"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
Actually Rush proved it was possible, though rather than any pretensions toward fusion they had their roots as a hard rock band to fall back on. Mixed with just enough proggy complexity it was enough to carry them through the "dark days" of the 1980s.
Ironically, what actually almost did them in, I think, was their turn toward synth-pop on Hold Your Fire. That one caused a lot of the early rock fans to leave in droves while only providing a fleeting brush with acceptance by the fickle masses.
I'm holding out for the Wilson-mixed 5.1 super-duper walletbuster special anniversary extra adjectives edition.
If I remember correctly, one of the best things on the St Louis deal is the By-Tor/Xanadu medley. I actually rather like the way they'd segue songs together like that. I wish this had the entire show, but if this is all that was broadcast, then maybe that's all that they have to release (especially if this is only kinda sorta an official release).
I still remember when Rush would release 4 studio albums and then one live album. Now it's one studio album and 6 live albums. Guess that's the way most of the lord bands are these days.
So true! They used to follow that 4:1 pattern religiously. I think the flip-flop may, at least in part, have something to do with the fact that (1) they're all older now and have opted for a slower pace in life, which is understandable considering how much they've toured, and (2), because they're a "musician's band", and over the years musicians and fans alike have shown that they want multiple live visual documents on video, DVD, and Blu-Ray as well as on CD. That way they can have a virtual front-row/side-by-side/face-to-face perspective of the band they love. Supply & demand and all that...
Last edited by Koreabruce; 04-18-2015 at 09:02 PM.
I think artists should release a live cd/dvd after every tour.
Music isn't about chops, or even about talent - it's about sound and the way that sound communicates to people. Mike Keneally
It's called revenue stream.
It's funny because if bands in the 70's could have released a lot more live records at the time, it may have stifled a lot of the bootlegging they despised. You would think you would get a clue too, that if bootlegging was so prevalent, that there would be a good demand for more live albums.
That said, there certainly was a more critical stake in those days. If you released an album of any sort, it needed to be of the most superior to withstand critics and fans alike. An album release was a big deal. Nowadays, it's more just feeding the already devoted with super-sized everything.
Doing live recordings (audio and video*) was also far more expensive back in the '70s/'80s. I'm sure that played a significant impact on releases. Those costs have dropped significantly as well as physical production costs. --Peter
*Nearly every venue nowadays have their own in-house video system - back in the day you'd need to hire equipment and technicians and allow them access to the venue for day(s) ahead of the performance to set everything up.
You say Mega Ultra Deluxe Special Limited Edition Extended Autographed 5-LP, 3-CD, 4-DVD, 2-BlueRay, 4-Cassette, five 8-Track, MP4 Download plus Demos, Outtakes, Booklet, T-Shirt and Guitar Pick Gold-Leafed Box Set Version like it's a bad thing...
Sounds like another gray market reissue of an extremely well circulated 75 minute radio broadcast.
Great show, but that's all there is. Anthem pressed the show (2LP) for radio in Canada and "The Source" picked it up in the US. From these or directly from radio came the later onslaught of vinyl, cassette and CD bootlegs of all or part of this broadcast.
Definitely worth picking up in some form if you haven't heard it. If you're a fan of Taurus pedals, this one is certainly for you.
Disc 3 from Different Stages likely would have been released much earlier but it got shelved because Geddy was sick that night and not happy with his voice. I like it because of the the live A Farewell To Kings material, but I prefer All The World's A Stage for the rest of the songs.
That was because they used to view their own musical development as occurring in 4-album increments, i.e. a string of 4 albums was loosely connected in that the first album in the sequence was moving into a new sound and the fourth album was the culmination or maturation of that sound, and then a live album to sum it all up and provide a breather before the next new direction.
I think that whole sequence stopped after Hold Your Fire and the Show of Hands live album. They seemed to go in 2-album sequences after that, i.e Presto and Roll the Bones were a lite-FM singer/songwriter version of Rush... then Counterparts and Test for Echo were a return to heavy guitars and the introduction of Geddy's flamenco playing and multiple instrument and vocal tracking. The next two still use heavy guitars, flamenco bass and multi-tracked instruments/vocals, but Vapor Trails seems to stand on its own for its absence of keyboards and guitar solos, while Snakes & Arrows has more acoustic guitar than previous albums and to my ears, sounds like an extension of Geddy's solo album. Then Clockwork Angels is a throwback to more proggy arrangements and sci-fi lyrical topics. So their last 3 albums seem to stand on their own and not relate to one another as earlier albums did... but you may hear them differently than I do.
You say Mega Ultra Deluxe Special Limited Edition Extended Autographed 5-LP, 3-CD, 4-DVD, 2-BlueRay, 4-Cassette, five 8-Track, MP4 Download plus Demos, Outtakes, Booklet, T-Shirt and Guitar Pick Gold-Leafed Box Set Version like it's a bad thing...
