Remembering Peart: A Show of Hands and Visa Bands

A memorial post for Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist for Rush, as well as some discussion on their live album A Show of Hands (1988).

Relevant posts

I did a text series a few years ago on Rush’s entire studio catalog. Start here.  

Flashback to the Oughts: 2002

Music often connects to experience in strange, sometimes unpredictable ways, and its capacity to become vividly associated with times and places is, I feel, a given. In this blog, I have recently referred to these flashes of recollection that arise when listening to music from one’s past as “memory episodes,” but I don’t know that I have ever clearly defined what that means or why I think that it happens. As an organizing principle of this series in particular, it seems like that is an oversight worth addressing.

One could argue that recorded music is a phenomenological abomination. A recording tears music from the musical act and flattens it, which results in only half of a full experience for the listener. I theorize that when we listen to recorded music, the untethered aspects of the musical experience latch on to the things we are feeling, thinking, and doing as we listen. Later, if this tethering is strong enough, listening to music can trigger recollections through this association.  As I reconstructed 2002 for this best-of list, my memory episodes were somewhat painful to travel through.



This was the year that I experienced the end of a marriage and desperately sought out a new path for myself.  As a result, my recollections are a jumbled mess of crushing sorrow, indulgent escapism, and, later in the year, self-discovery tinted with desperation.

10. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven: My introduction to the problematic sub-genre “post-rock” also served as the soundtrack to my inner struggle with a friend’s suicide. Its melancholic mood swings still bring back sadness and rage.

9. Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head: Before they became pigeonholed as the darlings of the new adult contemporary, Coldplay resonated with me as a reinterpretation of what was once good about U2. A Rush of Blood to the Head is brimming over with well-crafted melodies and arrangements.

8. Oysterhead - The Grand Pecking Order: Although the material on the album felt a little slipshot at times, listening to Stewart Copeland lock into a groove with Les Claypool made the whole thing worthwhile. Thanks to the influence to Trey Anastasio, The Grand Pecking Order also marks the beginnings of Claypool’s interest in the jam band format, and laid the seeds for his current work with Sean Lennon.

7. Brendan Benson - Lapalco: Benson followed up his criminally good One Mississippi debut with the merely excellent Lapalco. Jason Falkner’s co-writing presence firmly adjoins Benson to the Jellyfish Family Tree.

6. Glass Hammer - Chronometree: A self-aware and somewhat satirical concept album about the pitfalls of reading too much into concept albums. Glass Hammer has made many recordings since this cautionary tale, but it remains my favorite.

5. Happy the Man - Crafty Hands: For a time this year, I was so emotionally devastated that I could barely listen to music with lyrics without twisting their meaning to suit my addiction to self-pity. This mostly instrumental release was in rotation a lot during that time, and actually served to later inspire me to play the Stick, even though there is no Stick on the album.

4. Rush - Vapor Trails: After a significant hiatus, Rush returned to the studio and produced Vapor Trails, which was a great improvement upon its predecessor Test for Echo. Although the album was slightly uneven as a whole, the band’s playing and concept was stronger than ever.

3. Spock’s Beard - Snow: Neal Morse’s final album with Spock’s Beard ended up being a career-defining rock opera with no small amount of religious overtones. Like any rock opera, Snow has its share of filler, but by and large the material is so amazing and is executed with such exhilarating chemistry that this shortcoming can be easily overlooked.

2. Peter Gabriel - Up: In retrospect, there is the nagging sense that parts of this album seemed geared toward radio airplay. These moments are fleeting, however, revealing Gabriel to be at a creative zenith in terms of orchestration and arrangement.

Album of the Year 2002

1. Porcupine Tree - In Absentia: After the relatively polished songwriting approach that Porcupine Tree had been operating with since Stupid Dream, In Absentia represented the first step in a heavier direction. While the guitar riffs were thicker than before, there was no loss of the nuanced melody and texture that had come to be the band’s trademark.

The Year in Rush Part 10: The Neapolitan Power of the Three

At twenty albums in, and with CDs quickly becoming a thing of the past, how many more opportunities would I have to pluck a new Rush album from a record store shelf? Realistically, not too many, but I unselfishly left that honor to the Little One, who, just days away from being 10 months old, was on my hip as I entered Waterloo Records. I let her pick out a copy (with some encouragement) and she carried it for me to the checkout. Considering the smugly aloof experience I had with the Waterloo staff last year when I bought the new Yes album, I was wondering what kind of reaction I might get when she plopped Clockwork Angels on the checkout counter. This time, I escaped without incident, but I heard snippits of discussion between a group of staff members from across the aisles of the store:

“The new Rush is out…….”

