Steel Rat

That sounds like a beautiful moment to me. That's so sweet, and a reminder that I should be wearing my Snakes and Arrows shirt. I've been on this forum since 2004, since I was 14 years old. I kinda drifted away for a several years, but I had to come back to the old family to share how profoundly fundamental Rush was to my life. Love you, Professor. Steer that airship right across the stars. Oh how I wish that I could live it all again.

I'm an absolute snowflake and constantly find myself against the tides of the regular inhabitants of SOCN, yet I've never considered it any form of shitstorm, whether slurricane, trollnado, bigotryzzard, or amoralggedon. Haven't been there in a while, though. Edit: Alternate portmanteau for Blizzard - "Triggzzard" (Triggered + Blizzard)

I've always thought that one of Rush's most remarkable characteristics was their consistently good quality. I think the average quality of their product's sum total is higher than just about any other music entity. I might score the high moments of Spock's Beard's, Dream Theater's or Porcupine Tree's/Steven Wilson's catalog higher than Rush's highest moments, but Rush is consistently great enough that Rush's average and lowest points are higher than most other musicians. I thoroughly enjoy every Rush song, and every Rush album, but I can't say the same for SB, DT, or PT, even though there are a few SB / DT / PT songs that I like better than the best Rush songs. Just the fact that every Rush song and album, over their 40 year career, is at least pretty good, even when their total catalog is rich with breadth, variety, and experimentation, that seems rare and amazing. They can be harsh and dissonant, they can be beautiful and melodic, they can be everywhere in between, and they keep me engaged the entire time. Their full discography could be the combined product of a heaping handful of completely different bands, and yet it's all void of glaring flaws.

I love ILSnowdog, LaughedAtByTime, Tom Sawyer, Ken Jennings, and all the other UltraCons (term of endearment) in SOCN. ...And I hope that pisses them off. ;)

I have to confide in you guys, the strangest thing happened to me at work today. I work at a gas station, and when I clocked in today, there was a man sleeping in a chair at one of the tables. He had a large sack of stuff, so I figured he was a homeless man trying to escape the cold. Since it was Saturday, my manager wasn't there, and I was the most senior employee in the store. Eventually, he woke up, and asked me if I knew anything about Alcoholics Anonymous. I looked up the number in the telephone book, handed him a phone, he called them, and arranged with them to be picked up to go to a meeting. In the mean time, he chatted me up. He told me he was 60 years old, a sergeant in the Vietnam war, and homeless. Then he began to sob as he told me his wife had just past away. He looked extremely depressed and was somewhat incoherent. He rambled sometimes and repeated things frequently. He spent any time he wasn't talking to someone else by talking to himself. He didn't say anything nonsensical or fantastic, but rather he had a great sense of humor. He pointed to my long hair and said, "believe it or not, I had hair all the way down to my ass back in the seventies. I was a hippie." He started conversations with most people, told them his life story, but never asked anyone for anything, and rejected whenever anyone tried to give him money or food. It just seemed like he was very cold and lonely. He greatly appreciated when people listened to him, and he'd say "God bless you, you saved my life," then he'd salute them. I called my boss and let him know that there was a homeless man who had been there for at least four hours, and he didn't see anything wrong with letting him stay. Eventually his ride came and took him to his AA meeting. He was gone for about 2 hours, and then he came back. Then things got weird. He said he was going to the McDonalds next door, and he gave me a walkie talkie. He said "if anyone gives you any trouble, let me know and I'll be there right away." He was gone for an hour or two, but he checked in on the walkie talkie every five minutes, and would get upset if I didn't respond. Eventually he came back at the end of my shift. My coworkers offered to book him a hotel for two days, and he was very grateful. He referred to us as his family. They gave him a ride and, as far as I know, he was given a "hospital discount." So I need to ask you guys, what the hell are you supposed to do in this situation?

I've had an aura a few times. I get blind spots in the dead-center of my vision, and I can't read or drive for an hour. I also become drunk. The only time I've been pulled over for an infraction was when I had a headache, once for driving 78 in a 65, and once for running straight through a red light. The um... personal attention... doesn't help. Have proven it many times. It's nice though!

Migraines are so inconceivably horrible, I can't believe there hasn't been a thread dedicated to them yet. They bring with them pain greater than that of several stone kicks. Time grinds to a halt. Nothing you do even slightly alleviates the pain. Any activity made in an attempt to pass the time is punished with more extreme pain. All you can do is lie in the dark, wide awake, groaning and crying until eternity passes. The only times in my life I've seriously thought about suicide were brought on by migraines. I've had them for my whole life. I missed 9 out of 45 days of school this semester because of debilitating headaches, which means I get one every five days, round about. I've tried every painkiller, and nothing ever remotely works. I've given up on going to the hospital, no help there. I'm missing out on a huge portion of my life, and I feel hopeless. Even worse is when people don't care. You can't stay home from a minimum wage job with a headache, that's not a "valid" illness. I was going to complain a lot more, but my head hurts too freaking much right now. I'll get to it later. Write something about your migraines, your friends migraines, your suggestions for treating migraines, how God doesn't love us anymore, you know, stuff about migraines.

