Monthly Archives: August 2005

Rediscovering Rush – Caress of Steel II

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Bastille Day

No problem here - this is another of those well-loved Rush classics.  Great riff, fantastic drumming, creative instrumentally, and those lyrics - just your average rock 'n' roll song about the social implications of the French Revolution...

If I had to find fault with it, it would be nit-picking - the king has knelt, Neil - we have a perfectly good past tense in English; no need to invent your own one - but that's it, really.

An observation, though - they're getting really good at these dramatic staccato chords, something which is one of the real early Rush hallmarks, but there really is such a thing as too much of a good thing.  No problem here, but it would be easy to get carried away.

Hm, another observation - I'm finding it hard to find interesting things to say about songs which are extremely familiar to me - I really like this song, but there are only so many ways I can say that.  Still, this album's off to a cracking start; where next?

I Think I'm Going Bald

Oh dear.  Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

All I remember of this is that it's terrible.  A ridiculous title, and I seem to remember that the song's not much better.  What were they thinking?  Still, before I criticize it any more, I suppose I'd better listen to it...

Well, what do you know?

If I might be permitted a little advice from 30 years in the future?  Guys, this is a pretty damn good song - a little too 'early Rush' for some, I fear, but a good thing to have on an album where you stretch the boundaries of the 'new Rush' - it kind of bridges the gap, and will help to bring people with you.  Just one thing - change the title.  Call it, oh, I don't know 'Peace of Mind' or 'Tempo Fugit' [sic] or 'The Terrible Revenge of the Green Slimy Thing'.  Call it anything; just don't call it that.  Please.

There truly is nothing wrong with this song - heard in the context of the first album, it would be a fine thing indeed - still showing those Zeppelin- and Who- based influences; perhaps trying a little too hard to be witty (witty is not something this band does well - at least not yet), but honestly, it's pretty good.  Listen to it someday; you might be as surprised as I just have been.

"I'll still be grey my way".  Amen to that, brother.

Lakeside Park

Sentimental; nostalgic - how old are you, Neil? 50? 60? Come on, keep this stuff in the notebook and bring it out when you need to boost the retirement fund.  Frankly, I used to like this song; it's kind of inoffensive, and has some nice lines, but listening to it now, I get the vision of a man who can't wait to be middle aged (see song with ill-advised title above).  And it doesn't feel right.  This song does not go with this album.  It might have fit better on the second side of 'Fly by Night', but I'm not even sure about that.

And here's a thing - how easy is it to sing something like this, when it's not your memories?  I had never thought about this before, but I reckon Geddy doesn't sound all that convinced by what he's singing.  I may be wrong, but  I just get some odd feelings about this.  I've been listening to these on average three times through before committing my thoughts to keyboard.  Third time through, I skipped this one - first time I've done that.

I realize some of you may love this song to death.  Sorry.

The Necromancer

I really had to scratch my head to work out what I was going to say here.  Musically, this is terrific stuff - Alex' solos are quite breathtaking in places, and the whole thing more or less hangs together - I'll come back to that 'more or less' in a minute, if I may.  So what was wrong? Why did I come to the end of this and still feel unsatisfied?  I'm actually delighted to have rediscovered it, because there are musical ideas in here that I hadn't remembered, and I can really see where the seeds of '2112' are.

And the problem isn't that some of these ideas get reused in other, later, songs - that, to me, is one of the marks of greatness; the ability to learn from your earlier efforts, and improve on them.  No, the problem is only clear to me when I pay closer attention to the lyrics - in fact, to the way the lyrics interact with the music.  It just doesn't work.  It doesn't work on two levels, possibly three.

Firstly there's the treated voice introducing each section.  It took me a while, but eventually I realized where I had seen it before.  It's 'Winnie the Pooh', isn't it?  'Chapter One.  In which our Heroes set off to find the Necromancer, but it doesn't look good for them'  I can't figure out the purpose of having this spoken - it just removes all the drama from the sung lyric.

Secondly, the sung lyric just doesn't bring anything to the party.  We already know what's going to happen, and then Geddy sings it to us.  This is bad enough in the first two sections, but it's the third where this really doesn't work. After we're told about Prince By-Tor's victory (and incidentally, is this the same By-Tor?  Or is it a common enough name in Ontario?) we hear it set to music, and that leads me neatly to...

Thirdly, the music does not fit the lyrics at the most crucial point of the song - and this is what I meant by 'more or less' earlier; we hear the three heroes despair and sorrow; the music is perfect for this, then suddenly, there appears to be an almighty battle going on.  Where did that come from? What's going on?  Have they escaped and are battling their way to freedom? Once the exhilaration of the battle is over, we're told that a mighty deus ex machina has swooped in from another song entirely, and won the battle for them.

Then Geddy sings about it, by which time we're struggling to remember what it sounded like.

Don't get me wrong, there are some terrific things going on here, and as a dry run for what came after, this is extremely useful - the idea of the introductory passage is properly relegated to the lyric sheet by the time we get to '2112' (as I recall), and the music is allowed to help the lyrics tell the story.  In the final analysis, this is a fascinating piece of Rush history - a bit like growing up in public - and I'll happily listen to it again, but I'll try not to pay too much attention to the lyrics.