“Neapolitan ice cream?”

“You’re out of control!”

There was a perceptibly snarky undertone to this exchange, but I didn’t really care. Rush showed up at a crucial time in my musical and social development, and the unified persona of artistic excellence and ambition that the Geddy, Alex, and Neil strove for as a unit served as a role model for me. They have been, as I stated at the beginning of this project, “my” band ever since. Nothing that the hipster crew could do or say would ever be able to dislodge that.

Like most fans, I was already somewhat familiar with Clockwork Angels. The first two tracks were released as digital “singles” over a year ago and were also included in the setlist of last year’s Time Machine tour. The rest of the album was written and recorded while the band was engaged in this tour, which is a unique setting for Rush’s recent compositional process. For several decades, the material on their albums was written as the band was coming off a break and preparing for a tour, and Lee once lamented that their albums did not always capture the song's live rendering. Because it was recorded while the band was actively touring, however, I think Clockwork Angels more accurately captures Rush’s trademark live energy.



Unlike many fans, however, I resisted the temptation to examine these tracks too closely. As a single, Caravan, with its twisting time changes and exploratory structure, seemed a bit confounding, but as the lead track to Rush’s first concept album, it’s an explosive opening statement. Arguably, all of Rush’s albums are conceptual, but not since the long-form songs of the 70s has the band tackled the idea of a story with character development and a climax, and they never did so in the full-album format. Peart is in his wheelhouse when he can employ a story as a vehicle, too, especially one with the descriptive richness of Clockwork Angels' steampunk-inspired imagery.

As usual on Tuesday, I later went to the dojo. I make no secret of my Rush zealotry amongst my fellow aikido practitioners, and before I had my shoes off, a person asked if I had heard the local radio promo that Waterloo Records had released for “new music Tuesday.” The spot posited that if Rush in the 70s was vanilla, and 80s Rush was chocolate, and in the 90s they were strawberry, then the new album was "Neapolitan ice cream."  The cryptic secret explained!

As flippant as this description is, in a superficial way it’s pretty fair. Rush’s recent predilection for mining their own repertoire as a repository for inspiration is more pronounced than ever, and is skillfully navigated on Clockwork Angels. The incendiary, muscular riffing of 2112 and Caress of Steel coexists with the focused, driving intensity of Signals, unified under the melodic emphasis and consistency of Counterparts. Even more exciting than watching these flavors bleed together is the comeback of the instrumental excursion. In the past, these gave Rush’s songs a sense of exploration and return, and that is excitingly recaptured  on Clockwork Angels.



Longtime Rush fans are usually prepared for some sort of reinvention of the band when a new album is released.  Clockwork Angels, however, musically encapsulates the bands history in a way that embraces, rather than challenges, their identity.  It sounds like Rush at their most memorable, which, at this stage in their career, seems to be an artistically gratifying path, not to mention a strategically smart one.  Fans that have felt disconnected from some of Rush's more stylistically jarring experiments in recent decades can jump back on board, while new fans don't have to understand their entire career to get where they are trying to say.

There is, of course, the danger of empty nostalgia in a situation like this, and there is, admittedly, a nostalgic aspect to the album, but it creates a tone of familiarity for the band's further progression.  In fact, although Clockwork Angels would be a shining end to Rush's long, engaging career, its exuberance makes me confident that "my" band still has outstanding work ahead of them.

To see the previous post in this series, click here.
To start over at the beginning, click here.

The Year in Rush Part 9: New Uses of Space and Time

As Rush’s timeline lengthened, the distance between their releases got wider and wider, but it wasn’t filled with empty space. In the six years leading up to Vapor Trails, Peart worked through an emotional burden that could have ended his career, an ordeal that is best recounted in his own words. My world radically changed in this gap, as well. The band I was playing in broke up, I graduated, began teaching in public schools, got married, and was subsequently divorced. I was a much different person by the time Vapor Trails was released in 2002. When it was announced, I was, of course, elated, but also skeptical. I had six years to get used to the idea that Rush was done, and after leaving on what I saw as a particularly low note in their catalog, I was uneasy about their return.

Vapor Trails, however, ended up being a compelling entry into Rush's canon. It is, admittedly, a casualty in the “loudness war” that producers were waging in the 00s, but that doesn’t hide the strengths of its distinctive compositional approach. Rush was focusing on creating a singular, synergistic sound to support Peart’s lyricsm, which now carried a noticeable emotionalism borne of experience. There were few guitar solos and noticeably dense chordal bass work from Lee. Traditional structures like choruses and verses were downplayed in favor of a more egalitarian flow from one musical idea to the next.

