Rush: PROGENY
Rush: PROGENY
Music isn't about chops, or even about talent - it's about sound and the way that sound communicates to people. Mike Keneally
Originally Posted by profusion
That's what I'd say about Signals...
Indeed, both ATWAS and ESL suffered from shitty sound, like they were recorded from the lobby. How something so bad could be released is beyond me. I recall before ESL came out, we were all hoping for better sound, only to find it was pretty much the same as ATWAS.
I still don't get it. I have bootlegs that blow them away.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
What did you expect the music to sound like?!
LOL, whut?
I'm holding out for the Wilson-mixed 5.1 super-duper walletbuster special anniversary extra adjectives edition.
All I remember was seeing the blood - mean lookin' dragon boots - spikes - ya know - heavy metal lookin' gear - so naturally I was thinking they could be another cool Black Sabbath type band! Nope. Anthem sounding major chord rock and roll. No thanks.What did you expect the music to sound like?!
The mix is slightly dark and the use of synth 'pad' sounds got way out of hand, but it hardly sounds "underwater." They've admitted that the synth technology available in 1982 wasn't well-suited for what they were trying to do with it (replace/augment rhythm guitar chords, essentially). On earlier Rush albums, the synths worked well for coloration, but they clearly didn't know how to utilize them as a primary tone color yet. Arguably, I'm not sure they ever learned that.
The first buzz I heard about Rush was some Canadian kids telling me "we got our own Zeppelin now, eh". This was just before 2112 came out. Everything that I heard about Rush was that they were a.) heavy and b.) wrote some long-ass songs. As a Led-head, this got my attention. First time I saw them was the 2112 tour, when they opened for B.O.C. For this reason ATWAS still works for me, takes me right back to that packed hockey arena..."this is side one from our new album, this is 2112".
I think what I should do is take the 11 track version of the St Louis show that I have and mix in Cygnus/Hemispheres from Desert Passage or Black Forest, maybe a couple others, into one playlist just to get a set list that feels right. Trouble is those shows don't sound quite as good as St Louis.
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
Really? I think Black Forest sounds fantastic. GRanted it's a SB, versus the FM mix on the St. Louis gig. But, that's pretty much the one I'll turn to first.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
I don't know why it would "natural" to assume that a band with a bass player who drools blood onstage would sound like Black Sabbath. It's hard for me to comment because I first heard Kiss long before I ever heard Black Sabbath or any of those other supposedly "evil" sounding bands. Before I actually heard them, I had no concept of what to expect them to sound like, other than they were a rock n roll band. At the time I might have Peter Frampton, Uriah Heep, BTO, and a few others my brother had in his record collection, so I imagine that's probably what I expected Kiss to sound like.
Talking about the synths in Rush, I liked them best when Geddy was playing a lot of sort of melodic synth parts. He did a fair amount of that up through Signals, with I think Countdown and Subdivisions being the last songs to have "solos" as such. I think after that, Geddy decided he mostly what to play chordal and textural type stuff, which interested me a lot less.
I think the reason Geddy got so heavily into synths during that mid 80's era was because he was writing stuff on synths rather than guitar, perhaps feeling he'd run out of ideas on guitar or whatever. And I also recall one interview where Alex made a wisecrack about "the keyboardist" filling up too much space and not leaving enough room for guitar parts, with Geddy countering that "in the keyboardist's defense, the guitarist didn't always have his guitar parts ready". The inference I got was there were times where Alex wasn't coming up with anything, songwriting wise, so Geddy was left to sort of fill the breach, as it were. And if the guy coming up with most of the songwriting ideas is doing so on an Oberheim or a PPG rather than guitar, well, the synths are gonna tend to be a bit more prominent in the sound.
"IIII, wanna rock and roll all night!" Ya... that's what blood drool, spikes and dragon boots sounds like. When you're 7 or 8 years old it doesnt.
I think the bootleg "A Desert Passage" is better than this Kiel show.
I love Rush before and after this, but I think this is the era where they truly 'peaked', and this tour may have been the tip of the peak.
look at this setlist:
Track Listing:
Looong Intro - goes on 4ever if you are not a Moody Blues fan -
Anthem 3:09
A Passage to Bangkok 7;26
**Geddy Asks Crowd to Move Back* 11:07
By-Tor and the Snow Dog 11:45
Xanadu 17:07
Announcement (MOVE BACK) 30:00
Something for Nothing 31:00
The Trees 35:25
Cygnus X-1 40:15
Hemispheres 50:55
Closer to the Heart 1:10:00
Circumstances 1:13:42
A Farewell to Kings 1:17:50 !SO GOOD LIVE!!
La Villa Strangiato 1:23:36
2112 1:33:55
Working Man Medley 1:52:44
-Bastille Day 1:56:00
-In the Mood 1:57:47
-Drum Solo 2:00:26
Bonus Tracks
Something for Nothing 2:05:39
Cygnus X-1 2:09:55
Just listened to this show last night. Its certainly a good one! Dont hear Geddy ride the audience much so this one is fun to hear.
I would love a Live record of the Signals tour
Maybe my ears are bad but to me Moving Pictures and Power Windows are outstanding albums for both the music and sound. But what happened with Signals?
Yep. I haven't even seen a decent boot from that tour.
I'm holding out for the Wilson-mixed 5.1 super-duper walletbuster special anniversary extra adjectives edition.
I used to have that bootleg where Geddy has to keep telling the audience to move back from the stage. At some point, someone did a hilarious animation that was on Youtube (maybe it still is) to that bit. In the comments, we were debating the exact nature of the announcement. Stateside, we'd probably saying he's "getting slightly annoyed", but by Canadian standards, he's "really getting pissed off now".
about as good as it gets for that tour ----
Bookmark: http://www.digitalrushexperience.com...cordingID=1090
Media: 2 CDr
Time: 60:10, 47:50
Catalog: Digital Reproductions: DR 52183
Source: Audience
Date: May 21, 1983
Location: Wembley Arena, London, England
I have not heard any, but there are some boots with the A-rating highlighted on this page:
http://www.rushtrader.com/signals.htm
My sense generally is that Alex lost a lot of his guitar ambition after Moving Pictures. For me, Permanent Waves was his high water mark as a player, where every song had tons of innovative and difficult rhythm guitar parts, as well as out-and-out shred solos. His live playing was also razor-sharp at the time, based on the recordings I've heard. He still came up with decent textural parts in the studio in the '80s, but the quality of his live playing had noticeably dropped off by the time I first saw them in concert in 1985.
A friend sent me this one a couple of months ago:
http://www.digitalrushexperience.com...cordingID=1456
Very good sound quality and one of the few shows where they included 'Chemistry' in the set - granted not everyone's fave tune, but a nice memento nevertheless.
And that Desert Passage set is just fantastic - great setlist and very good sound quality.
I bought the Kiel 1980 set legally as a cd called Spirit of the Airwaves - sound quality is pretty good, and a nice mix of tunes, even if it is missing a chunk of the set.
Can anyone dropbox me that London show using single tracks??
It's been nearly 3 years since i posted in this thread (jesus time flies) and i'm finally getting around to tracking down a copy of this recording. There's not as many cd copies around but vinyl seems plentiful. Curious to know if anyone has this on vinyl and what's the quality like? I personally don't see shelling out the difference for a bootleg.
Never bought any of the recent gray market reissue vinyl over the last 15 years, but the original bootlegs (vinyl and CD) sound great to me but those were available before MP3 so I know they weren't sourced that way.
Not sure how the recent reissues are sourced so I've generally stayed away from them.
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