Does anyone else dislike P/G?

[NAO]

[thing2jordan]

DON'T YOU BLASPHEME IN HERE!!!!

[analog guy]

I have never cared for P/G a great deal, although it is far from my least favorite Rush record.

 

And what is interesting about that is Signals is actually my favorite album. People often lump the two of them together because they seem to share many common sonic elements, but for whatever reason, Signals completely works for me while P/G does not.

 

I do not care for the production on P/G all that much. Part of that could be that Peter Henderson was a bit of a late choice and maybe not necessarily the right choice. I feel the drum sound is inferior to Signals, and there is a lot of sibilance on the vocals.

 

I'm also not a fan of the Simmons drums, which I find dated and cheesy. I think songs like Red Sector A and Red Lenses might have worked better without them.

 

I also feel that some of the emotion in Geddy's voice on certain songs sounds contrived and perhaps over-emphasized. I understand it was an emotional album to make, but I don't feel it.

 

Not to say that the album doesn't contain some great music.... it does. But for whatever reason it doesn't have quite as much repeat value to me as the albums that immediate precede it and follow it.

Edited August 30, 2010 by analog guy

[g under p]

This IS my #1 album by far period. It might not be the best BUT it's the one album I will always come back to and listen intently. It was my first concert, first album I bought even though on initial listenings I wasn't that enthused about the songs but after seeing them live I was hooked on the album.

 

Red Sector A was the song that got my attention and the rest slowly followed one by one...Afterimage..awesome and so on I can listen to this album from beginning to end. I was jamming to it today as I did some late summer shopping. I can't put the record down.

 

Peace

 

 

[circumstantial tree]

Signals still has a hard rock rebelliousness to it that Grace Under Pressure doesn't have. Funny thing is that the guitar is much more upfront.

 

I've grown to almost love Grace Under Pressure. I loved Signals when it came out and was expecting Grace to be about the same. However, it wasn't which made it a disappointing album initially.

[WIDE-ANGLE WATCHER]

I love Grace....and total change from Signals....but so good to me

 

It was 19...freaking...84... A great time, and a great album!!!

 

I know the OP's question was "Does anyone else dislike p/g?" And there will be some haters.....Not me.

 

Between The Wheels...Rocks

Distant Early Warning....Nothing sounded like it at the time...Ever

Red Sector A....Intense storyline...Great live.

Afterimage....Different....touching.....RUSH

The Enemy Within....Great tune.

Etc.

Etc.

 

I really enjoy cranking Grace Under Pressure. It's too bad the OP dislikes it enough to make a post about.

 

There is probably more RUSH dislike posts to come. Bring it on.

[Xanadu93]

Alex's awesome guitar tone (courtesy of the Hentor Sportscasters), Neil's percussion experimentation and lyrics, and Geddy's vocals, basswork, and keyboard usage. It's my fourth-favorite Rush record.

[tkdryan]

Its a good album. not much too say. Not my fav but its the most emotional in my opinion. I love the synth work in afterimage,.

[Weakly Criminal]

[glover]

I have to say that at this point of my Rush fan career, I don't dislike anything they have done... I mean...what is the point?

 

And when it comes to Grace Under Pressure...

 

Distant Early Warning, Afterimage, Red Sector A, The Enemy Within, Between the Wheels, Kid Gloves...

 

Are you serious about disliking these songs?

 

Sorry, not here... Great great album...

[g under p]

QUOTE (WIDE-ANGLE WATCHER @ Aug 29 2010, 09:10 PM)

I love Grace....and total change from Signals....but so good to me It was 19...freaking...84... A great time, and a great album!!! I know the OP's question was "Does anyone else dislike p/g?" And there will be some haters.....Not me. Between The Wheels...Rocks Distant Early Warning....Nothing sounded like it at the time...Ever Red Sector A....Intense storyline...Great live. Afterimage....Different....touching.....RUSH The Enemy Within....Great tune. Etc. Etc. I really enjoy cranking Grace Under Pressure. It's too bad the OP dislikes it enough to make a post about. There is probably more RUSH dislike posts to come. Bring it on.

...And to make it his first post, but it's kool......time is on my side....... Yes it is.

[Ted Barchetta]

I love GUP. It's gotten me through some hard times; especially the tracks Between The Wheels and Kid Gloves. It's my second favorite Rush album.

 

Whatevs man, your loss is our gain.

[Xanadude69]

I love GUP aside from 2 songs. I liked GUP much more than Signals at first. Signals took time to grow on me. GUP was the last good synth album IMO

[shaun3701]

I'm with the OP... I really can't get into P/G. I don't like the electronic drums, the bass (if you can call it that) that Geddy was using, or the whole sterile sound that permeates the album. I can appreciate most of the songs, but I prefer to listen to live versions.

[TullSkull]

Dislike GP?? WAY!! Gets all kinds of play here. One of my fav's.

[Pause Rewind Replay]

I liked p/g right away. How Red Sector A could ever be described as cold boggles my mind.

