jnoble

If it makes any of you feel better, Geddy named Neurotica as one of his "What was I thinking?" songs in an interview I read around the R40 tour. Forget where, may have been Guitar Player or something

"The most we could agree on...is it could've been wooOOOorrrRRRrrrseeee......" Dear sweet Jesus, how is this the same band that played that absolutely incredible By Tor/In The End/In The Mood/2112 medley at the end of the Exit video???

Its not a coincidence that all my fav songs from Counterparts are the ones that have little to nothing to do with relationship themes: Stick It Out, Cut To The Chase, Between Sun & Moon, Leave That Thing, Everyday Glory

Neurotica has the weakest laziest most underwhelming chorus out of their entire catalog lol

I don't hate Dog Years nearly as much as others here. The song wasn't meant to be any type of serious statement or work of art and the band was obviously having fun cutting loose with a punkish arrangement

I liked the title track but everything else bored me to tears. Its been a drink coaster for many years now in my place lol

I've always had mixed feelings about Counterparts. Half the songs are really good, the other half really cheesy. But damn if its not the best produced album they ever did this side of Moving Pictures

Snakes was Neil's 'Old Man Yells At Cloud' moment. In fact, that should've been the album cover only him instead of Grandpa Simpson :-)

Snakes has no repeat listening value. Aside from Far Cry and a couple of the instrumentals, there's little there that makes me excited about wanting to put the CD on again. Thus why mid tempo acoustic dirges sung poorly about why Neil hates religion other people and the world is a mean terrible place was a bad idea for an album lol

I'll admit my patience and attention span isn't what it used to be when I was younger and my taste in music has changed a bit but you couldn't pay me to sit and listen to Clockwork or Snakes start to finish. Or Vapor Trails. They're all too long and too dense (or in the case of Snakes, plodding and monotonous) to get through end to end.

Just because its not aggressive hard rock or proggy or has any show-offy guitar /bass/drum parts that they are known for doesn't mean its a bad Rush song. I think its a great example of the band merging a lyric with perfect music , something they got away from in the years to follow where too many songs sounded scotch taped together with lyrics shoe horned in

What's funny to me is that RTB gets a lot of flak around here from the fans but for many years Geddy himself claimed it was his personal favorite album they ever did

I've always liked that song too and don't understand the hate it gets from a segment of fans. OK, so its not exactly hard rock but the song has soul and a great melody and arrangement

TFE, Snakes, Clockwork. I find the latter two pretty much unlistenable, especially the wall of unmemorable hookless dense noise that makes up most of Clockwork. I still can't believe the band was OK with the mix. It sounds like Geddy is singing in a different language, I can't make out a damn word of almost any song

And TFE was also the beginning of the layers upon layers of distorted guitars & bass wall of noise production plus the infamous Geddy choirs of "whooaaass" and "ooohhhhhs" which just got worse with Vapor Trails onward lol

I pinpoint TFE as the album where A: Neil's lyrics really started decline in quality and B: Geddy and Alex couldn't come up with inspired music to put them to. Their long time method of coming up with riffs and parts and fitting them to the words started sounding obvious (Time And Motion comes to mind as a particularly disjointed sounding song) Color Of Right is another example of bland music put to bland words with a bland melody by Geddy

Heh. I went to a couple Snakes tour shows and couldn't wait for then to get past all the new songs. Like I said, Far Cry kicked ass but the others, yeeech. Talk about a string of bathroom or beer stand break songs... lol I've sometimes wondered if bands ever notice fans leaving their seats walking away during certain songs or segments of their sets and if it bothers them

Snakes for me because Rush doing an album of folk-rock type songs was not their best idea nor played to their strengths. Far Cry and Malignant N were the only two songs on the entire album that sounded like them. I respect that they made an entire career out of changing direction every few albums but that wasn't a good one for them in hindsight and seems a lot of fans consider it a drink coaster now

The 45 minute thing is absolutely true. The final three studio albums were all at least 3 or 4 songs too long. Especially VT, they could've left the last few tracks off that one and not lost anything worthwhile

Geddy seemed to really love the songwriting they accomplished on RTB but even when it was brand new and still on the charts he was vocal about how weak the production sounded

Where did you see that? Alex & Geddy are both on record (no pun intended lol) not happy with CP. I believe its mentioned in a couple of the Martin Popoff books. Alex didn't like some of the lyrics while Geddy complained "there were too many compromises" while making it plus he and Alex had a lot of fights during, probably over how and where to use keyboards in the songs. Not sure what Neil thought about it.

That's unfortunately why I don't listen or watch very often any of the live or studio albums past R30 or if I do its only for a couple of select songs. His voice and singing style was just unpleasant and cringy. And like others have pointed out, I'm NOT saying that as a put down or an insult. I've been a big fan for many many years now. But Lee's voice was just worn out, plain and simple and there's no getting around that or denying it

The bass part on studio Scars was a looped synth anyway, not a real bass guitar so it didn't matter to me that he didn't play it live.

For the longest time Geddy always named Power Windows and RTB as his personal favorite albums they ever did

I like his crunchy Ric tone, especially on the Exit Stage Left video. But on the other end of the sonic spectrum I also really liked his poppy clean Wal tone which sounded great on the instrumentals like YYZ & La Villa. I never cared for the Steinberger either aesthetically or its plastic thin tone