The cause is clear. Alex went crazy with his effect pedals. The guitars were there but with even more keyboards, 40 piece orchestra and choir. I would imagine for you, a bit to freakin' much.
At least Rush went out with a good album. THE WRECKERS had become on my favorite Rush songs. To me it has the same feeling as the THE PASS. I remember playing the R40 Blu-ray and hearing the first song and thinking "Is this a new Rush song? Sounds great." I found out later it was from Clockwork Angles.
Problem. Rush is not big on demos or unfinished work being released. Maybe a CD with just Neil's best drumming parts. The DASH tapes for PW don't play but the drums were recorded to analog tape first and then dumped to DASH. They can give us a stereo (5.1) mix of just the PW drum parts. Assuming the 2 inch tape is still around.
Rush did record a whole shows from the GUP tour. As well as PW and HYF. But unfortunately not Signals. Does anybody know of a FM broadcast for a whole Signals show? If it exists then the record company must have the master. Usually......Like I said, things go missing. In 1987 every 7.5 ips tape for Chum 104.5 FM SCHOOL OF THE AIRHEAD went missing. That is 524 shows at 5 - 10 minutes each. I recorded over 100 shows to 14 bit 1/2 VHS tape transferred from my cassette tapes . So that was toast! Most of these were made with the clock radio speaker over the built in cassette recorder microphone. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the intro which was the Dragnet theme. I would fumble to get the record button on and the radio volume right. Ahhh the 1980's. The radio show came on between 7:30 and 8:00 am. Funniest thing you have ever heard. Anyway lost forever. Like I said...Things go missing.
I liked the fact that Rush has these different periods. You have the early crazy Zep Rush. Then you have the classic 1975 - 1981 Rush. And then you have the Keyboard-overblown-where-is-the orchestra-conductor- Rush 1982 -1988 period. And then you have the back to basics Rush period. Whereas AC/DC always sounds the same. Which would not be any issue if they were still turning out albums like LET THERE BE ROCK and BACK IN BLACK. The old drummer was amazing. He had finesse.
I'm too late to chime in for the 25th anniversary of this album. -- How about the 35th? I love it from top to bottom. I really didn't like it at first (just like P/G). It grew on me, however. And this is in real time ; I was fortunate enough to experience the change RUSH was going through (album-wise). After Moving Pictures it seemed harder and harder to "get into" each subsequent album. Not just because of the ever-increasing keyboard textures, but the diminishing role of Alex's guitars. In three or four years, the guitars went from "front" to "back". - That's kind of a simplistic view but ... the tide had turned. I think it's their last "vital" album, until, perhaps, Clockwork Angels. Every album between served some sort of purpose, I suppose, but all those Mercury albums are, IMHO, absolute classics (yeah, even that last-in-line "red- cover" (HYF) album).
Absolutely. It's the main reason why their music is so intriguing and involving. It's because it's consistently evolving. It still blows my mind that Signals for example, was made in well under a decade's time from Fly By Night. Maybe it didn't happen quite so dramatically anymore once Counterparts was released. There was still growth, but on a much more subtle level. From that point onward, they seemed to really make peace with their hard rock roots and those subsequent records went back to placing more emphasis on guitar in the forefront like the old days. Power chords and riffs return within the songs again. It's all such a fascinating journey they went through and took their fans along with. It's why they're the greatest. Not to get too cornball here, but it's true! But yeah, music and loyalty to specific bands can be strange and inexplicable. I also love AC/DC and Slayer, for example, who had these incredibly long and rewarding careers without changing much at all. You know what to expect to a large degree when those groups release a new album. With Rush, you didn't.
not in the past but sometimes artists soften on things like that as they get older and further removed from their old bands
I could not agree more with this entire post. I, too, love Slayer and AC/DC. For exactly the same reasons. They stood their ground.
I think I missed this thread initially too...so what the heck, I'll post now I had recorded Power Windows from a friend back in 1985, and played that cassette a ton, eventually leading to me buying a CD of my own. Loved most of it then, and I still do. The only track I tend to skip is Emotion Detector, but some days I'll play that one too. I was so happy when, on the Clockwork Angels tour, Rush brought back several PW songs into their set, especially Grand Designs and Territories. At some shows they did Middletown Dreams too, but I was not fortunate enough to see one of those gigs.....but the setlist made me call this tour the "CLOCKWORK WINDOWS" tour
Well said. I loved Roll the Bones when it was first out and still do to this day, but I was so psyched when I heard Stick It Out as the first single from Counterparts. It was the appetizer that told us, "Rush is ready to rock hard again!" I get that many tuned them out in the 80's once the synth era got rolling, but they missed out on the journey. Hell, I didn't get into them until the early 90's and it was still amazing to listen to all of those records in about a six month span given how different some of them were. Getting into Hold Your Fire around the same time as Fly by Night, and digging them both, was kind of surreal when you think about how different they are stylistically and tonally.
I agree. Not one of their very best, but it's an excellent album. And the final track "The Garden" is something of a tearjerker - a wonderful capper to a brilliant career.
It was supposed to sound like that for the reasons you stated. I think Power Windows to be sounds more clinical at times.
I don't have that book, but I think that quote leads off his Power Windows section in Contents Under Pressure.
Popoff is an 80’s Rush -keyboard hater, it’s the same old dismissive quotes in all his books, according to him it’s all over after Moving Pictures. If he wanted them to be a hard rock band, he should go listen to Motörhead or AC/DC. Could you imagine critics saying Genesis shouldn’t be using keyboards or synths? Jeez. Moving Pictures also features keyboards and synths and was recorded in the 80’s by the way.
I'm pretty sure that's where the 2015 McGee masters came from. Everything that was salvageable has already been transferred in Rush's case.
That was just the masters, which I’m sure were backed up ages ago, hopefully in multiple formats. I’m talking about the multitrack tapes for a 5.1 mix.
Other than Geddy’s 21st century vocal decline, multiple live versions of the same Rush songs basically sound the same to me. Although I’d love to see them do a cherry-picked live album focusing on the songs that didn’t make 70’s-90’s live albums (“Superconductor,” “Half the World,” etc). I have bootlegs but it’d be cool to have something official...sort of a companion piece to the first four live albums.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of Rush. I think they'd make my top-10 rock bands of all time. But Power Windows? Not a big fan. I love Signals and Grace Under Pressure before it, and Hold Your Fire after it, yet with Power Windows it never struck that internal chord within me. Still, I'm glad we have it. There are a lot of people who enjoy it, so its existence makes the musical-world better for being here. That's my new stance for any music that I don't care for, because it's the truth.
Most of them sound different to me. Closer To The Heart being an obvious example in recent years. Bravado is another one. La Villa Strangiato....