Most often, this approach worked. The overwhelming majority of the songs on Vapor Trails are gripping, and in some cases, the album’s cacophonous production enhances the vital drive that is a key element to Rush’s finest work. I find the explosive stabs of noise in Peaceable Kingdom to be particularly electrifying.


When they began their support tour, however, the issues of production melted away, and the band’s characteristic energy emerged. When I saw them on this tour, and the ones that followed throughout the decade, I felt that not only were they playing better than ever, but the quality of their sound continued to improve exponentially, as if stage sound had finally caught up to what they had been doing in the studio since the late 70s.

Although many of my memory episodes connected to previous Rush albums were of the people that I shared the actual listening experience with, their post – 2000 material brings contemporaneous experiences as a music teacher to the surface. Vapor Trails, for example, will always remind me of moving percussion equipment around the campus of Texas State University during All-State Solo and Ensemble contest in 2002. Additionally, the cultural impact of Guitar Hero had a positive influence on Rush’s relevance, and I sometimes engaged in critical discussions with students about Rush’s newer releases. In 2006 I went so far as to assign one of my jazz band drummers, who was musically studious but academically ineligible, to write a written review of Peart’s playing on Snakes and Arrows.

He pointed out, quite correctly, that overall, Snakes and Arrows has a noticeably relaxed feel. More subtly, however, the prominent appearance of the "Hemispheres chord" in the introduction of Far Cry indicates an intentional move to evoke nostalgia for the devoted fan, a strategy that extends into the song’s attendant video, as well as the album as a whole.



Although in some ways, Rush was self-sampling on Snakes and Arrows, their relaxed and confident playing is also reified in the album’s formatting. It is a unique mélange of songs and freestanding instrumentals that is unprecedented in the band’s catalog. Some of these tracks are quite short. In the distant past, these tidbits would have found their way into Rush’s extended work as connective tissue between larger ideas, but on Snakes and Arrows they find a life of their own as standalone compositions. 



As Rush and I grew up together, I often wondered how they would be able to maintain their intensity in a believable way as the years passed. Snakes and Arrows is a perfect example of what a mature version of the band I loved since I was a teen would sound like. More than any other album it is a culmination of everything Rush had done up to the point of its release. Its intensity is tempered by an unperturbed self-assurance that kept my passion for the band alive as a devout, if cautious, fan.

This fervor makes tomorrow a particularly exciting day, then, because Rush’s newest album, Clockwork Angels, is going to be released. There is the opportunity to hear nearly this entire album online, but I have tried to keep myself in the dark as much as possible to preserve the experience. Of course, my willpower has cracked a couple of times, and what I have heard has only whetted my appetite. The final entry for this project will be a review of Clockwork Angels, and I hope that I can be patient enough with myself to reserve judgment until the excitement of new Rush material dies down – just a little.

The previous post in the series is right here.
The next, and last (?) post is here.

The Year in Rush Part 8: Reflecting on the Alternative

In the 90s, the password was "alternative" - a music category that represented a shift in ideology rather than in style. In the years during and after Nirvana’s popularity this term was repurposed and widened by the music press to promote the heavier sounds of bands like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. When these grunge bands started to hit the airwaves it was apparent, at least to me, that a generation of musicians raised on the fiery riffs of 2112 were finally assuming control.

Still, there was an inexplicable stigma that went along with being a Rush fan during the 90s.  I remained loyal, but I harbored a secret hope that the band might find inspiration in this wave of overdriven guitars and thunderous drums and go for a more vintage sound. I was nothing short of elated when the Carlos Casteneda book I was reading on the job as a bowling alley pin boy was interrupted by the dissonant riffing of Stick it Out.



In the media, however, the generation gap between Rush and their younger grunge contemporaries was impassable.  Ever on the ready to bash the band, the music press criticized Counterparts for jumping on the "alternative" bandwagon when it was released in 1993, a position that I find laughable. Even at the height of their popularity, Rush had never been a mainstream act. In my book, they were always and already the alternative.

In any case, Counterparts was, and is, easily their best album since Power Windows, perhaps even since Moving Pictures, depending on the degree of synth bias you, the listener, harbor.  It carries the succinct songwriting fingerprint of their early 90s work, but also has the vitality and adventurousness that attracted me to the band in the first place. It was also their most consistent release in a very long time. There were no tracks to merely tolerate, because even the weakest tracks on the album were actually tear-jerkingly good.



I saw Counterparts as an artistic comeback for Rush and a return to form that I hoped would gain momentum as their career progressed.  Even today, I count is as one of Rush's finest albums, and probably their most underrated.