I think I know the part you mean--it's not quite as abrasive, but it's definitely there. This is what I'm talking about: (@4:20) I remember the first time I heard it, I was like "That's definitely the same sound I heard in Necromancer."

The same growl appears on The Main Monkey Business, right?

I honestly don't know what it is. It just seemed to be the obvious thing.

Maybe I'm just trying to come up with an excuse to enjoy this song, but I just wondered if "The Necromancer" is some kind of trivial tribute to a very famous atonal piece from 1925 by Henry Cowell, called "The Banshee." It's a very creepy piece in which a piano achieves the quality of a banshee screech by scraping the strings inside. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND-ga_BrkCE I think it's Geddy who also performs a type of guttural banshee screech on his bass in the transition at 7:05. The effect is achieved in exactly the same way, only with an electric bass. http://youtu.be/w3Hn8ywmjEI?t=7m5s The titles of the pieces are also structurally identical ("The Banshee," vs "The Necromancer"). It's also interesting that Necromancer was written exactly 50 years after Banshee. That's about where the similarities end though. Thanks for stopping by, and apologies for wasting your time. :hail:

For my one song, I elect "One Little Victory." It is worse than everything so far listed in this thread. I judge songs weighted heavily on the composition of the music and "One Little Victory" is crap. It's so repetitive and so drearily modal, switching back and forth between two keys. Nothing interesting, just a re-hashed, ham-fisted noodling of the minor pentatonic scale. Nothing bores me more than noodling on the minor pentatonic scale. It's exactly the kind of song a terrible garage band would write. Actually, I wrote a song making fun of it musically when I was 15 years old. It's pretty comical. It's ornamented heavily, but the Rush melody is still in there. https://soundcloud.com/benjamin-burnham/a-song-in-which-i-make-fun-of-one-little-victory-by-rush My second worst is MalNar for committing similar crimes against music.

The only thing I remember about HTW, musically, is that it's in 3/4. I never was good at fractions Oh, it isn't? Never mind then. Must be thinking of something else entirely... or it's hat it's not remotely memorable ;) it's in straight four. :) The main rhythm (those three prominent chords that play at the beginning and throughout the whole song) is made up of dotted notes. You probably remembered the three dotted notes as a triplet meter. On the topic of subjective melodies, Beethoven was famous for melodies which, if you were to dissect them, were actually stupidly simple. For instance, the fifth symphony, the sequence EVERYONE knows, think of how ridiculously uncomplicated that is. Three repetitions of the same note, then drop down and hold; repeat. Then there's Beethoven's 7th. The wikipedia description says it all - "the movement transitions to Vivace through a series of no fewer than sixty-one repetitions of the note E." Then there's the 2nd movement, the melody of which is composed primarily of a single note. And yet, the 7th symphony was universally lauded as one of humanity's most amazing artistic achievements; and deservedly so. It's truly amazing what you can express with merely the repetition of one note, you barely even realize it's actually that simple. There's more to the definition of a "melody" than can be captured by words.

If you're looking for the actual meaning of Clockwork Angels, ignore this post; but a couple of years ago I wrote up a post summarizing my certifiably insane interpretation of the story, going on the lyrics alone, completely unaware that there were liner notes. As a matter of fact, I was recently struck with the interest to revisit that insane interpretation and dig through it some more, trying to make my interpretation "work" with the material provided in the actual story. If you want to read a sample of that, check this out: Why Clockwork Angels is actually about a young man's encounter with the Devil "Clockwork Angels”, the way Neil Peart describes it, seems like a sort of “Forrest Gump” of a story about a character who recounts his life of adventures and misadventures. It’s nice and inoffensive, but it’s really boring. There’s the occasional conflict and “part where something happens,” but they are really few and far between in a story that is by far dominated by mere description of this Steampunk world Peart dreamed up. Clockwork Angels needs a spicier story, a plot to bring this world to life; and when I read the lyrics and heard the music the first time, my imagination brought me something much more dramatic and fanciful than what Peart intended. Not to spoil it or anything, but it’s actually about a young man whose soul is usurped by the Devil. Not only that - but it’s even more so about how a religion, in their effort to take followers under their wing, can instead systematically push them away, inciting a dangerous backlash. Then in their arrogance, they ignore their role in the deviant’s behavior and completely forsake their lost brother, shedding their responsibility entirely instead of taking it on like they should. Now that’s more like it. Now we’re cooking with brimstone. At the moment, I've analyzed the first four songs of the album. I'll post it when it gets done.

I've got an emotional attachment to this album, reminds me of summer days with my best friends in high school. One day, we just sat silently in a basement listening to Fountain of Lamneth. It was an unusual activity for us, we normally spent a lot of time beating stuff in each others yards with gardening tools. At the end of the song, after the heartbreaking sting at the end, all my friends were like "...wow." I'll never understand why people don't get this album - Rush fans, no less. I was just introducing my friends to Rush at that time. You rarely get the chance to get others interested in the music you like. Caress of Steel really brings me back.