Apollo

I would say go for it if you have the opportunity. I have met a few celebs whose music/projects I like (Joel Hodgson of MST3K, Bobby Blitz of Overkill, Sascha and Lucia of KMFDM) and all of these experiences were very positive, I got to talk to each of them for several minutes and they all seemed like great people who really care about their fans. The key is that all of these artists were willing to stay after their concerts/shows and meet fans and genuinely (at least as far as I could tell) enjoyed the whole experience. I think they must since staying after shows and meeting people isn't something they are required to do, many groups don't. This is why I wouldn't want to meet Neil, but I think a meet and greet with Alex and Geddy would be OK but probably too short to get any real impression of what they are like, either good or bad. I would do it if I could though.

QUOTE (H82LUZ @ Jul 10 2012, 03:03 PM) If you were around in the eighties trying to find RUSH and FLY and Steel was a freaking nightmare,When I went to Nashville ,Memphis I found them on cassette in a $3 bin in a Gas Station When I had the first three I was a true RUSH fan in Grade 10.....CD was another story of a pain in the ass to find them....... I didn't have a hard time finding the older albums in the '80s, I remember finding the 3 record set of Archives in a record store new for $15. Really wish I wouldn't have traded that in for CDs...

QUOTE (Amy Farrah Fowler @ Aug 29 2012, 09:16 AM) CONSOL Energy Center c/o RUSH 1001 Fifth Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15219 I think I will chance sending my Caress of Steel LP to try this out. So would I send it to this address exactly or add a line that would say Attn: Liam Burt at the bottom of the above? I think I will try this, hopefully I will get it back even though I live nowhere near Pittsburgh, although in my defense they aren't coming within 500 miles of me on this tour.

QUOTE (shail @ Aug 20 2012, 03:31 PM) nothing new here. he improved the solo last tour also. he might get rid of the big band crap this time around. it's going to be more of the same every single night. he doesn't have much vocabulary at all. he will play the same drum ostinato in three. boom chick chick boom chick chick. same tambourine trigger. the drum solo is the perfect time to get a beer and take a pee. Agreed, I wish they would play another song or two instead of having the drum solo. It wore out its welcome long ago.

QUOTE (tas7 @ Aug 7 2012, 05:43 PM) QUOTE (Apollo @ Aug 8 2012, 08:57 AM) QUOTE (tas7 @ Aug 6 2012, 07:14 PM) I have asked this question for years, is there any extra footage from the early live concerts?Now that we're into DVD and Blu Ray surely there must be extra footage from the ESL, Grace Under Pressure and ASOH that could be added a la How the West was Won by Led Zeppelin. I would guess not seeing as how they didn't even bother restoring Lock and Key to the A Show of Hands DVD when it finally came out. While it's not my favorite song, it was outrageous to leave it out since the footage obviously existed. It was a laserdisc exclusive song back when ASoH came out. That has been the most frustrating thing about RUSH, the marketing people over the years have done, at times a bad job of promoting them. In the UK GUP, Power Windows and HYF were all released with next to no promotion. When you think of bands who put out remasters and re-releases, they have added all sorts of extra material to keep old fans interested and to attract new ones. But not so Rush.With the early live releases they must have recorded the whole concert???? As an earlier poster said they had extracts from different concerts on that particular tour and must have the whole soundtracks for the video/DVD versions. For example I always preferred the soundtrack on the video of ESL to the CD although I've not heard the recent Sectors remaster. I agree with you about ESL, ESL was a terrible audio release but the video is good and boots from the era like the St. Louis 1980 radio show are really good. ESL is the worst live release I have ever heard, I think Rush admitted all the energy of the show had been sucked out of it when ASoH came out and they said that they wanted it to be a balance of ATWAS and ESL.

QUOTE (tas7 @ Aug 6 2012, 07:14 PM) I have asked this question for years, is there any extra footage from the early live concerts?Now that we're into DVD and Blu Ray surely there must be extra footage from the ESL, Grace Under Pressure and ASOH that could be added a la How the West was Won by Led Zeppelin. I would guess not seeing as how they didn't even bother restoring Lock and Key to the A Show of Hands DVD when it finally came out. While it's not my favorite song, it was outrageous to leave it out since the footage obviously existed. It was a laserdisc exclusive song back when ASoH came out.

Don't be afraid of going by yourself, I went by myself to the T4E tour back in '97 in Vancouver and loved it, no distractions between you and the music. Also had to go by myself to Iron Maiden last week since nobody would go with me and had a good time there too. As for the 450 miles, I am pondering that battle too and could still go either way on it. I really wish someone could discover the 2013 list to see if there's something closer.

I would really like to know about the 2013 leg too, I was surprised and really liked CA and want to see this tour. But I am also lazy and don't want to have to travel a long way to see it if they are going to come closer to me next year.

Got to go with ATWAS although I would have picked RiR if it didn't sound like crap. GuP also has some great performances on it (especially The Weapon which I cannot understand why they don't play it again) but it's not my favorite era of the band. I always prefer a rawer sounding live album and this was a great one. 2112 on this I think is still the best sounding 2112, although it would have been even better if they would have played the whole thing.

QUOTE (Workaholic Man @ Jul 25 2012, 06:08 PM) QUOTE (Apollo @ Jul 25 2012, 12:48 PM) I always bring a point and shoot camera with me to all concerts and have never gotten hassled about it. Do you walk right through the gate with it in your hand, or do you stash it somewhere? I usually have it in my front pocket underneath my wallet. I am going back to just taking pictures this year and no videos though, as Aikenrooster says you lose some of the atmosphere of the event when you are constantly trying to record video of it. I recorded almost the whole TM show I saw but doing so subtracted from the event itself.