Three years after its release, however, I was disappointed with its successor Test for Echo. Although the album retained the heavier sound of its predecessor, and incorporated some use of non-standard song forms, overall it just seemed forced. For the first time, I began to consider the possibility that perhaps Rush’s best work was actually behind them.

The most surprising flaw of the album was, uncharacteristically, Peart’s lyrics. After his revealing take on interpersonal relationships on Counterparts, Test for Echo seemed aloof and removed. This did very little, however, to tame his playing, which he was famously reworking under the tutelage of jazz drummer Freddie Gruber.

Now I admit that by 1996, I had pretty much given up on progressive rock and was delving into the artistic potentials of power pop. Listening back to Test for Echo today, I think that perhaps my initial judgment was a bit harsh and shaped by my tastes (and peers) at the time.  Although it lacks the consistency and confidence of Counterparts, it does have some standout moments in terms of musicianship and studio craft.



Even though Test for Echo was uneven, it ended up playing an important role in Rush's longevity.  For nearly thirty years, Rush kept regenerating based on the music that Lee, Lifeson, and Peart were listening to at the time, but these late 90s albums were different.  Counterparts brought the band's broad influence on music in general to light, but Test for Echo was self-referential.  Its most obvious inspiration was culled from the vast catalog of music that Rush had generated since their inception, and less from external sources.  This was a new perspective that would successfully reinvigorate the band after a series of personal events would put them on an unfortunate hiatus for over five years.  

To go back to the previous post in the series, click here. 

The next entry is here.

The Year in Rush Part 7: Focus on the Song

I took the first few steps in my music education degree while living in the ad hoc “music dormitory” at UNT, Bruce Hall. Although I was a pretty active musician for a high school kid, this was an entirely different environment with a ridiculously high level of musicianship. There was also an unfortunate bouquet of jazz snobbery that, as an insecure freshman, was hard to ignore. With a world-class 18 year-old bassist across the hall warming up on Portrait of Tracy every day, it felt a bit bourgeois to examine Presto too closely.  A self-taught garage band bassist like me seemed to have no place, so my playing relationship with Lee abruptly ended late in 1989. The last passage in Rush's catalog I learned was the bass break at 3:15 in Show Don't Tell.



Rush generally conceived their work was as "instrumentals with words,” but in the 90s, they made a concerted effort to hone their effectiveness as songwriters,  This had a noticeable effect on the energy of their music. Show Don’t Tell notwithstanding, if you look at Presto in terms of the flash and bang of their previous work, overall, it doesn't seem to add up. For example, Rush consistently cites The Pass as one of their favorite songs. Certainly, I loved it when it came out, but I found its relatively laid-back energy and circumspect melancholy perplexing. Seeing it performed live on the Presto tour, however, was revealing for both the song and the album as a whole.


I eventually became a staunch advocate of Presto, although I admit that I was confused by some of Rush's musical choices on the album. The title track from next album, Roll the Bones, was also controversial amongst their fan base for its infamous spoken-word “rap” section. Time has allowed me to appreciate this experiment, but the mohawk-endowed skull from the video is still a bit cringe-worthy.

Rush's endeavors to become songwriters in the 90s did not transform  them into a power pop group, but on Roll the Bones, it did result in a more radio-friendly sound. Although their intention to simplify for the sake of accessibility sometimes felt a little forced, there are tracks when Rush’s cleverness lends itself incredibly well to pop songwriting.

Roll the Bones also recaptured some of the vigor that characterized Rush's streamlined trio sound, which I missed on their previous releases. When the album came out in 1991, I had moved downstairs and around the corner into a room at the base of a stairwell, and I was much more confident, perhaps even a bit brash, about my identity in our little community. I vividly remember bringing he album home from the Sound Warehouse store on Fry Street and, putting my oversized stereo speakers in the doorway, defiantly flooding the halls with the crackling energy of Dreamline.

It’s important to note that from here on out, things seem to change for Rush quickly in retrospect because the pace of their output began to slow. Up until the mid-80s, they released an album virtually every year. In the 90s, they averaged two or three years between albums. The inspiration behind the changes in their sound became more difficult to track, and I think that the gap between their studio-influenced compositions and their live persona resulted in some inconsistencies. The albums from this period may not have won Rush any new fans, but they are still stronger releases than the best albums of the majority of early 90s bands.

