Your favourite Rush albums?

BTW, though I have a wide range of musical interests, pgaulke60 managed to put together a list of music that, for the most part, makes me gag.  Yuck!

If there is a more mindnumbingly boring music than early Springsteen, I can't think of it.  Santana - most overrated "guitar God" of all time. Rolling Stones?  Wake me when they're done.
My idea of hell, though, would be the music of Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy piped in all day long.  I'd be begging for the flames instead.

But, hey...that's the subjectivity of musical taste for ya....:)

As a once-Rush fanatic growing up, that's a tough question.

But I think I have to go with Hemispheres.  That's when I'd got in to Rush most deeply and it's their most complexly layered, ambitious stuff.  I had so many nights with the old headphones on just being immersed in the world of Hemispheres.   It's still the case that if I put that first side on, I can't help but sit through the whole thing.

If I had to choose a favorite individual Rush song it would probably be Xanadu - the music, the lyrics, the playing, the modulation....that song is just a trip I always love to go on.

I'm in what seems to be the majority who didn't care for anything beyond, say, exit stage left.  I did enjoy some of Signals, but they had started off on their other trajectory by then and it just didn't grab me.I found virtually all the albums afterward that I heard (even in parts) seemed to lack the amazing hooks of all their albums up through Moving Pictures.  They always managed to make their music "hooky" not in the sense of "pop music-like" (though they did have some hooky songs), but rather in the sense of memorable vocal lines, music changes, and memorable riffs by all 3 guys.  For me they had the "dried up band" sound after that, ESPECIALLY when it came to the late 80's/90's onward.  Yeah...they still produced some albums with some great energy, but to my ears, nothing that sounded remotely memorable.  Geddy's singing was just modulation over the music, nothing memorable, and the music also was just sort of moving here and there with nothing sticking out.   I can remember virtually every Peart/Lee/Lifeson part on every song up to Signals...beyond that...nothing stuck.

My friends and I "progressed" beyond Rush and prog rock to "Fusion" (jazz/rock) that had become bigger, and also "real jazz" and then on to a wide array of musical influences.  That was the "I'm sort of embarrassed to ever have been so in to Rush" phase, and "jeeze prog rock...remember that? "  Kind of squeamish looking back on it, because music was still one's identity, and if you wanted a new identiy you had to shed/reject the old one.

Thank goodness for maturity later in life.  Now that I'm a middle-aged fart, I"m not rebelling against the last thing I liked, I have no particular demands of musical progress, and so it's been an absolute BLAST revisiting Rush.   It feels like I can fully appreciate them again, with something near the enthusiasm I had when I was a young Rush fan.And damn, those vinyl remasters are killer!  I'd had various albums on digital but rarely played them.  When I got the vinyl remasters it was a revelation: Rush sounded like Rush again, but perhaps even better.

So, I'm a Rush fan again.  With no apologies!

tonykay,

Did you not read the circumstances causing Peart to be late?  Weather problems and unforseen issues that you aren't aware of, and the problem with the telegram.  That isn't 'arrogant," that's someone missing a show he wanted to play!

Rush is known for their dedication to fans - one of the hardest working bands of all time and that was an anomaly amongst a record showing great professionalism and dedication.

Given this context it's silly to declare the situation was due to "arrogance."

@n80

I agree.
But I mean it in a nice way :)

My father-in-law listens strictly to classical music. To his ears, pretty much all other music, especially any popular modern music, is only fit to be played by "cavemen dancing around a fire." (His words).


I won’t be turning him on to EDM any time soon. But that’s ok, I don’t need his permission to like it, or Rush....

Everything I wrote was, of course, purely a reflection of my subjective opinion.

The guaranteed way to look like a fool is to go beyond one’s own opinion to make objective claims in pronouncing some music "good" or "bad."

Virtually every classic piece of music, or any musical style, had someone somewhere declaring it to be of no worth and "will not last."

Peart does have a reputation of being stand-offish.  But he, and people close to him, insist this is as you say, a misconception about why this is so.

But there's a big difference between being a privacy-loving person who isn't comfortable jawing with fans, and not being a pro when it comes to actually performing for the fans.  Peart is clearly a pro.

tonykay

You may as well have written "it doesn’t matter where Peart was, he should have been in control of the weather so he could arrive on the scheduled time."

Everyone "should be" at work on time all things being equal.

But not all things are equal.

You do understand that we live in a world where not everything is under our control, right?

Every airplane, boat, or even rocket launch "should" happen or arrive on time. But there’s this little thing called "The Weather" - among many other possible influences, that can make achieving good intentions impossible.

If you have somehow managed to predict every possible weather condition, and every other chain of causation such that you’ve never been delayed by anything in your life, time to write a book about it and become a millionaire. Until then, your critique of the Neil Peart situation seems rather petty.


You’ve also ignored that Peart managed to actually get another flight which would get him there on time, but since his telegram didn’t make it to the organizers they couldn’t know he’d be there on time, so they cancelled the show.

Upon encountering difficulties Peart DID everything he could to get to the show on time, but of course he was not in control of the weather, or of telegrams getting lost.

You may have the opinion that the show was cancelled due to Peart’s "arrogance" and indifference to the fans, but given the evidence of Rush’s track record as dedicated pros, and the details given of what happened, well, some opinions are sillier than others. :)

I can’t take Geddy’s singing from the last...what is it...10, 15 years?...where he’d lost his old vocal dexterity and no longer does the high notes. Even within his lowered vocal range I found his voice to be a hard-to-listen-to strained gargle. Especially the later live performances. Egad! A real bummer and pretty much rules out Rush music of that era for me.