I always bring a point and shoot camera with me to all concerts and have never gotten hassled about it.

QUOTE (HowItIs @ Jul 16 2012, 02:39 AM) QUOTE (Bastille Night @ Jul 15 2012, 06:06 PM) I took a two week hiatus on CA, and am just listening to it again tonight. The Wreckers holds up for me, and I think it will hold up for a long time. Sorry that it doesn't work for you dude! More and more I'm feeling sorry for the cynical folk that can't appreciate this material! Call me a sap, but I'm loving this shit!!! Touche'! Well, some people just aren't happy unless they are tearing something down. Just wish them well and move along

QUOTE (sitboaf @ Jul 18 2012, 12:04 PM) Is any mainstream band making epics anymore? Maybe what Iron Maiden has been doing for the past 12 years is as close as we'll get. No, there aren't any more 13-minute "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"s being recorded, but I'd say a 70-minute album of dense, heavy, 8-minute prog songs is the 21st century replacement for a Tales From Topographic Oceans. And that's pretty much what Rush is doing now, too. I agree with you mostly but The Final Frontier sounds a lot more progressive to me than CA. TFF's songs can be broken up into sections like a proper epic should, usually a pretty quiet 2-3 minute intro then rocking out the rest of the way while CA is the wall of sound many complain about, I think TFF was better produced and mastered as well. It took several listens for me to get into The Final Frontier and I absolutely love it now. I will say I like CA and think it's the best thing Rush has done in I'm not sure how long. I like a lot of the individual songs in CA and they are extremely catchy, they stay stuck in my head for a couple of days after whenever I listen to it but the overall concept doesn't work for me that well. And I give Rush lots of credit for never really selling out unlike Genesis. The day I bought Invisible Touch and first listened to it was an incredibly sad day.

"Industry professionals" are hardly a guarantee of quality. In the days of old, I would record LPs onto tapes to listen to and there was a record volume knob and accompanying LEDs on the tape deck so you could make sure the sound would be audible but not distorted by being recorded too loud. "Industry professionals" have been raising this knob for 12 years and ruining a lot of music. I had a better handle on recording volume when I was 11 than the engineers who now turn that knob to 11.

Freeze is great, hope they play it this tour.

I can see both sides of this, there is no way Rush could do unlimited meet and greets at every tour stop because it would take way too long. I think they could make more of an effort though, maybe do some record store signings or something for 100 people every now and then or something like that. It's cool that they autograph things at venues though if you send them in advance, I need to look up how to do that for this tour.

QUOTE (spock @ Jul 14 2012, 10:27 PM) Good points - I posted once before that I feel like we've been given a handful of polaroid pictures and have to guess what happened. I think A LOT happens in the story that we don't hear about. I feel like the Headlong Flight is the oddest song - it picks up just after the terrible ordeal of The Wreckers to say "hey, there were good time, bad times, I know I've had my share, (to quote R. Plant) but sure, I'd do it all again - to head right into BU2B2! It's like someone dropped all the Polaroids and reassembled them out of order and that is why CA has the song order that it does. I think that's what holds CA back from being great to just being pretty good is that the story has no flow at all. I agree with those who say that Halo Effect and Headlong Flight seem particularly out of place. I am curious about the book but I have a feeling it's going to be terrible, I'll wait for some reviews here to judge.

I was way too young to be listening to music in 1975 but I think it's more than a coincidence that Genesis had the same troubles in 1974-5. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour was plagued with poor attendance and I heard the album didn't sell that well either. I don't know if people were getting tired of progressive rock or what the deal was. Also I don't know how much Rush could be blamed for bad concert ticket sales, weren't they still just an opening group at this time? I think they opened for Kiss when CoS came out. I would put CoS somewhere around #5 in all time Rush albums, there's a lot of good stuff on it. They really need to bring back the By-Tor/The Necromancer medley live, that was absolutely fantastic!

My prediction is that this tour will not have comedy (or Rush's attempts thereof) intro/outro videos at all, instead they will have a cool clockworky type intro video and no outro video.

On the Boneyard, I have heard Headlong Flight several times and last week they played the title track of CA. They play a fair amount of Rush on that channel, in fact I have heard 2112 in its entirety a few times on it.

I am in the "The Wreckers is the best or close to the best song on CA" camp. The tracks I would classify as filler are Halo Effect, Wish Them Well, and The Garden (which I know many people like). I think there are only 3 tracks of filler and while most of us would disagree on what those three tracks are, most people seem to list about 3 tracks they don't care for. This is a marked improvement on any Rush album since Presto IMHO where typically I really like half the songs and could do without the other half (except for S&A where I could do without the whole thing).

Strange Genesis choice, I think Selling England by the Pound is a much better album than Nursery Cryme and has much more overall acclaim, and deservedly so. Unless he just really likes the Musical Box.

QUOTE (Mr. IsNot @ Jun 28 2012, 10:28 AM) I'll keep listening to King Diamond's album "Them" instead... Grandma makes some damn good tea, the old bitch. I like Conspiracy better than Them but think both had better flowing stories than CA does. Although I do like the music and a lot of the ideas in CA, the story is just too choppy. And it was nice to see that CA was not just another long attack on religion like S&A was. I would have liked CA to be a little more fantastical, it doesn't seem like a lot was done with the steampunk setting.

Agreed, Hemispheres is the best!

I think that Halo Effect, Wish Them Well, Seven Cities of Gold and BU2B2 will not be played. Headlong Flight will definitely be played since that is the single being pushed on radio now.