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The Year in Rush Part 6: Wake Up and Look Around

Because we were all bussed across town, there was a well-established tradition of carpooling among my fellow high school band members.  By the first week of summer band my freshman year I was already catching a ride with several other band students from my neighborhood. The driver and her boyfriend were unrelenting Rush fans, so when Power Windows was released later that year, it was a daily listen for several months. This was where I was first exposed to Rush, and although it wasn't the kind of teenage epiphany that is usually associated with the backs of cars, it was no less life-changing

Still today, nearly thirty years since its release, I insist that Power Windows is Rush’s finest artistic moment. In my eyes, it is where their musical intensity, atmospheric awareness, compositional strength, conceptual clarity, production value, and technical skill all peaked. The presence of synthesizers and sequencers is admittedly pronounced, but Lifeson's guitar cuts through like a surgeon's scalpel. To me, one of the most sublime and moving instrumental moments in the entirety of Rush's career is when his guitar roars out of the percussively agitated stillness during The Big Money's instrumental excursion.



I am fully aware that the album is shot though with sedimented layers of nostalgia, but Power Windows still brings a tear to my eye. I can accept that from some perspectives, there are more musically impressive albums in my collection, but none are more influential on me personally. It was a jarring wake-up call that illuminated a worldview beyond my immature middle school experience, bringing to light profound issues that I had only passively considered.



In the next three years, with my Reganomics-era minimum wage capital and the freedom of a 10 speed bike, I bought Rush’s entire back catalog. By 1987, I could perform a reasonable facsimile of most of their songs on bass. When Hold Your Fire came out late in that year, however, it challenged my idea of what Rush was. As a diligent fan that yearned to reproduce their songs with my garage band compatriots, its synth-laden and relatively mellow soundscape was somewhat hard to swallow.

I came to appreciate its nearly symphonic expansiveness, but even in retrospect, I think that Hold Your Fire was when Rush’s synth interests threatened to overtake their identity. Still, the distinctive instrumental voice that Rush began to cultivate on the 2112 Overture is evident. Anyone who has seen Rush play Mission in a live setting will attest that its inspired lyrics, orchestral texture, virtuosic musicianship, integrated use of technology, and brilliant instrumental bridge retread all of Rush's various musical paths in a familiar yet novel way.



Looking back, these albums served as bookends to my high school years, and bound me to a group of people that were equally attracted to the way that Rush spoke to them like adults rather than children. As this time drew to a close for me in 1989, I knew that life was about to change forever, and Time Stand Still served as a frame around my senior year. Admittedly, nostalgic feelings about a song about nostalgia may subvert any argument about the song's strength, but in any case, this track holds a special meaning for me.



Regardless, as inspirational as it was at the time, I secretly took exception to Aimee Mann’s backup.  Today, of course, I see it integral to the song, but back then her appearance was confusing. Was she in the band? Would she go on tour with them? It seemed that Rush was beginning to change, which was nothing new, but this time it was “my” Rush that was changing.  As devoted as I was to the band, I was a bit conflicted as to how that made me feel.

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The Year in Rush Part 5: The Advent of the Synth

In the 70s, Rush was fascinated with the conventions of progressive rock and became a defining force in the genre by sheer force of will.  In the 80s, the smart, direct style of bands like The Police and The Talking Heads exerted a similar influence. Rush's deference for the music around them did not result in obvious reinventions, but some dramatic changes in their sound were certainly generated by their interests in the artistic successes of these new wave bands.

Integrating new technologies into their music also contributed to Rush's evolution. The band had been toying with synthesizers since 2112, but Subdivisions, the lead track from 1982's Signals, clearly announced the beginning of what I call their "synth period."



This particular era was divisive amongst Rush's more conservative fanbase. Some felt convinced that the band was selling out and losing connection with their progressive roots, but I find this prejudice troubling. Rush’s skills as open-minded music listeners proved to be a benefit to their longevity, and their interest in absorbing technological and stylistic conventions in their music was, and is, progressive in the truest sense. I do concede that there was a point in their career when the synths swallowed Lifeson’s guitar voice, but Signals is not when it happened. Lifeson’s guitar coexists and compliments Lee’s synthesizer interests when they arise, but by and large the album features some truly amazing guitar (and bass) playing.  Listen to Lifeson punish his whammy bar at the beginning of this blistering solo.

Although it is an amazing document of the band’s long career, the recent Rush documentary Beyond the Lighted Stage suffers from this anti-synth bias. The filmmakers did a respectable job of organizing live footage and interviews, particularly of the band’s early days, into a cohesive narrative, but there is a feeling that as Rush’s experimentation with synthesizers grew, the filmmaker’s interest in representing the band waned, as if these albums were somehow beneath notice.

