Why Rush

[EagleMoon]

I bought Moving Pictures on a whim.

 

From the first few seconds of Tom Sawyer I was in love...by the end of it I was beyond happy with my random album purchase!

 

And here you are. Amazing how things work out. :)

[Mr. JD]

I remember the first time hearing Rush. I grew up in Akron Ohio and in 1974, WMMS out of Cleveland was THE radio station to listen to. I heard them when they first started into rotation at WMMS. Very soon after hearing them I bought their first album on 8 track tape. The rest is history.

[geezer]

Heard them for the first time in the 80s and I liked them immediately, but it wasn't deep and mad love af first listenIng. Becoming my favourite band has taken a while, probably when I have reached a proper age of reason (now, at 49, still to come if you ask my wife....)

[psionic11]

I was 14. And other than hearing a little Kiss when I was around 11 from two brothers who were our backdoor neighbors, I literally had NO IDEA about rock and roll and albums and such. I grew up in a military family with a father who hated rock and roll and a Filipina mother who was supposed to be a nun before she fell in love with my GI dad. So I spent 1st through 5th grades in a rock and roll vacuum in the DOD schools in the Philippines. We moved every two years or so after that.

 

In 8th grade, my dad stopped giving me and my brother buzzcuts, and let us grow our hair out. At Satellite Beach, at PAtrick Air Force Base where my dad retired, I met a couple guitarists who were into Rush big time, as well as Zeppelin and Dungeons and Dragons.

 

It was when Moving Pictures was released. I remember thinking Alex Lifeson was a genius musician. A couple years later, I bought my first stereo system, a used "quadrophonic" record player. My first ever albums:

 

Rush -- Hemispheres

Rush -- Exit Stage Left

The Police -- Synchronicity

Def Leppard -- Pyromania

Hall and Oates -- some album with a diner on it (don't know why I bought this)

 

I absolutely loved Pyromania, and rocked out to it every day. But the Rush albums held a spell on me that remains unbroken to this day.

[onthebeam]

Fall 1975, I was 17 when I ordered Caress of Steel from Columbia House on 8-Track based on the write-up.Put it in and during the Necromancer I knew at that moment that this was it, and I never looked back. I bought 2112 the week it was released, and I've been there the first day on every new release since then. Life changing event is an understatement.

[Stormtron]

I started getting into music at around 8 or 9. Back then I really liked rock and rap...Metallica, Aerosmith, GNR, Queen, Ice Cube, NWA, etc. I wasn't as into Rush back then but I liked Tom Sawyer and had Chronicles (double cassette ftw). Truthfully, I was probably more into rap as a kid, but I liked that I could play my rock tapes out loud in front of my mom. In the late 90s I started revisiting some older music and that's when Rush started creeping up as my favorite. Since then I've listened to a ridiculous amount of Rush, far more than any other band, and I've never gotten tired of it. Even after all this time my favorites are still changing...SHOUT OUT TO HEMISPHERES.

[Super25Smasher]

I discovered Tom Sawyer when I was 14. I really liked it. Later that year, someone recommended 2112. I got both Moving Pictures and 2112, and couldn't stop listening to them. I then got everything else they made.

[canadianice]

I was 16 (76') and heard Caress Of Steel (8 track) in a friends car. Not long after that I went with another mutual friend to the record store to purchase my first album ever. I bought the two he suggested to get me started. ATWAS and Sad Wings Of Destiny. Nuff said... :)

You old fart!!!!!

Guilty as charged...

lol, me too!

[gudbuytjane]

I grew up in the heart of Rush-land during their rise--Neil was born in the town I grew up in--so I remember "Fly By Night" and "Closer To The Heart" on the radio. To give context, the Laura Secord show on R40? I don't remember Rush being on it, but I remember that TV show. I don't remember any of my sisters having Rush albums back then, though, and it probably wasn't until Exit... Stage Left that I recall any Rush being around the house. A friend at school's older brother had all of the albums, and I started listening to them when I was over visiting. I seem to remember recording all of the albums up to that point onto cassette tapes. Later in the 1980's, when you couldn't get Rush CDs in Canada yet I picked up copies of the Mercury CDs while shopping in Niagra Falls, New York, and sneaked them back into the country! :) Edited May 7, 2015 by gudbuytjane

[Syrinx]

In high school - first lp - Working Man and In the Mood

[CaressMySteel]

I don't remember the exact first time I heard Rush. Too young I suppose, but I do remember listening to 2112 on vinyl. My brothers were playing it. We had one of those lights that would light up different colors and pulse to the beat of the music. We turned off the lights and listened to 2112 in the dark with just that colored light flashing. This was probably 1979.

You guys remember these things?

http://3.bp.blogspot...Electronics.jpg

 

OH man I remember those ! I got to get me some . Were they called light organs or something like that.

something like that. Some stereos in the 70's starting coming with them in the console. Really cool.

[Bard]

Yup, it was Tom Sawyer on good old FM radio that first alerted me to Rush.

[blueschica]

I do. The first Rush song I remember hearing was Fly By Night in the seventies. Quickly followed by Closer To The Heart. It was most unfortunate that the NYC FM disc jockeys chose that song to represent AFTK. The song wasn't enough to make me want to hear more.

 

It wasn't until Moving Pictures that I sat up and took notice of Rush.

 

My experience was very similar to Lorraine's. I grew up in Pittsburgh and Rush got radio time but I don't remember them being as big in the 70's there as say, Kansas. I then moved to Colorado and it was Moving Pictures and Limelight that made me a die hard fan and then I sought out the rest.

