psionic11

I know I'm probably one of those *other* fly by night posters that no one knows about too much, but I'm gonna post a string of replies here. Alex's playing is one of the strongest reasons I love Rush.

I have to reply to each thread in order -- it's just too much to pass up so many valid points and rebuttals in a single thread.

Bottomline: Alex is my biggest guitar influence.

The cells tick away.

If you are one who realizes fully that you are mortal, and are more aware of your end of days than of the hey days, of that distant past when you bathed in that constant, invincible immersion of youth and discovery...

If the measure of a life, of a lifetime, is the love and respect you've earned, of all you have given rather than taken,

... then The Garden is wholesomely positive if you've lived that full, rewarding life with wonderful children to pass on your legacy.

... else The Garden can be a painful reminder: "It's cold comfort to the ones without it, to know" how you struggled. Like the homeless man on the outside looking in, blankly gazing with jaded envy through the shopping glass window at all the shiny, happy people inside the store.

The memory of a life is too rich to be labeled "positive" or "negative." But the overall feeling can be warm and nostalgic, or cold and longing.

The arrow flies while you breathe. The hours tick away.

The above post still holds true for me up to this point.

After letting the album cool for a few days, coming back to it, yes, CA has cooled down for me.

I'm making a playlist of the best songs that I can listen to over and over on repeat. Did the same with S&A. Leaves a concentrated "best-of" feel to the album.

Caravan

BU2B

Carnies

Halo Effect

Seven Cities of Gold

Headlong Flight

BU2B2

The Garden

When Caravan was released, I loved the open sound and the "progressive" breakdown section. Lexrst with a Primus twist!

BU2B was very catchy, a solid, straight-ahead song. The lyrics resonate very much with me personally. Carries the Hemispheres-Freewill-GhostChance-Totem-Faithless tradition.

Headlong Flight blew my mind! Punk speed, epic length, catchy melody right from the get go with me. Heard the classic rock tributes in it (E major, wah-wah pedal).

When I first heard the whole CA album together, two things overwhelmed me -- the multitude of a collage of musical ideas, and the dense sonic wall.

The Garden gave me goosebumps, makes my eyes water, and leaves a sad, respectful realization of the mortality and worth of this one life we each have.

Don't forget that Geddy, Neil, and Alex all most likely have quite a bit of hearing loss.

I really like the idea of "Open Source" RUSH. Releasing individual tracks and letting fans re-mix and re-produce them. Genius.

There are many electronic acts that have their original music remixed by other DJ's... NIN is a great example... why not Rush?

Old classics I want to hear with the live string section:

Losing It

Manhattan Project

Marathon

Of course, The Garden has to be the main force justifying the strings.

First of all, autotune wasn't even invented yet when Grace Under Pressure was recorded.

Secondly, the version of The Spirit of Radio from Different Stages that I have has Geddy missing the pitch all over the place. It has his character without the autotune robot "fixes"...

And yes, that youtube clip has obvious autotuning correction. I didn't dig deep enough into the youtube comments, so I apologize if somewhere the youtube author admits somewhere that autotune was added after the fact.

TBH, there are plenty of places where autotune could have helped him, but Geddy in a live mix is more than good enough without autotune.

/2c

***goose bumps*** (first listen, play-by-play)

holding back the knowing tears

allusions to so many Ru$h themes... time please stand still!

What?! Piano drops? Geddy so emotionally delivering Neil's emotional and pregnant lyrics.

Oh no... here's Alex. Can the emotion go any deeper?

dragging a bit here... but suspended in the allness of Rush lyrics... "the measure of a life"... love...

cello, so sincere

*hits replay*

Disclaimer: haven't listened to the whole album yet.

Besides Caravan, BU2B, and Headlong Flight, all which I like the most off this album so far.... "Wreckers" is the next best for me...

Excuse me while I once again rock out to HF....

Great OP, some great story and inspiration in it. And I agree that even though the lyrics are sometimes dark, they are mostly inspiring. Life is not all positive or all negative; it's more realistic to reflect on the mix of the two and draw your inspiration from your life lessons.

But I would disagree with the whole "guilt" aspect you derived from the lyrics. I don't see guilt at all. There may be some regrets or remorse, but it's more sprinkled with hope and nostalgia than guilt. Conscience is the moral compass to right your wrongs, while guilt is more a despair when you're off course.

Neil uses conscience much more than guilt as a motivator.

But Trenken does have a point -- Neil's lyrics lately are more direct. But while he relies less on wordplay, I believe you still will find plenty of double-meanings:

BU2B is rife with simple phrases that are actually deep (if cynical) explanations of a doubting deist's take on pop religion. The phrases hold resonance not only within pop culture but also within the Rush universe

-- "the universe has a plan ("God has a plan", Freewill, Ghost of a Chance),

-- "heaven's justice will prevail" (indignant righteousness of the fervent few, Armor and Sword, Freewill, Totem)

-- "blind men in the marketplace, buying what we're sold" (Jesus destroying the marketplace where the pharisees were, Heresy's counter-revolution and Superconductor's scathing rant against pop culture markets).

