I'm gad you're here now. Hopefully we can create some more discussion on this thread. I guess I still owe the thread my top albums list, which could create some interesting reactions.
So I happened to click on one of those "ranking Rush albums" vids on youtube, and it was... well, the guy ranked Hemispheres at something like #15, and his reasoning went something like this: It only has four songs - and one of them is an instrumental.
Which one is it? Just typed in "ranking rush albums" and there are like... um.. at least twenty videos?
Took one look at the video stills and just knew it had to be the goon pulling the funny face with the horns. Now I'm no great advocate of Hemispheres, but at 4-tracks "you are not getting much value for money" Someone ought to chuck him Popol Vuh's In Der Garten Pharaos, his head may explode.
I am teaching a class to seniors on progressive rock. One 90 minute session is on Rush. We will hear Natural Science. I will post the first part of the lyrics on a blog if they want to get into it. Now, how do I explain Peart and his lyrics to at lest four seniors who probably do not know any Rush songs. I am taking liberties but I finally got a way to explain this one: he was probably watching Cosmos and reading Sagan.
I like this format of Great, Good, Average, Skippable. My second favorite format behind @The MEZ number ranking with no comments whatsoever . I was dead-on with you for a lot of the catalog. You seemed to like Vapor Trails way more than me and liked Snakes and Arrows way less than me. Here are some other anomalies: ???? One of my all-time favorites! Totally get this but this is “great” to me. Lots of discrepancy on the forum when this song came up. I enjoyed reading the thoughts of the band on this one. They said they could tell the crowd never really got it when they played it live, but they kept it in the shows year after year (because they loved it) and eventually the crowd came around. Another one I understand but I am happy to say I listened to it enough to where I grew to like it. I’d put it in Average.
The one certainty about Rush’s music is the polarising views that it elicits. The only positive thing that I can say about ‘Dog Years’ is that it saved ‘I Think I’m Going Bald’ from being the worst song that Rush ever wrote...all in my humble opinion, of course
Thanks for the kind words! Understand that my grading system is based on a scale of Rush-ness; as we as fans know, most "average" Rush is better than some other bands' "great" music. And yes VT just hit me at the right time when I was in the middle of the wrong time in my own life. Rough period then, and VT was an album that got me through. For SnA, I'm not sure why it never really clicked with me. I suppose all bands have that one album even a die-hard like myself cannot get into and that's the one for me.
Maybe it click for you someday. Some albums you get right away and some may take time to get, or not! There won't be any more Rush albums, so there's HOPE. Rush - Hope
For sure, in general. Rush, of all the bands in my top 10 progressive bands, had a whole bunch of stinkers that should have never been recorded. On the other hand, I also did not care much for Greg Lake's lyrics. Some are just Lucky Man, some are worse.
I'm really hoping for a 5.1 to give the album a bit of air... If done well, it would really open the album up and add extra life to it.
If you want to go into more detail, and chat about albums or songs, I'm sure folks will join in. I don't seem to get notifications from here anymore, but whenever I see it on the front page I stop in and say hi So Hi!
I don't know that I could add anymore than you guys did. Just glad this was here. Great insight from all of you.
I had to think about the lyrics of Test for Echo. I really appreciate them more and more. Basically this gang of kids/adolescents commit some kind of crime as a "test for echo", as a means of validating themselves but also, perhaps, as a call for help. It's not far from a character like Rael (from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway). Within their own peer group they are respected, even feared. But faced with public attention and the judicial system they quickly collapse (would-be desperados > tough-talking hood-boys > nail-biting hood-boys in borrowed ties and jackets). This ties in nicely with "The Color of Right", which as we learned in this thread, is a judicial term. Basically, feeling unappreciated does not justify violence. And "Driven" operates on similar grounds - "driven to the margin of terror". Feeling powerless can lead people down very dark roads where they try to exert force on others.
Ok, I finally found evidence that this was true. I couldn't find it anywhere, almost making me think I had imagined it - but here's a picture of a cassette splitting CTTH:
