Rush Album by Album, Song By Song

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by mark winstanley, Jan 11, 2020.

  1. Cheevyjames

    Cheevyjames Forum Resident

    Location:
    Graham, NC
    By-Tor and the Snow Dog

    It took me a few years to realize that this wasn't a serious song. Once I found out that the title characters were named after dogs, I could appreciate it a from a different level. As a serious song it's utterly ridiculous, but as laugh it's fun. Funny how it works out that way. This song is a perfect example of what Rush was capable of at this time period. They could do heavy riff-oriented rock, melodic passages, proggy stuff with odd times, spacious and spacey music, creative noise...and all of that tied up in a good arrangement. In the vocal sections I like the way Geddy's vocal melody goes along with the guitar riffs. I love those little "cha" vocalizations he does before the fight. I also really love Geddy's final "SNOW DOG!!!" in the last section. I laugh every time I hear that. I really love the tone he got during the fight too. It's wonderfully ugly. It was a really good move to incorporate the little guitar riff half way during the fight. That bit grounded it and made it something other than some weird instrumental freak out. The really mellow section is unexpected, especially for them to go THAT mellow and spacey. It's so cool, though. All in all this is a good, fun song with excellent playing.
     
  2. anth67

    anth67 Purveyor of Hogwash

    Location:
    PNW USA
    By-Tor is a classic, as quintessential a Rush song as any. And, as noted above, a milestone as their first multi-part epic.

    I wonder if they were aware of King Crimson's Lizard, which prefigured it as a fantasy epic battle between hero & evil beast. As big a KC kick as I've been on, though, lately...I like By-Tor better.
     
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  3. Rick Robson

    Rick Robson

    Location:
    ️️
    Beneath, Between, and Behind" is one of those Rush tunes whose fine playing and catchy grooves get even greater when played live. And it's position in the album is also great as it perfectly warms me up and turns me on to the ideal mood for diving deep into the great epic that is "By-Tor And The Snow Dog" ... "UUUYEAAHH! ... "

    By-Tor is a great track! Right at the very start Geddy's amazing and so characteristic bass breaks interweaved with Peart's damn killer drumming are just mind-blowing! And then it keeps me completely immersed into such an epic change of moods and rhythms thanks to their great sense of dynamics clearly already more developed at this stage...
    Man that amazing atmosphere created by Lifeson's guitar section at the min 6:29 reminded me of Eloy's ending guitars on "The Bells Of Notre Dame", albeit clearly not in such a Floydian way as that Frank Bornemann's approach. BTW, I reckon By-Tor is the first Rush's actually progressive song ever penned, great in all accounts and so uniquely Rush. It's no doubt a pity that Lifeson's section was not performed in the Hammersmith Odeon '78 show (the one from the third disk of Different Stages), but I love that live performance in spite of that!
     
    Last edited: Jan 28, 2020
  4. HenryH

    HenryH Miserable Git

    "By-Tor And The Snow Dog"

    I believe I'm one of those that fall into the "it's a good track but I'm not quite into it" camp.

    Over time I've kinda warmed up to 'By-Tor", mainly because of the middle instrumental section, but even with that I seem a bit halfhearted in my interest. I suppose this was their first foray into something that leans into the "proggy" side of things. To me it comes across as two different pieces of work...the main song, which still has a little of the early Rush style in it, and the middle, where the band lets loose more than with anything else that they've done to that point. I hear a bit of The Who, a splash of Zeppelin, some Edgar Winter maybe, and a hint of things to come. But to me it doesn't quite hold together, almost like loose pieces of a puzzle. Again, I don't dislike it. I can listen to it and get into it for what it is, which to me is an example of young, newly teamed musicians feeling things out. And I guess one can look back and possibly say that it would take another couple of albums for them to hit their stride.
     
  5. Terrapin Station

    Terrapin Station Master Guns

    Location:
    NYC Man/Joy-Z City
    "By-Tor and the Snow Dog"

    Their first prog epic, and an excellent, really well-developed one. I love how jaunty it is at the start, and it has some really cool chord progressions off the bat, too. The sections flow smoothly despite the pretty wide variety of them stylistically, and there's often a really effective balance between parts feeling jammy and intricately composed. There's a ton of creativity in the arrangement. Certainly "goofy" doesn't bother me. "Goofy" is one of my primary bags! Some killer fills by Neil in the staccato-riff segment before the "false ending" leading into the mellow section, which is prescient of both "Xanadu" and the "Discovery" section of "2112."
     
  6. misteranderson

    misteranderson Forum Resident

    Location:
    englewood, nj
    Yes, absolutely.

    By-Tor is fantastic, and, amazingly, bettered by most live versions I've heard. It's completely ridiculous, but melodic, and rocks like hell, so it's irresistible.

    The stop/start riffs remind me a little of Apocalypse in 9/8 in a way, though I don't know if Rush was actually inspired by that or not.

    Jeff Buckley did a brief Rush parody -- Squeakor, Prince of Vermin -- which clearly was making fun of By-Tor. I don't know if it was completely off the cuff, or a regular part of his act:



    Geddy, Alex, and Neil all had a healthy sense of humor about themselves, so I imagine they'd get a kick out of it.
     
