Apollo

Live, there is just more energy to the music, although ESL is an exception to that and possibly the worst live album ever recorded. Thankfully there is the St. Louis 1980 bootleg that is infinitely better than ESL, if only it was the complete show. Although strangely I am preferring Clockwork Angels studio to live, I think the orchestra is too high in the live mix but then I also thought that was the case at the second CA live show I saw so at least the live record is accurate.

I don't think it has to do with digital as it did the formats of the time. In ye olden days, you only had records and cassettes. A double LP or a cassette could only hold 90-95 minutes so I think that is why live releases were typically in the 80-90 minute range, whereas your typical show would be around 2 hours or a little over. I don't know why live videos from the '80s never had the full show, I would guess that home video was relatively new at that time and the industry was scared that people wouldn't go to concerts anymore if they could watch the whole show at home.

Shocked that has not set off a firestorm of comment!! I was being polite :D I met gangsterfurious in Salt Lake City for half a second and she didn't seem insane but looks can be deceiving I guess :P I think Clockwork Angels is easily the best thing they've done since Power Windows and HYF is probably my least favorite Rush album. All IMO, to quote the lead singer of Napalm Death "If everyone had the same views, life would be boring." Back to the topic, I don't think Rush will top CA but then I was surprised it was as good as it was so I would love to be wrong. If CA ends up being their last release, I think it is a great way to go out.

I thought of that but all the audio snobs say that the line in and A/D converters on built in motherboard sound cards suck. I really don't want to invest $250+ for a good record player especially after spending $110 on the one I have now so I compromised and ordered a new sound card, one that also has the digital in I have wanted forever so I can make perfect audio copies of some of my old laserdisc concerts that have never come out on DVD. Unfortunately none of this helps my playing of Clockwork Angels, I will have to see if any of my friends have another record player to try.

Audio Technica model AT-LP60USB. I hate to tell you this but there is no point in pulling punches. That turntable is little more than a cheap plastic toy. It's barely capable of playing any record correctly and you should change it for something suitable for the task sooner rather than later. I'm not telling you this to upset you, but because your fledgling adventure with vinyl is in danger of being derailed because of it. Look at buying a second hand Rega or Music Hall deck, or a vintage Pioneer or Technics in good order. Then you will actually understand why vinyl is worth persevering with :) Unfortunately I am learning more and more that you are right. I got this player to digitize my LP collection and hear for myself what people say about LPs sounding better than CDs. Like many others, I am disgusted at the loudness war of the last 10-15 years. This Audio Technica player has no volume control and for some crazy reason doesn't use the preamp when using the USB connection so all my recordings are super low and have to be artificially amplified. Even with that I can tell there is better sound in some ways but yea, this player is not the greatest.

Thanks for the recommendations everyone! Unfortunately none of them seem to work. I cleaned the record and it still skipped. I tried a penny and then a nickel on the stylus and the skip keeps happening. Should I try anything heavier or is a nickel pushing it? I guess I will have to take it back to the store again, this really must be a bad batch since it has happened on two different copies and in the exact same place. Any other ideas, I really would like to have this great album on vinyl, this whole thing is very frustrating.

Vinyl was my first exposure to this show, it was a double LP set called Xanadu. My first Rush bootleg and my first bootleg of any group. I thought I had all the Rush albums and was at a party and saw this LP in the host's collection and wondered what the heck it was. Fantastic recording and it turned me into the live music junkie and concert collecting nerd I am today. So yes I preordered this from Amazon UK.

Me too about the liking it so much I saw it three times. This tour will always be my favorite because it was my first. I had listened to Rush for about 15 years before this but had never got around to seeing them and when I heard about the Evening with format and a full 2112 I knew I had to make the time to see them and it was well worth it. Highlights were the full 2112 and Natural Science and I thought The Trees was well done here too. Lowlights were Half the World and Nobody's Hero, a huge pee break song. I have boots of all the shows I went to but unfortunately they all sound terrible, at least they made Different Stages. The Albany video boot is pretty good as I recall, haven't watched it in years.

Audio Technica model AT-LP60USB. I exchanged the LP yesterday for a different new copy and have the exact same symptoms. I had a skip in Caravan and Clockwork Angels at the exact same places. Just like the first copy, I cleaned the record and the skip in Caravan is gone but the one in Clockwork Angels is still there, at exactly the same place it was in my first copy. This seems extremely bizarre, I have played probably a dozen other records on this player with no issues.

Has anyone else had a defective copy? The first time I played this record, I had a skip during Caravan. I have cleaned the record to the point where there is no dust or anything on it and it looks perfect. But I get a skip now during the title track (song 3 of side 1) where that didn't skip before. It is driving me crazy, I just got a record player and have only maybe played maybe 20 records on it, could I have a stylus problem? How quick do they wear out?

I was around when P/G came out and didn't like it then, still don't care for it much now. Between the Wheels is the only really good song off of it IMO. I did like the tour video but only because it had a good version of Vital Signs and an outstanding version of The Weapon. I still can't figure out why they haven't played this song live since 1984. And I am not an '80s hater, I love Power Windows and consider it one of their all time best albums.