I think that’s a tragic oversight. Rush was pushing themselves into incredibly creative territory in the 80s, and not only musically. Peart began writing lyrics that were loosely organized around a concept or theme, and by Signals, a lyric style had clearly emerged into a form that would pervade Rush’s work to the present day.  Taken as a whole, Signals is a somewhat bittersweet commentary of the friction that often exists between the expectation of society and the isolation of the individual. Grace Under Pressure, on the other hand, captures the stressful zeitgeist of the late cold war in 1984, when computers began creeping into our homes and the threat of nuclear war sent people desperately scrambling for bunkers.


Grace Under Pressure is one of Rush’s most programmatic albums. The relationship between lyrics in music in Rush's past work was relatively incidental, but Grace Under Pressure, with its further inclusion of synthesizers, sequencers, and, for the first time, electric drums, reflects the band’s intent to harness technology rather than submit to it. As a result, the album leans more in favor of a more synthetic, keyboard-driven incarnation of the band, but Rush retains their energy and fervor and adds an unexplored atmospheric depth. Anyone who has seen the band in recent tours has probably gained some respect for the power of Between the Wheels.

Although I can see how fans whose loyalties lie with Rush's more classically progressive albums might have had a had time accepting the work from their synth period, I am a staunch advocate of this era. The precision, intensity, and imagination of these albums won me over into Rush's camp.  Still, neither Signals or Grace Under Pressure had the distinction of opening the door in the first place.  That fortuitous event wouldn't happen until 1985....

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The Year in Rush Part 4: A Pivot from the Wide to the Deep

And with one very loud tick of the clock, the 70s became the 80s. Rush traded their robes for skinny ties and streamlined their sound, but still maintained an incredibly high level of musicianship and artistic integrity. Their work during the early days of this period features the last of their extended length output, although these compositions are so tightly structured and executed that they seem to suspend time. Natural Science, from their 1980 album Permanent Waves, is an enduring Rush favorite that, once initiated, cruises effortlessly from beginning to end, all the while revealing Peart's increasing success in addressing poignant, philosophically inspired concepts.



Oddly, there is very little footage of Rush specifically from 1980, but in the process of looking, I ran across this imperfect and incomplete clip of The Spirit of Radio during a soundcheck on the Permanant Waves tour. It shows the massive keyboard rig that Geddy was dragging onstage to execute what was, in retrospect, a relatively rudimentary sequence. Still, employing a sequence at all in 1980 was pretty innovative.



Listening back to The Spirit of Radio in its entirety, however, is an entirely different matter.  I am still amazed at how many ideas are folded into its relatively concise running time.

It was characteristic of Rush’s approach in the 80s to refine their sound by simultaneously expanding and contracting. Shorter songs became more prevalent, but they also became deeper in terms of composition, texture, and concept. The creativity and energy of this particular era of their work inexorably drew me into Rush's dedicated fanbase.

I was not alone.  I remember walking into the band hall as a freshman during lunch to be met by a swirling, menacing tapestry of guitar and bass, woven by a couple of upper classmen. Mesmerized, I stopped in my tracks until they sputtered to a stop, laughing. The song they were playing was Tom Sawyer, and to this day, that kaleidoscopic first exposure to the song still hangs in the air for me. Having only a small taste of Rush's catalog at the time, I was convinced that I needed to dig deeper.  Within a year, I had my own bass, and I was wearing out copy after copy of Moving Pictures, vainly attempting to learn this tune and every other bass lick Lee could throw out. Their classic no-nonsense instrumental YYZ became a two-year project.

Needless to say, I know the songs from Moving Pictures very, very well, so much so that it is difficult to free them from the layers of experience that have settled on top and listen to the album “as is” rather than “as was.” I will spare you the tempting but probably exhaustive track-by-track review.  Suffice it to say that it was awesome back then and its still awesome today.  One track that stlll seems particularly fresh, however, is Limelight. In addition to being an amazing song with a brilliantly structured instrumental section, it also contains some of Peart’s most personally revealing lyrics.



Although still defiantly experimental, by 1981 Rush had refined their sound into something relatively accessible for those who were willing to listen. Moving Pictures was the axis upon which their sprawling experimental past turned into a more succinct approach, and it represents the period of Rush’s career that I wholeheartedly bought into. While it is probably Rush’s most popular and essential album, it most certainly defined who I was and who I would become in my teenage years.  It is in a class all its own.

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The Year in Rush Part 3: The High Progressive Period

The success of 2112 brought Rush, in their own words, their “freedom,”so on the albums that followed, they fully committed to the progressive rock paradigm. While there are not any side-long suites on A Farewell to Kings, Rush’s prog-rock identity was evident in the expanded palate of sounds that pervade the album. Geddy Lee’s synth interests began to take a more significant role, with melodies being prominently featured on cutting edge Moog and Taurus technology. Peart’s drumset also expanded to include chimes, mark tree, glockenspiel, temple blocks, and a variety of orchestral percussion, turning him into a one-man percussion section.