  7. SurrealCereal

    SurrealCereal Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    I like "By-Tor and the Snow Dog" well enough, but it feels a bit underdeveloped to me. For a "prog epic" it feels very raw and surprisingly not that dynamic. It has multiple sections and changes, but the way it just launches straight into the action with no intro and jumps from section to section without much transition makes it seem less fleshed out than some of the shorter songs on the album. Don't get me wrong, it still flows nicely and any structural issues can be forgiven due to it being their first try at an "epic," but it just seems odd to me how little embellishment it gets in comparison to less ambitious tracks like "Anthem" and some of the songs we'll get to later. All that being said, I really do enjoy the song. The opening section is a raw and enjoyable rocker, and I like the way the instrumental that follows foreshadows songs like "The Necromancer" and "Cyngus part 1." The spacey section is a bit dull, but I like the guitar solo that builds out of it. The finale is a bit underwhelming since it's just a rehash of the opening section with no added gravitas or drama. Overall I like the song and appreciate it as an essential building block for all the classics that followed.
     
  8. George Co-Stanza

    George Co-Stanza Forum Resident

    Location:
    America
    I love me some By-Tor and the Snow Dog. Easily my favorite tune from this record, and a top 20 Rush tune in my book.
     
  9. Lamus

    Lamus Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tempe, Arizona
    By-Tor and the Snow Dog

    I love the part right before the quiet section where they play a repeated riff but leave off a note with each repeat until they get to 1. Cheeky bastards.
     
  10. boboquisp

    boboquisp Magic Prism Eyes

    Location:
    NE Ohio
    By-Tor And The Snow Dog is great. Their first prog epic/stoner rock jam and the first song to really give an insight to the band's humor. It's just so damned fun! The studio version is a classic, but I agree with @GodShifter that the AWATS version is the best. Raw power! Alex really get deep into it! Saw them on the '77 tour and they went into The Necromancer! Cool! :righton:

     
  11. CoachD

    CoachD Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tennessee
    "By-Tor And The Snow Dog"

    I need to give this a listen with fresh ears.

    Never made mixtape status for me back in the day. I never cared for the special sound effects. Nevertheless it's certainly not a bad album track, and I'd probably appreciate it more today with my wider tastes than as an early teen. Back then, if it didn't make it onto the mixtape it sort of disappeared from the canon.

    Once again revealing my lack of attention to the lyrics, I was under the impression that Snow Dog was the bad guy and By-Tor was the Beowulf/Godzilla of the story (granted the retreat of By-Tor at the end was a head scratcher). I figured Snow Dog was some Canadian reference and assumed this conflict took place in a snowy realm.
     
  12. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    I'm loving all your comments folks.
    Thanks for the straight talk, it's very much appreciated
     
  13. riskylogic

    riskylogic Forum Resident

    My dog is both By-Tor AND the Snow Dog.
     
  14. ytserush

    ytserush Forum Resident

    Location:
    Northeast US
    Don't like this one as much as some here do. It's not bad and the version on All The World's a Stage might be my favorite live version because I think the comedy translates better. Still one of the better songs on the album but it still doesn't come close to say Anthem or In The End.
     
  15. Murph

    Murph Enjoy every sandwich!

    I always thought that By-Tor and the Snow Dog sounded like it was based on Yes's The Gates of Delirium....
     
  16. Mr.La Page

    Mr.La Page Smoking with the boys upstairs...

    Location:
    The Custerdome
    Love it. Still love it. Fond memories of me at about 12 going on 13 years old, buying it on CD at a mall in the 90's. Had heard Moving Pictures, A Farewell to Kings, and 2112 from my father, but never heard the even earlier stuff. The owl on the cover alone for a kid that young was enough for me to turn over my mowing lawns money for it. Great fun epic and great album period.
     
  17. Mr.La Page

    Mr.La Page Smoking with the boys upstairs...

    Location:
    The Custerdome
    Your profile pic is amazing. Can't wait to get to PW!
     
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  18. JAG

    JAG Forum Professor with Tenure

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    Thank you, I don’t think I ever heard them play the necromancer live
     
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  19. SizzleVonSizzleton

    SizzleVonSizzleton The Last Yeti

    By-Tor & The Snow Dog

    I feel like if the band had never spoken about the origins of the lyrics to this song it would be thought of in different terms. I think these are great words in the heavy metal/Jimmy Page heroin shooting/Aleister Crowley kinda way.

    I'm way late to the game but I don't take this as a joke at all. Or at least it's no more ludicrous than 2112 or The Trees.

    Either way it's a great song and a lot of fun to listen to. It finishes off a great side of music.
     
  20. robcar

    robcar Forum Resident

    Location:
    Denver, CO
    Me too, such as the place depicted on the (excellent) album cover!
     
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  21. Melllvar

    Melllvar No Matter Where You Go, There You Are!

    Location:
    Anchorage, Alaska
    By-Tor and the Snow Dog:

    It's not bad. Silly, but fun none of the less. I can hear Yes's 'Gates of Delerium' influencing the mid-section and then a cool Pink Floyd influence that follows.

    It's a pretty good start for the band for their prog-rock direction, which makes me excited when we get to 'Caress of Steel'.

    Also, it's my first time listening to it on vinyl and I think I better flip it since the bells are stuck in a lock groove.... :laugh:
     
  22. robcar

    robcar Forum Resident

    Location:
    Denver, CO
    Me too!

    Oh, wait....you mean Permanent Waves... ;)
     
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  23. Fischman

    Fischman RockMonster, ClassicalMaster, and JazzMeister

    Location:
    New Mexico
    Interesting coincidence.
     
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  24. GodShifter

    GodShifter Forum Member

    Location:
    Dallas, TX, USA
    I’ve never thought of it as a “joke” song, either. Less than put together? I’ll buy that (for a dollar), but this is not a comedy tune despite its semi ridiculous premise.
     
  25. GodShifter

    GodShifter Forum Member

    Location:
    Dallas, TX, USA
    “Thank you” for what?
     
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