 

I didn't go to Rush's first concert with Neil in Pittsburgh but weirdly, I remember it really well! :) I realized that when I saw On The Lighted Stage with the Uriah Heep interviews. My good friend Rose had moved to Pgh from Britain, we were both 15, and she was a total Uriah Heep fan and planning for us both to attend their big August 1974 Pittsburgh concert! Still remember that week and our clothes (but ask me what I had for breakfast . . . ) Shortly beforehand, parents made some kind of conflicting vacation plans and it didn't work out. It was so disappointing! Still is! :)

Edited May 7, 2015 by blueschica

[Jaminbenb]

Fall 1975, I was 17 when I ordered Caress of Steel from Columbia House on 8-Track based on the write-up.Put it in and during the Necromancer I knew at that moment that this was it, and I never looked back. I bought 2112 the week it was released, and I've been there the first day on every new release since then. Life changing event is an understatement.

 

I actually ended up getting that on 8-track a little while later because I had a portable 8-Track player (and no way to record my own at the time) and wanted to have that accessible! (I also had Kansas Point of Know Return, Sweet Level Headed and Foghat Live at the time)

[ILSnwdog]

It was the summer of 1943, in Sicily. We had just driven the Nazi's out. A beautiful Italian woman was playing something on her Victrola. It was side two of Signals. I was immediately smitten by what I heard, and I bought every Rush album when I returned stateside in 1945. :D

[Fat Stick]

This one time, when I was in band camp...

[Fat Stick]

My wife turned me on to 2112 in 1976 when we were dating in high school.

 

We lost contact in 1977 when my family moved to the west coast in 77' and her family moved to Asia same year.

Got reconnected in 2007 and married.

 

Since then we have been to every tour together. (twice for VT, and 3 times for CA)

 

LONG story, and we really should write a book about it.

[WIDE-ANGLE WATCHER]

It was 1977....I was thirteen.

I was spinning vinyl with a lot of Black Sabbath, AC/DC and Judas Priest.

My friend bought ATWAS and said "Hey, you've got to come hear this..it's freaky good". I think we played Anthem first....

I was blown away...It was so heavy, but really not like any of the heavy metal I was listening to. Then after hearing that live version of By-Tor, I knew that Rush was unlike any else I'd ever heard.

I went and bought 2112 the next day and now at 51 yrs. old and 25 shows seen, Rush (and Yes) have been extremely influential in my bass playing and in my life.

[Pale Facsimile]

As I grew up in the '90s, I'd started out with Queen and then moved onto Metallica, Green Day, and a lot of the popular rock acts of the time...Pearl Jam, Blues Traveler, Smashing Pumpkins, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, etc. Metallica was my favorite, and while I'd listened to a lot of classic rock, my knowledge of Rush amounted to "the guys on the radio with the high voice that do 'Freewill'." Fast-forward to May, 2005. My friend Mike (best friend from college; he'd just graduated, I'd graduated the previous year in 2004) and I took a road trip to my parents' summer cottage on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, Canada. (Interestingly, Neil has actually stayed in this exact cottage when he and Brutus visited in 1996...he doesn't mention the cottage, but he briefly mentions the visit in his NW&S entry about the Clockwork Angels show in Halifax...the lady who owns the other cottages in the group rents ours out when we're not there.) Anyway, during our 2005 stay, Mike and I had planned to have a big cookout on the deck for Victoria Day. Well, a spring storm made its way across the island, bringing wind and rain. So, we retreated inside, got a nice roaring fire going, did up some burgers...and MIke said "I'm going to get you into RUSH." Well, we started with Chronicles, and worked our way through most of the catalog afterward. Quite simply, the boys had me at "Yeah, ohhhh YEAH!"

 

Since then, I've gotten to see RUSH 8 times (once with Mike, in my hometown of Syracuse in 2010), with three more scheduled for R40. My final show of the three will be in Portland, Oregon, on Geddy's side in Row 9 (non-VIP!), with Mike right by my side. I can't think of a better way to end my live RUSH experience.

[GW2]

It was either late May or early June 1982. I was a freshman in high school and about 30 of us from school bused it up to Knoxville for the World's Fair. Now, up until that time I had really only listened to Top 40 music on the radio--I always made sure to hear Casey Kasem's American Top 40 every weekend--so the music I was exposed to was average at best.

 

All the way up to Tennessee and back to Florida, I think the guy that brought the boombox only had two cassette tapes with him. One was Van Halen because we must have heard Eruption and You Really Got Me about 500 times. But the other songs I heard (and payed attention to) had some guy with a very high pitched voice singing about invisible airwaves, concert halls, lotus land and choosing to decide.

 

When I got back home my dad told me he just singed up for the Columbia House music club (12 for a penny) and asked me if I wanted a couple....of 8-tracks! Turned out he had an 8-track player that worked but he didn't have any 8-tracks to play on it. So, my first copies of Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures were on 8-track. The solo for Freewill started on track 1, faded out, then started again on track 2.

 

That's what started my now 33 year love affair with the music of Rush.

[Fat Stick]

LOL... I remember joining Colombia House. Several times.

 

I used to get reel-to-reel, 8 track, and of course vinyl.

 

Still have most of them too :codger:

[Geddy's Soul Patch]

Rush's music cradles my soul. It's my go to comfort music. Sometimes you just need a little Rush Therapy :smoke: