analog guy

I've never been able to fully embrace Grace. To me, it doesn't seem to strike any evolutionary ground. It sounds like an inferior re-do of Signals. I've read that the band was supposedly trying to "correct" mistakes they made with Signals, but IMO there was nothing broken that needed fixing. There is a coldness to the sound and the production that is off-putting. I think the fact they had trouble finding a producer kind of shows through it, because I'm not really sure where the band was trying to go with it. I realize Signals is very synth-heavy too, but there is still a warmth to the synths. I don't know if it's the change from the Oberheims to the PPG Waves or what.... this is at a point where analog is being overtaken by digital, and it was kind of an ugly transition in some ways. The Simmons drums have not aged well at all. Lyrically it's a little bit weak on the second side. The Body Electric, Kid Gloves, and Red Lenses are all just silly.... especially in the wake of some absolutely emotionally crushing passages found on the first half of the record. I think the gloom surrounding the writing and recording of the album shows.... it's a very cold and clinical sound record. Late 1983 / early 1984 was a difficult period in my life.... perhaps the album has an unfairly negative connotation in my eyes due to this coincidence. It may not be that bad a record on its own merits, but when you put it in context with everything that came before it, Grace seems to represent a point where the band began to decline from its artistic and commercial peak.

I've never liked the sound of the vocals on that album.... I've never been able to figure out exactly why. Maybe it is the dryness. It's almost too isolated from the backing track. I always thought that they didn't EQ his voice quite right, or something.

Well, I actually do listen to Presto a lot more than I listen to 2112. Is that strange? (No, I didn't write the review).

And the careers of both bands went their, um, separate ways. (groan)

How many bands are even together 40 years into their careers?

Yep, if anything, they have more of a beef with the end of Tom Sawyer than anything from Xanadu.

I heard Neal Schon actually painted this.

On a different note, I've always heard a similarity in the Alan Parsons Project instrumental "Sirius" to that same part of Xanadu.

Cool song. Really cool, actually. Certainly better than anything I ever associated with Journey. Kind of reminds me of Brand X or something. I don't think it's probably as big an influence on Xanadu as it's made out to be, though.

I'm not sure exactly what it means, but obviously a lower number is less range and a higher number is more. I believe the scale is 1-20.... most "brickwalled" albums tend to fall in the 4-6 range. I think Steely Dan's "Aja" is like an 18.

Yeah, it's funny how the keyboard era is despised, and this album is so loved at the same time, because this is probably the most overproduced album they ever released. I don't hate it, but I could have done without 62.5% of it being played on the last tour, especially since "Middletown Dreams" wasn't played the night I went. That's the only one of the five I really wanted to hear.

A lot of worthy inductees there, IMO. I wonder if Rush has opened the door for the progressive genre in general. It'll be interesting to see if Yes gets in because of it.

And then they started seguing it into Xanadu.... that's almost too much epic for one person to take.

I said the same thing 20 years ago. I started listening to Rush at 14, when Roll the Bones was the most recent album. Counterparts was the first new release during my fandom. Back then, I was like "man, I wish I hadn't jumped on the bandwagon so late. They've already got 16 albums. They're all gonna be 40 soon... surely they won't be around much longer!" Little did I know, that their career still had 20+ more years to go. I guess I'm luckier than I originally thought. If I went back and told myself in 1992 that I'd still be seeing them in concert 21 years later and that the boys would be kicking it in their 60s, I'd never have believed it.

Early MTV was something else. Can you imagine MTV today, or even 10 years ago, doing something like this now? That was a big part of my childhood. To this day I have such a huge affinity for music of the early 1980s because of that connection. It's the first music that I remember being new and relevant.

They used to play the ESL version of Tom Sawyer on MTV the first year or so it was on. I was about four or five then and watched it a lot, because I liked music. I was kind of meh.... but the ginormous drum kit did grab my eye. My older brother listened to Rush a lot in the late 80s when he was in high school. I was still kind of meh. Then I started high school myself in the fall of 1991. Roll the Bones was a brand new album. I was in the percussion section in our concert band and the marching band and a lot of us had study halls at the same time, and we got a permanent pass out for the year to spend in the band room, where we basically listened to Rush albums while we did our homework. I grew an affinity for the band over the course of that school year, and during the next summer we all went to see the band at Alpine Valley together.

VT. OLV came out a month before the rest of the record, and I was completely unmoved. I still am unmoved by it, which is kind of unfortunate because I know what that song means to the band.... but I just cannot learn to love it. I bought the rest of the album anyway about two days after it came out, and I knew it didn't sound good the first time I listened to it. I felt like I should have liked it more than I did, because the songs seemed like they were good, but something wasn't right. At this point nobody really knew what "brickwall mastering" and the "loudness war" were just yet. I'm happy to say that I totally dig the remix. The songs were never the problem with that album.

It's fantastic. They've done exactly what they needed to do, which was get some clarity and separation. I'm amazed at all the things I can hear now that I didn't before. There's so many interesting little guitar parts and countermelodies that were just completely buried before that are now very apparent and add to the whole experience.

The choruses in Ghost Rider all sound differerent, especially the "shadows on the road behind, ahead, there's nothing to stop you now" bits. I think one of the lower harmonies seems to have been given greater emphasis.

This is incredible. I really didn't think they could improve it this much, but they did.

My first show was in '92, so I didn't get to see the really classic period Rush live... I was just too young. I got a few bootlegs though. My favorite is the St. Louis '80 show. Obviously, the setlist would be #1.... hearing anything from Kings or Hemispheres that they can't play anymore due to the vocals. The vintage equipment. The Ampeg stacks, the double-necks, the Moogs and Oberheims, the Taurus pedals, the Tamas and Slingerlands.

Really, my favorite album too.... maybe not as universal as Moving Pictures, but to me, much more personal. Subdivisions is just as close to a perfect song as is possible.

These are 96 kbps samples, so they aren't ideal, but you get a good taste. I can definitely hear a difference.

"Oh won't you please welcome home...."

BTW, if you get Selling England by the Pound (also an excellent choice) and have a keen ear, you may recognize "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" as this is often played over the PA at Rush shows.