanding and has tons of energy.

Also check out the Manchester June 1977 show, By-Tor segueing to the Necromancer was really cool and I don't know why they never did it again. But back to the thread, ATWAS is still one of my all time favorite live albums, it really captures the energy of the show. I listened to some of ESL last week and was reminded why I rarely listen to it, it just sounds way too clean and I don't know what they were thinking doing fadeouts of crowd noise between the songs.

I think this is a flawed question, the USA is so large that crowds in it vary widely. For instance, Salt Lake City crowds suck but Seattle crowds are good. And those are just differences in a corner of the USA. Vegas was good too but I saw them in Vegas before they started playing in the casinos, and casino crowds are generally regarded as lame.

Neil has Twitter? Wow. And I thought he was nothing more than a washed-up, fan hating son of a bitch who refuses to play old songs, drink cheap scotch or ride to the next show with his bandmates. You forgot "writes overlong boring blog posts and books yet thinks he is a real writer." If you're going to bash Neil, do it right! :P

I wouldn't say "given," my last few Rush concert tickets have been rather expensive :D As to the thread question, a new younger singer will never happen. I do agree that Ged's voice is getting worse, I can't imagine them even doing two more tours. And while I'm complaining, they should drop the intro/outro videos, they haven't been funny or entertaining in any way since Jerry Stiller was in them. Leave comedy to the professionals!

If those prices are real, it might finally be time to move back to the cheap seats. $150 is my limit for anyone and there are very few groups I would go that high for.

I think the original I agree wtih almost all of this, I like a lot of the songs on Vapor Trails but the original mix was terrible. The remix is terrible in different ways, it seems like a lot of the energy of the songs was stripped out. So to answer the question I would say no, the remix was not worth it. Why does Rush have such problems getting good sound in the last 20 years? I'm still mad about the horrible mixing of Rush in Rio and the CA tour, which both had setlists I loved but atrocious sound.

Totally agree that the sound mixing is terrible, and this is from someone who saw the tour twice and loved it.

Are we able to pre-order all of these records? Amazon has most of them available for pre-order now at $30 each, ATWAS and ESL are $10 extra.

A couple of people were complaining about only getting mp3 downloads and not lossless downloads, according to RIAB these new vinyls will come with download cards for both mp3s and various high res audio formats as well. I would imagine it would work like Clockwork Angels did where you could download whichever format you want. IMO the hi res download tracks of CA sounded better than the CD and the vinyl.

I think you're right about the cash grab part. Seeing the Lock and Key video as part of the bonus disc really irritates me. They obviously have had that footage all along and it should have been integrated back into the ASOH DVD when the Replay DVD set came out. I would even rebuy Rio by itself on blu-ray but I already have all the other blu-rays in this set and I'm certainly not buying a whole set for one disc.

I am fine with the big production budget, effects, etc. but the full fledged intro/outro/intermission videos need to go. The only good ones they ever did were with Jerry Stiller back for R30. That was 10 years ago now so the percentage of good videos is really not good at all. It's also not a coincidence that Jerry Stiller is an actual comedy professional. Rush should stick with what they're good at!

Interesting, I hadn't heard that. I hated S&A, loved Gilmour's later Pink Floyd work but did not care for his newest album much which came out around the time S&A did. I would advise everyone in this thread to check out the Remember That Night bluray though. Sonic perfection and the ladies can see Gilmour in full HD! If he goes on tour again, I need to go!

Say no more!

Ladies, I am writing a book with a female lead character and was wondering if any of you who like men 10+ years older than you could elaborate a little as to why. My timeline is character gets married at 20 to her male professor who is 10 years older than her. They get divorced ten years later when her husband starts feeling old and wants to get with 20 year old women again. I guess i can see a student/teacher relationship starting but I would guess most of you who prefer older men probably didn't start this way. What does a woman get out of the older man deal?

If a person was born after A Farewell to Kings and Star Wars came out, I don't think they're old enough to have any idea what they are talking about. :D So I guess I would tolerate a range of 6-7 years, fortunately my wife is 2 years older than me so it's not a problem.

I would like to see it go but agree with others that it never will.

If you have a blu ray player, why did you get the DVD?

I like Double Agent too but hated the way they did it live, where the non-chorus parts were a backing tape. Sounded weird and I think they shouldn't have done the song at all if that's how they were going to do it.

I don't know if this has anything to do with my past problems but I played a brand new record once since my last post and it was fine. When I play it again now my needle is skipping like crazy during any blank sound part (like at the beginning and end of a side or in between songs). Is my needle dead, what the heck is going on? Vinyl seems to be even more of a hassle than I remember in the good old days.

The classic Manchester bootleg from June '77 has the By-Tor/Necromancer medley, it is awesome and I don't know why they never did it again.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the ancient rumor that Geddy's brother/cousin/some relative has a soundboard boot of the Toronto show discussed here with Fountain in it but this has never been confirmed by anyone. I believe the witnesses that maybe parts of it were played in their rare at the time headlining show but I can't imagine they ever played the whole thing if they didn't even play all of 2112 when they toured for that. Cool to hear from people that were there!