 

I liked it because it's melodic, with enough guitar to rock, Red Lenses gets a little , as does the intro to Body Electric, and the lyrics grabbed me as well (especially DEW, Red Sector A, Body Electric and BTW).

 

But don't feel like you're nuts... you should see what I get called when I say the only p/g song I dislike is Afterimage, and the only Rush album as a whole I dislike is Caress Of Steel

Edited August 30, 2010 by Pause Rewind Replay

[ReRushed]

It's nowhere near being a favorite Rush album of mine. It's pretty much middle of the pack as far as I'm concerned. It's good, not great.

[NAO]

QUOTE (analog guy @ Aug 29 2010, 07:30 PM)

I have never cared for P/G a great deal, although it is far from my least favorite Rush record. And what is interesting about that is Signals is actually my favorite album. People often lump the two of them together because they seem to share many common sonic elements, but for whatever reason, Signals completely works for me while P/G does not.

 

Signals and P/G are not really similar. I think Signals stands alone and there is nothing like it. Same for P/G.

 

Power Windows and HYF; Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures; everything else, IMHO can be grouped.

 

QUOTE (analog guy @ Aug 29 2010, 07:30 PM)

I do not care for the production on P/G all that much. Part of that could be that Peter Henderson was a bit of a late choice and maybe not necessarily the right choice.

 

 

Either Peter Henderson was a bad choice, or Terry Brown was a fantastic choice, or both.

 

 

QUOTE (analog guy @ Aug 29 2010, 07:30 PM)

I feel the drum sound is inferior to Signals, and there is a lot of sibilance on the vocals. I'm also not a fan of the Simmons drums, which I find dated and cheesy. I think songs like Red Sector A and Red Lenses might have worked better without them. I also feel that some of the emotion in Geddy's voice on certain songs sounds contrived and perhaps over-emphasized. I understand it was an emotional album to make, but I don't feel it..

 

Yes to all.

[ReRushed]

QUOTE (NAO @ Aug 30 2010, 12:35 AM)

QUOTE (analog guy @ Aug 29 2010, 07:30 PM) I do not care for the production on P/G all that much. Part of that could be that Peter Henderson was a bit of a late choice and maybe not necessarily the right choice.     Either Peter Henderson was a bad choice, or Terry Brown was a fantastic choice, or both. The wanted and had Steve Lillywhite all lined up. Mr. Lillywhite was not a man of his word.

[Silas Lang]

[NAO]

QUOTE (g under p @ Aug 29 2010, 07:49 PM)

This IS my #1    album by far period. It might not be the best BUT it's the one album I will always come back to and listen intently. It was my first  concert, first  album I bought even though on initial listenings I wasn't that enthused about the songs but after seeing them live I was hooked on the album. Red Sector A was the song that got my attention and the rest slowly followed one by one...Afterimage..awesome and so on I can listen to this album from beginning to end. I was jamming to it today as I did some late summer shopping. I can't put the record down. Peace

I wonder how many people who really like P/G and the post-Signals stuff came on board AFTER Signals?

 

It was very hard for people who had really liked Rush before 1982 and were more hard/progressive rock fans to appreciate a completely different sound. Especially a sound that we associated with "music we don't like'.

 

To me, every album from RUSH to MP sounded like Rush, but from Signals forward they sounded like a different band. Two of my favorites - both in 1981 and now - are RUSH and MP. Although radically different, they had a quality of similarity of essence. I can listen to RUSH through MP, and it seems like a gradual, logical progression. Then Signals seemed like an abrupt, radical change.

 

For me, VT kind of reminds me of RUSH. And Caravan/BU2B sound & feel like the next logical step after MP.

[NAO]

QUOTE (WIDE-ANGLE WATCHER @ Aug 29 2010, 09:10 PM)

I love Grace....and total change from Signals....but so good to me It was 19...freaking...84...  A great time, and a great album!!! I know the OP's question was "Does anyone else dislike p/g?"  And there will be some haters.....Not me. Between The Wheels...Rocks Distant Early Warning....Nothing sounded like it at the time...Ever Red Sector A....Intense storyline...Great live. Afterimage....Different....touching.....RUSH The Enemy Within....Great tune. Etc. Etc. I really enjoy cranking Grace Under Pressure. It's too bad the OP dislikes it enough to make a post about. There is probably more RUSH dislike posts to come.  Bring it on.

Well, I hardly consider myself a 'hater'.

 

Glad you like P/G. I did'nt like the times, musically. I thought everything was crap, except Rush. When they jumped on the mainstream post-punk bandwagon...things seemed bleak.

 

Just out of curiousity, how much play does your copy of RUSH get? As another poster said of P/G, "it may not be their best, but I love it".

 

I think I've listened to RUSH and Hemispheres more often than anything else, with PermW and MP trading places as my two favorites.

[NAO]

QUOTE (Xanadu93 @ Aug 29 2010, 09:20 PM)

Alex's awesome guitar tone (courtesy of the Hentor Sportscasters), Neil's percussion experimentation and lyrics, and Geddy's vocals, basswork, and keyboard usage. It's my fourth-favorite Rush record.