I guess I'm lucky I've never heard that one. Reminds me of my friend who saw Genesis on the Three Sides Live tour and said that immediately after Supper's Ready, the band launched immediately into Misunderstanding. Not necessarily a segue or medley, as such, but there was mere seconds between the two.
Recently on That Metal Show, that did an album battle between All The World's A Stage and Exit...Stage Left. Geddy was the guest on that show, and he chose the first live album, because he was "haunted" by the lack of audience noise or whatever on Exit...Stage Left.
I suppose you could argue that Exit...Stage Left doesn't have as much of a "live feel", but I prefer the selection of music, and in particular I love the Broon's Bane/The Trees/Xanadu suite on side three. I also love the way Geddy actually does vary the synth parts on Jacob's Ladder and La Villa Strangiato (as well as the electric guitar intro on the latter, which to me sounds like Alex gone DiMeola or something).
I remember back around the time of Grace Under Pressure, I read an interview where Alex talked about Exit...Stage Left and how he was particularly happy with it, in part because of the selection of songs (he apparently felt The Camera Eye and Vital Signs should have been on it). But when asking the question about the album, the interviewer said something like, "I know you'd prefer to forget about the first live album, so how do you feel about Exit...Stage Left?". I always wondered about why Alex would want to "forget about" All The World's Stage. For a long time, that made me think maybe it had been poorly recorded or mixed or whatever. Ya know, like Earthbound or one of those things the record company puts out without the band's involvement or something. Of course, listening to it, that's clearly not the case, so one still wonders about that comment.
You say Mega Ultra Deluxe Special Limited Edition Extended Autographed 5-LP, 3-CD, 4-DVD, 2-BlueRay, 4-Cassette, five 8-Track, MP4 Download plus Demos, Outtakes, Booklet, T-Shirt and Guitar Pick Gold-Leafed Box Set Version like it's a bad thing...
I'm personally very fond of "All the World is a Stage" I didn't get into RUSH until 2112 and then the live album was so energetic that it made me buy their first 3 then. I thought they were nothing but a derivative of KISS before I heard 2112. So I have a serious soft spot for the first live album even though I know they've done much better work after it.
The comment was phrased pretty much exactly as I said. the interviewer said "I know you'd like to forget the first Rush live album", as if to imply there was some obvious reason why the band might be embarrassed by it. And no further explanation was given for reference.
Yeah, I never understood the so-called Kiss thing. I see nothing similar. Okay, both bands have one syllable in their names.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
I would have to explain that more in depth. My cousins were big big KISS fans back then and told me about how much they loved RUSH. I had only heard a couple songs from RUSH at the time and before I heard 2112 I just connected them with KISS. Obviously when I heard the live album I realized how much difference there was between them both. I think they did draw some of the KISS fans though back in the early days because of the hard rock live shows.
KISS and Rush toured together, too, so there's that connection. But of course their music doesn't actually sound very similar at all ...although Rush poked fun at the KISS song Goin' Blind in I Think I'm Going Bald.
"In the book Contents Under Pressure, Rush member Geddy Lee explained: 'We were touring a lot with Kiss in those days and they had a song called I Think I'm Going Blind. So we were kind of taking the piss out of that title by just coming up with this.' Lee noted that the title originated with drummer Neil Peart, who was making light of the fact that Alex Lifeson was constantly worried about the future possibility of going bald, often employing 'all kinds of ingredients to put on his scalp. And I think it just got Neil thinking about aging...'"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goin%27_Blind
KISS was the biggest false advertiser of the 70s for me as a kid. I remember seeing those cool posters in my brother's and his friend's rooms - then I heard the music - WTF. I'll leave it at that. :P
I've never thought of Moving Pictures and Signals as belonging to two different, well, stages, no matter where the live album falls in the sequence. Those two albums are two sides of the same perfect coin, in my book. More synths on Signals but it wasn't a radical enough change for me to call it a stylistic change. That would evolve over GUP and PW.
High Vibration Go On - R.I.P. Chris Squire
That's interesting about Rush & Kiss. While I agree they sound nothing alike, I can't deny that after being a total KISS fanatic when I was 12-13, my friend played me All The World's A Stage and I (and we) was quickly converted. It was the beginning of the end of my Kiss fandom. And also hearing the live 2112 on that album, was definitely the catalyst for me becoming a prog fan. It was the coolest thing I had ever heard.
Exit Stage Left sounds like it was recorded underwater. I much prefer the Kiel Auditorium show for that general period of Rush (different tours, of course). I'd love to see a Rush Live boxed set containing ESL properly remixed and expanded as well the 'missing' tracks off of the third disc of Different Stages, along with any unused stuff from ATWAS.
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