Status Updates From Experiencing Rush: A Listen...

The authors notes about the bands final studio album (Clockwork Angels) tells about the vaguely steampunk themes and related book and graphic novels that it inspired.

Bowman does a nice job of identifying two great points about Snakes & Arrows: (1) it holds not only one instrumental piece, but three; and, (2) the album’s final song “We Hold On” includes lyrics that suggest that “Rush found quite a lot of vindication” in later years for its decades of eccentric, progressive, and individualistic music.

After Vapor Trails in 2002, there were only two more studio albums produced by the band. Bowman wraps up the last twenty years in about 14 pages by describing the various other milestones that were finally bestowed on Alex, Neil, and Geddy. Rush made the cover of Rolling Stone for the first time in 2012, and in 2013 was inducted into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame.

Bowman’s review of Vapor Trails is spot on, from the epic hard rock recovery album and single (One Little Victory), to the over-amped recording and subsequent remastering, to the Lifeson arrest about the same time (read about it)!

Bowman provides a detailed explanation of the cover and cd booklet art that I never really noticed or fully understood! He also eases into the descriptions of the tragedies that led to sabbaticals and a question of whether Rush could continue after 1997-1998.

Counterparts uses even less synth/samples than Roll the Bones, and was more straight forward rock. Reading this book and listening along took me back to when I pulled into port in Vancouver, BC in 1993 on the day the album was released in Canada and ran to find a music store to purchase the CD! Bowman talks about how Rush always stayed current, reacting to the times and translating trends back into its music.

I remember when I first heard Dreamline. It was playing on the local Waikiki rock radio station as I laid in bed early one evening in 1991. I recognized the band’s sound immediately within the first few measures and became very excited for new Rush music! While some tracks us synth/samplers, virtuosity remains. On the end of Bravado, Peart’s drumming shows “limb independence that rivals any drummer”!

Going back and listening to Presto while reading the book showed me just how funky and driven that album truly sounded! It really was another change in direction for the band, away from music technology (synth and samples) and back to instrument virtuosity. The bunnies on the album art belie the true funk-inspired rock album under the covers!

Learning more about the albums that I love… I new that Aimee Mann sang on the second track (Time Stand Still) of Hold Your Fire (1987), but I never realized that the sounds that open and close the first track (Force Ten) are samples of jackhammer sounds! Also never connected the album title to persevering with ones “inner flame”! Fantastic! Saw RUSH on this tour when they came to Buffalo, NY in Fall/Winter.

Some good history and background around Signals and Grace Under Pressure gave me a better understanding of those albums that I love.

I also learned something new about Permanent Waves. Timed to be the very first major label album released in the new decade, it appeared on the shelves on New Year’s Day 1980. And I didn’t realize that Natural Science was Rush’s penultimate extended work (The Camera Eye being the last).

Bowman’s exposition is thorough. Hemispheres has long been one of my favorite Rush albums. Yet, I’ve rediscovered things in Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres (and things I’ve never realized about Dionysus). I’ve further been reminded of the connections between albums and the evolution of Rush music between AFTK and Permanent Waves.

Though I’ve been listening to Rush since the late 70s, I’m hearing things I’ve never before heard! Following the chronology of the studio albums, Bowman has shown me things I’ve never seen in my beloved songs. A revelation in 2112 (Soliloquy), a realization of A Farewell to Kings (Xanadu). What’s next? From here… on to Hemispheres.