A Farewell to Kings seems noticeably confident and clear of vision, and contains Rush’s first real success as a songwriting outfit. There have always been short-form works in Rush’s catalog, but Closer to the Heart is particularly accessible in both message and form, which has kept the song in their playlist for decades.



My memories of Rush’s early catalog generally converge on 1987 and revolve around high school events and friends from that year. For example, I went skiing for the first and only time in my life that year with a group of friends I met in band. I have not thought about this experience for many years, but I’m quite sure that I had A Farewell to Kings on a Walkman tape deck during this trip because listening back to it brought back a vivid flash of the cabin in which we were staying.

Back then, I did not fully understand the unique genius of Alex Lifeson and his role in Rush.  Lifeson accessed impressive technique in his dynamic and often blistering solos, but he always provided enough space for the rest of the bandmates to engage in their characteristic flash and bang. There is no better example of his intense, tasteful expressiveness than on the album’s centerpiece, the epic Xanadu.

My memory episode with Hemispheres is different, but no less vivid. An upper classman friend of mine, who happened to be the drum major, was very nice, cute, smart, and totally out of reach, and she would carpool some of us under classmen home. She had a jeep, and she liked to use the country roads on the outskirts of south Austin to avoid downtown traffic. I remember discussing the complex philosophical and technical virtues of Hemispheres as we rode through the countryside with the top off.

The Hemispheres suite (or more properly, Cygnus X-1 Book II, as a conceptual continuation from the last track of A Farewell to Kings) represents the pinnacle of Rush's early experimental work. Combining the science fiction and fantasy imagery from their past with the overt philosophical overtones of their future, it tells the tale of ancient Greek archetypes that fight for dominance in the fate of man. Compositionally, it is one of Rush’s most complex works, as well, and as a result it is perhaps a bit more impenetrable than 2112.

Their instrumental voice, however, which began to show its potential on the 2112 Overture, blossomed on Hemispheres, and is featured throughout the album. One of the finest instrumental moments in Rush’s entire oeuvre is the ten-minute thrill ride La Villa Strangiato. This tune got me through ear training, because I used its main riff as an internal reference for I, IV, and V throughout my first year.



The two short-form songs on Hemispheres are also important because they predict the general format that would pervade their output for years to come. Both songs are roughly four to five minutes long, with verses written around an instrumental exploration. Although The Trees is the usual representative Rush classic from Hemispheres, in recent years, I have become a strong proponent of the rhythmic power that propels Circumstances.



Hemispheres serves as the endpoint in an exploration that began on Caress of Steel. To date, they have not revisited the long-form suite as a compositional format. In fact, the majority of their output hangs in the four to five-minute range, which seems incongruous, considering their reputation for writing long songs (just ask Steven Colbert). Regardless, Hemispheres effectively ended Rush’s "high progressive" period, but also subtly predicted the band’s next arc, as they refined and streamlined their sound for the advent of the 80s.

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The Year in Rush Part 2: Evolution of the Suite

The artistic success of Fly by Night bought Rush some degree of notoriety, earning them touring collaborations with big name 70s acts like Kiss and Blue Oyster Cult. They also earned the expectation of a distinctive and challenging follow-up. Their third album, Caress of Steel, was a particularly ambitious effort, and reveals the band navigating extreme tensions. Influenced by the commercial success of their touring partners, the album features three short-form songs.  Judging by their placement at the beginning of the album, these tracks were most likely intended for the masses as "singles."



Alternatively, the band's increasing interest in progressive rock generated two long, multi-movement suites. Long-form songs are necessarily formed of multiple musical ideas, and the best ones seamlessly flow from one to another. At this point, Rush had arguably not quite mastered the compositional nuance to feature suites so prominently. For example, the side-spanning six-movement epic Fountain of Lamneth shows its seams.  It seems more like a collection of ideas than a single composition.  However, it also contains some of the most amazing performances and poignant moments on Caress of Steel. Rush’s more emotive side emerges on Movement III: No One at the Bridge when the lyrics and music converge on a particularly despondent moment in the storyline.

As adventurous as Caress of Steel was, it is probably most infamous for nearly sinking Rush's career before it really started. It did not go over well commercially, but I don’t think that it is a bad album by any means. It is probably fairly judged as one of the less cohesive entries in Rush’s catalog, and was definitely a necessary experiment in the band’s development.

The band was under record company pressure to produce a major hit or lose their backing, so 2112 was a particularly bold statement for Rush. The album opened with whooshing synthesizers, announcing a side-long, seven movement suite - a decidedly uncommercial move!   Although the Fountain of Lamneth was its equal in terms of length, the compositional strengths of 2112 made it far more coherent and masterful than its predecessor.

Movement I: Overture was a key component to this cohesion (and another manifestation of the influence of The Who - Tommy, anyone?),  It included and expanded on themes that arise throughout the long-form composition, tying them together into a truly incredible self-contained instrumental journey that also happens to introduce the listener to the entire long-form piece. The 2112 Overture also seemed to be where Rush realized the power hidden in their instrumental voice.



There are also several short-form songs after 2112, and they are all vast improvements on Caress of Steel’s “singles.” They are, admittedly, difficult to take in after 2112. Listening back to the album after quite awhile, I forgot about a couple of them. One that I did remember, however, was the song Tears, which has a mellotron-drenched texture that is unique in Rush’s catalog.

2112 was released in 1976, a mere two years after their debut, and Rush’s progress in this short time was nothing short of staggering. The band's momentum during this time generated a desire to explore and innovate that would continue throughout their career. Most fans will agree that 2112 marks the beginning of Rush’s “Golden Age.” The issue that is a matter of some debate is - when did their “Golden Age” end?

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The Year in Rush Part 1: "My" Band Takes a Quantum Leap

Of all of the bands to have adopted as my favorite, I certainly could have done worse than Rush. When I first discovered them, their music opened my ears to a kind of precision, creativity, and energy that, even today, fuels my own creative drives. I have unwaveringly followed them for decades, and their amazing longevity has produced an equally amazing catalog.

As amazing as it might be, however, it is not without its imperfections. Rush is, indeed, “my” band, but I admit that, with the same lineup producing nearly twenty albums worth of material, some albums shine brighter than others. My original idea for this long-term background project was to travel through their catalog chronologically. The downside of this approach is that I have to begin with what is perhaps some of the more infamous entries in their canon.

Their 1974 debut album, simply titled Rush, is bit of a curiosity, but for the completist it is, of course, essential.  Rush has the distinction of being the only album with original drummer John Rutsey. Rutsey, who played in the band from 69-74, was capable enough, and played an essential role in the formation of the band, but certainly did not have the ambitious technique that Rush came to be known for.  Even so, it has its place.  The foundations for every subsequent album can be heard on Rush, and the band still plays selections from this album live.  This video recently surfaced, however, showing a glimpse of what this lineup of the band was like.



I haven’t listened to Rush all the way through in many years. Early on, I saw them as a Led Zeppelin clone on this first album, but now I hear a much wider set of influences. The relationship that they have with The Who on this first album is, I think, glaringly perceptible. Geddy Lee’s admiration for John Entwhistle's aggressive bass approach is quite pronounced at this point. Also, for a band that is known for their precision, they play surprisingly loose. Especially on the psudeo-blues track Here Again, Lee and Rutsey play with a rather stilted shuffle feel while guitarist Alex Lifeson keeps it stubbornly straight.

Now, I accept that there are people that just can't get behind Rush, and for many of them the primary reason is Geddy Lee's vocal approach. Even later in their career, it can be an acquired taste. If you are one of those people, their sophomore release Fly by Night from 1975 will not win you over. Geddy's voice explodes out of the gate on the lead track Anthem, and it’s quite apparent that he's pushing his voice to, and maybe even past, its limits.  Still, the song, like the whole album, is impressively muscular and covers a respectable dynamic range.  Most noticeable is the invigorating influence of Neil Peart as he hybridizes Buddy Rich's flair, Keith Moon's kinetic energy, and John Bonham's precision into a style that would send an entire generation of drummers to the practice room.
 



Fly by Night is when the Rush sound that fans know and love really began to emerge. It’s a quantum leap forward from their debut in terms of composition, precision, and sound quality. In addition to pushing the band’s musicianship, Neil Peart's lyric contributions gave the band a more serious, intellectual, and, from a certain perspective, personal tone. The album also featured By-Tor and the Snow Dog, Lifeson and Lee's first multi-movement composition, a progressive rock influence that they would continue to experiment with for the rest of the 70s.

I did not jump on board the Rush bandwagon for nearly a decade after these albums were released, so they don't really represent the version of the band that initially won me over.  Regardless, I still think that both albums are great in their own ways.  Fly by Night, in particular, has become a representative favorite of these early albums, and one that set a high standard that the band would initially have some difficulty surpassing.

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