It was a tale of two cities for me. The crowd was fantastic at the show I went to in Seattle with the crowd loving every song and being very into it. Salt Lake City was a different story as there was a lot of sitting down for the CA material and people just didn't seem into it at all. But then Salt Lake City crowds are generally poor for any event, I have observed over the years (with the exceptions of course of the nice people I met at the SLC meetup ). Perhaps not coincidentally, the above exactly describes my experience of seeing Dead Can Dance in Seattle and Salt Lake City.

I have not watched the complete show, watched a couple of the Power Windows songs along with all the CA songs and didn't hear any crackle. I did however get angry at getting the B set twice and not the A set the two times I saw this tour as Seven Cities of Gold was awesome!

I am mad about that, it's going to make this a lot harder to rip the audio from. As for the blu ray itself, I agree with pretty much everything from Lieutenant Dan's review. Geddy's voice is definitely at or a little past its limits, but the setlist, performance, beautiful picture, everything else make this definitely my favorite Rush live release since the '80s. I am not a huge audiophile but am enough of one to properly hook up the lossless surround sound for blurays. I went back and forth a little bit between the DTS-HD and DD2.0 mixes and the DTS-HD sounded much better, the 2.0 just sounded thin. The sound was not as good as Gilmour's Remember That Night, which for me is the gold standard of blu-ray concert releases for sound.

I've been wondering that, too. I haven't seen Thing One about it, and I'm starting to worry that maybe there won't be one. You can rip audio off of a DVD or blu ray pretty easily, you should just get that and make your own CD. As a bonus, you can mix in the bonus tracks however you want.

A thousand times this. Most of my life has been lived in very backwater areas that were around 200 miles from the nearest place big enough for shows to go to and so I never heard of most shows coming within 200 miles of me at all. Thanks to the internet, I have been making up for this lack of shows in my youth ever since, although my wife wishes I would slow down already :D

I hope not, they were too high in the mix in the recent Salt Lake City show. I think there is a place for them live, but it must be carefully balanced to a degree that might not be possible in a concert setting.

I think the '90s was terrible for Rush, there are a few good songs from that period but the overall good/bad percentage was poor in that timeframe. Recently, I agree with others that I hate Geddy's vocal layering. I really liked CA but hated the parts in the title track and the Anarchist where there was some kind of strange effect to make it sound like he was singing from far away. It resulted in me not able to hardly understand what he was saying and I had to look in the lyric sheet. Terrible idea!

Yeah, Maiden is still relevant, releasing new music and still kicking ass with the original band. Really? The only true original member is Steve Harris. Dave Murray would be next closest followed by Adrian Smith. Dickinson wasn't the singer on the the first two albums. Have you heard the original "Iron Maiden" album, or "Killers"? I call close enough, Maiden has the complete lineup from their glory years (1983+) and Gers and they do still put on a good show. Although a lot of people seemed to hate it, The Final Frontier really grew on me and I think it's easily their best album since 7th Son.

I just got home last night from the show, was visiting relatives in the vicinity while I was down there. I was disappointed in the crowd, the show was sold out but my section (103) seemed pretty dead for most of the second half of the show. Seemed like there was a lot of people just there for The Spirit of Radio and Tom Sawyer.

[spoiler ALERT although there are only 3 shows left] This probably explains why there aren't any Vapor Trails songs in the current setlist.

To play devil's advocate, as I get older I have really begun to hate arena shows and vastly prefer small club/theater shows now. Parking hassles, ridiculous ticket prices and the impossibility of getting anywhere close without paying an even more ridiculous price, outrageous merchandise/beer prices, etc. really hamper my enjoyment of arena shows to the point that Rush and Iron Maiden are the only big shows I will go to anymore. As arena shows go, Rush is definitely the cream of the crop as there are no openers and even with their IMO lame intro/outro videos, you are still getting 2.5 hours of music which is more than most everyone else and with the lighting, effects, and videos, you can see where your money is going. I think Springsteen plays for about the same length but most groups only play a 90-120 minute set as J2112YYZ said.

I would go so far as to say decades. Almost two of them, I think CA is their best album since Power Windows, which is why I am really enjoying this tour.

Great pics from the '81 shows, there is a pretty good bootleg of the 3-24-81 Toronto show out there that is worth tracking down. Also does anyone who saw the Hemispheres tour remember if there was any kind of video backdrop footage for the Hemispheres tour, I have always wondered that but I wasn't able to see it but it was before I had ever heard of Rush.

I only experienced live Rush via DVDs and bootlegs until 1996 when I finally started making up for lost time and saw them 3 times on the T4E tour. DVDs do not compare to the live experience and especially if you like CA, you should absolutely make the effort to see this tour. I saw a first leg show in Seattle and it was the best Rush show I have ever seen except for my first show ever on the T4E tour which was a religious experience. The tickets were expensive but they definitely left it all on the screen, as the movie people say. I will admit I was souring on Rush after the Time Machine tour which I thought was mostly a cash grab and before that I also hated S&A but I love CA and am looking forward to show #10 in Salt Lake City in a few weeks.