Wow! Alex's guitar tone is what I most dislike about P/G. I think that's why I like Signals more than P/G.

 

I liked the guitar tone on Hemispheres or 2112 or RUSH. As performed on All the World's a Stage.

 

I like crunching, grinding guitar not ringing, jangling guitar. Just taste, I guess.

[thelocator]

I'm down with NAO...as coming from that same exact angle expressed on the Metallica v. Megadeth thread from ova thar at 'Music of the Spheres'...

 

Rush, like Metallica after 'The Black Album', and a ton of other groups which can easily be cited here as examples, who got theyselves such a huge serving of newfound fame and glory after that one, hugely successful crossover recording, began to sell-out immediately therafter, further and further streamling and mainstreaming their approach and sound with each subsequent release. With Rush, eventually the guitars were completely phased out and replaced with synths.

 

This 'selling-out' seems like a highly natural, albeit still highly 'despicable' thing...You get yourself a taste of what it's like to be invited to all those bigtime, music industry events, begin to clink and clack wine glasses with all your bigtime music industry idols, experience things you never have before, like sex with women other than your wife. Sounds like a bunch of fun, right? All those TV appearances and album signings?

 

It is true that Rush had made some concessions, i.e. 'compromises' to their sound, and in turn, to their 'musical integrity' in order to garner even more radio airplay time for themselves after growing further addicted to what had already been afforded to them at the end of their Permanent Waves/Moving Pictures phase...

 

They studied all these other highly succesful radio formulas of the time, such as 'The Police', and some of the other New Wave outfits which were climbing the charts...Rush studied these cats, and being as astute and perceptive as they naturally were as artisans, the lads adopted those elements which worked for them and discarded the rest...You CAN NOT deny both a 'Police' influence for the band throughout the enitre mid-80's period, as well as a generalized acceptance of radio-friendly 'synth' sounds...

 

It might even sound like I'm bashing away at Rush, but I'm really not...I'm able to appreciate a fair amount of their material from this period...I'm just pointing out what I think should be evident to all here...I can stomach a lot of the material from the sell-out phase...a gray area which begins somewhere in the light grey realm of 'Signals', and ends up in that deep, dark grey-black area of the abominable 'Presto' release'...I'm scared to even listen to that album anymore, for fear that I might even begin to like a tune, here or there...as I wound up doing with Genesis's 1978 title, '...And Then".

 

But, make no mistake...There were concessions made by Rush, compromises made to their sound to ensure further radio air-time allotments, and this move has always been synonymous with 'selling out'.

 

 

[ReRushed]

QUOTE (thelocator @ Aug 30 2010, 01:09 AM)

I'm down with NAO...as coming from that same exact angle expressed on the Metallica v. Megadeth thread from ova thar at 'Music of the Spheres'... Rush, like Metallica after 'The Black Album', and a ton of other groups which can easily be cited here as examples, who got theyselves such a huge serving of newfound fame and glory after that one, hugely successful crossover recording, began to sell-out immediately therafter, further and further streamling and mainstreaming their approach and sound with each subsequent release. With Rush, eventually the guitars were completely phased out and replaced with synths. This 'selling-out' seems like a highly natural, albeit still highly 'despicable' thing...You get yourself a taste of what it's like to be invited to all those bigtime, music industry events, begin to clink and clack wine glasses with all your bigtime music industry idols, experience things you never have before, like sex with women other than your wife. Sounds like a bunch of fun, right? All those TV appearances and album signings? It is true that Rush had made some concessions, i.e. 'compromises' to their sound, and in turn, to their 'musical integrity' in order to garner even more radio airplay time for themselves after growing further addicted to what had already been afforded to them at the end of their Permanent Waves/Moving Pictures phase... They studied all these other highly succesful radio formulas of the time, such as 'The Police', and some of the other New Wave outfits which were climbing the charts...Rush studied these cats, and being as astute and perceptive as they naturally were as artisans, the lads adopted those elements which worked for them and discarded the rest...You CAN NOT deny both a 'Police' influence for the band throughout the enitre mid-80's period, as well as a generalized acceptance of radio-friendly 'synth' sounds... It might even sound like I'm bashing away at Rush, but I'm really not...I'm able to appreciate a fair amount of their material from this period...I'm just pointing out what I think should be evident to all here...I can stomach a lot of the material from the sell-out phase...a gray area which begins somewhere in the light grey realm of 'Signals', and ends up in that deep, dark grey-black area of the abominable 'Presto' release'...I'm scared to even listen to that album anymore, for fear that I might even begin to like a tune, here or there...as I wound up doing with Genesis's 1978 title, '...And Then". But, make no mistake...There were concessions made by Rush, compromises made to their sound to ensure further radio air-time allotments, and this move has always been synonymous with 'selling out'.

Rush had a "sell-out" phase. Really? They compromised to ensure "radio air-time allotments". Really?