Caravan is likewise deceptively simple, mostly because Neil is writing from a very personal first point of view. How many songs does Neil use the very pop-friendly words "I" and "you" in? Most of his classic songs are not in simple first person. But this album so far is chock full of it. Still, "I can't stop thinking big" is rich in double and triple meanings, especially related to his whole repertoire of "big" -- big wheels, big money, god and government, grand designs so grand and complex, perspective where the "stars look down"... Neil has so many songs where he uses the word "world" in one form another, that I can't stop thinking big is a nice succinct way of bringing the whole lot together in an easy-to-relate phrase. Marathon and Mission and Freewill and 2112 are all about thinking big.

Like the whole genre that CA aspires to, Headlong Flight is a throwback or tribute to a whole past that could have been. "I wish that I could live it all again" calls up Time Stand Still, Cut to the Chase, Between the Wheels, Available Light, and in a limited way, even A Farewell to Kings.

Some days were dark, some were bright. Neil references "I feel" a lot on this album. Since Hemispheres, he's consciously flip-flopped lyrics on albums between a cerebral dissertation and a more personal catalog of feelings. On Counterparts, "passion was afire" and "you know how complex women are", while on T4E we have "Half the World" and "Totem". Snake and Arrows has plenty of "I feel" on it, but so far, CA has a strong mix of "feel".

This may be Rush's swan song. It's been a great adventure, and the world's a far cry from what Cinderalla Man would have wielded his shield of rusty wire against, but it is, after all, a battle between heart and mind, isn't it?

The Universe divided

As the Heart and Mind collided

Thunder Seven, hellz yeah!... 18 yrs old, Lakeland Arena, dry ice smoke and the spinning holograph of the Thunder Seven Man... memories. Probably the loudest show I've ever been to, esp since I was front row and my jeans were pulsing to the bass notes from the speakers. Lakeland shows you always came out with cotton in your ears for two days or so.

Midsummer's Daydream, Stranger in a Strange Land, Spellbound, Lay it on the Line, Little Boy Blues, so many more...

Rik is a great singer/guitarist, but Rush happens to have much more mojo and rocket juice.

But thanks for bringing back good memories.

Good catch, I noticed that right away as well. I think there are several reasons why they're favoring E minor lately:

-- easy access to the root

-- lots of open strings

-- Geddy can hit notes that are high but not too hard to reach for him

-- it's easier to make killer riffs in your "home" key

-- homage to rock's home key

For example, by singing in E minor, he can spend most of the time singing around the 7th, root, 2nd, and 3rd, where a lot of good melody lives. And yet he can belt out that high 5th that most of us struggle to hit but is easy enough for tenors.

In HF, Alex is playing the Jimi Hendrix chord often, and with the open ringing E's, both high and low. Those fast riffs are interspersed with the heavy root note too.

Counterparts is clear and heavy. Great-sounding album. But Alex just didn't have *heavy* guitar sounds.

CA so far is heavy on guitars. Bas it definitely there, but not as clear as CP. More bottom-end on CA, but yeah, drums are clearer on CP but heavier on CA.

CA is heavier than CP, but CP is heavy and clear.

Bullshit~!

7digital whatever gave me Caravan and BU2B instead of HF!!! SAME exact sound quality as the original mp3z of those songs I downloaded 2 years ago from Amazon.

I shit you not. I've got a new sub-folder in my Caravan album folder with 2 extra copies of Caravan and BU2B. No HF.

grrrrr.....

I'll keep refreshing the Amazon Prime download option until it says "available". Not worth me fighting for a $1.49 refund...

Buyer beware.

Blind men in the market place, indeed.

Writers are often coached, "write from what you know."

Philosophers are most often cynical, yes? From the lofty musings of The Trees and Fountain of Lamneth, to the thought experiments of Hemispheres and Natural Science, to the outright rebellion of 2112, Freewill, Ghost of A Chance, Totem, Faithless, and Bu2B...

Neil has alway been at least outside the mainstream, if not as ridiculously hostile as a lot of metal is.

It's a tricky balance between a universally appealing anti-mainstream stance and that immediately palpable energy ("angst") that successful pioneers have often displayed.

Let's hope that CA is all that. Steampunk is an interesting conscious choice to voice those views, in this day and age, yes?

Did not even know about it.

But yes, I'm in. I will be up anyway, and what's a buck when I've already spent a dozen on beer and wings on this chilly Florida night, eh?

I have Amazon Prime, so come Tuesday at lunch time on June 12, I'll be looking for that special package at the front door!

Damn, Headlong Flight energizes me to the point of wanting to form a Rush tribute band again... BU2B and Caravan are getting lotsa love lately too...

Could be, probably is. But while most may have the best memories during their teenage years, for me it was different.

Don't if it was being a musician all those years, but I really relate to the grunge years. Yeah, some of the 80's music holds some memories, but the 90's do more for me. The 2000's are mostly blah, with a very few standout songs. Electronic music is more prevalent now (and for those who like it, hiphop also).

For some unexplainable reason, Rush seems to transcend these decades (70's, 80's, 90's, '00's). Sure, some of it is stale or immediately tired upon release, but the best simply has a life all its own and will accompany us to the grave, yes?

I think maybe 1% of the world population alive in 2112 will appreciate the significance, but hey, it's the 1% that really counts, right?