Rediscovering Rush – Caress of Steel I

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Caress of Steel

History:

Not much to add, really - I owned this as the third part of 'Archive'; I played it least, and I'm not sure why.  I know it has a reputation as the weakest of the early albums, and perhaps I agreed with that - perhaps I just went along with what people said.  I know that 'Bastille Day' and 'Lakeside Park' apart, I have not heard any of these since the mid Eighties (but I can still play part of another of them on the guitar - more of that later.)

I'm looking forward to finding out why I didn't like it.

Rediscovering Rush – Fly By Night IV

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Some thoughts from the future:

The style still hasn't settled down, has it?  I'm a bit overthinking things in places, but I do enjoy my Edinburgh nostalgia, and it's strange to read the words written before the whole Canada thing became a reality.  As noted above, I own this as part of the 'Archive' set, and every now and then I see a copy in one of Victoria's marvellous record stores, and I never quite get round to it.  One day, though - just listening to these tracks as part of finding them to insert into the posts has given me the urge to go back and listen to it all again.  It's pretty good, this album.

Rediscovering Rush – Fly By Night III

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Fly by Night

This one's tricky.  A thousand memories wash through me as I hear the opening bars - this is a song which has always been with me.  It seems to have spoken to me throughout my life, and it still does.  Without giving too much away here (there are plans as yet unmade, and people as yet untold), we are planning the kind of life change which fits well enough with 'Fly by Night'; not an escape, but my ship isn't coming, and I'm tired pretending.

When I first heard it (I'm assuming it's on 'All the World's a Stage; I haven't checked), I had not long left home.  All alone in the big city, I bought Rush albums to keep me company, and 'Fly by Night' helped me realise that I was doing the right thing (I do find that what I'm after is changing every day; that's OK).  Two years ago, I was back in Edinburgh for the day, but Phoenix Records on the High Street is long gone, sad to say, and everything has changed.

Listening to this again should make me feel warm and nostalgic; instead it makes me want to get up and do something about my life.  Time to move on again; it's been 4 years in this one place, and we're coming to the end of it.  When I write the story of our experiences, some of the chapter headings will be lines from songs, and one of them will surely be:

Change my life, again...

Making Memories

On the other hand...

Nope, don't remember this.  It's kind of, well, acoustic, in feel - I can imagine it being busked on a street corner, or late at night in a packed Grassmarket pub - there's a folkishness to it which surprises me a bit at first, but then I remember Zeppelin's 'Gallows Pole', and I suppose that it's not such an unusual sound for its time. (Not that I think it sounds a lot like 'Gallows Pole', but there's a certain vibe to it.)

Second time round, I pay more attention to the lyrics.  It's already registered with me that this surely isn't one of Neil's, and now I suddenly realise that it's that staple of the repertoire, a tour song!  Man, life on the road is so tough; lucky we've got good memories to sustain us.  Oddly, for a song I am not that impressed with, it stays with me; the chorus - such as it is - has a neat hook, and I'm humming it all day.

Rivendell

Ah, yes.  Tolkien.  Now, I've done my share of reading, and I've ploughed through Lord of the Rings more than once, but I think that my interest in it is more academic than imaginative.  By which I suppose I mean that I've never felt inspired to write a song from the perspective of one of the characters.  But I do understand people who are inspired like that - I have felt like living in many other books (I'm currently immersed in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and there's a series which could inspire all sorts of creativity.  Incidentally, I keep conflating Stephenson and Peart in my mind; they seem somehow similar people; I wonder if they've met?)

All of that notwithstanding, I'm not sure about this song.  I remember it, sure - as a full blown acoustic ballad, it kind of stands out in the Rush repertoire - and I thought I knew what to expect, but I'm still slightly unnerved.  Partly this is because I'm listening through headphones, and Geddy appears to be perched on my left shoulder, which is very disconcerting.  Partly, I'm trying to work out what the background sound is - eventually, when I hear that some of it sounds like some of the guitar work in 'Xanadu', I realise it's Alex being creative. I'm also wondering who wrote the melody line which causes Geddy to rupture himself reaching the highest notes.

Out of context, this is a lovely song.  In the context of the whole Rush oeuvre, this is a bit of an oddity.  In the context of this album, it kind of works, but I'm glad this wasn't the path they followed.

In the End

Remember that stuff about me loving songs which begin quietly and build?  Well, this was for a long time, my favourite Rush song of all.  I fondly imagined being in a rock band of my own, and doing a cover of this. (Oh, come on, we've all done that.  Haven't we?)  On listening to it now, I see it very much as the bridge between old and new; even allowing for the fact that this band is only 2 albums old, this is a long way ahead of where they used to be.

There's a consistency to this song, and it closes the album off perfectly.  To dive straight into something raucous would have been too much after the pastoral idyll of 'Rivendell'; instead we are led gently down the garden path, and set up so that the eruption into the body of the song seems inevitable and welcoming.
Summary:

This was always one of my favourites, and I can see why: great tunes (I still think 'Fly by Night' could have been an excellent pop song); variety; cohesiveness; even a kind of 'concept' feel to the thing - especially with the way the second side (it'll always be the second side to me, even on CD) has a different sound - a different feel - to the first, only to be rounded off by 'In the End' bringing us full circle.  It's the first album with that true 'Rush' sound, where you can hear all the elements, and understand how three guys can make such a full sound.  Once this exercise is over, this is one of the albums I'll keep coming back to.

Rediscovering Rush – Fly By Night II

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Anthem

I know things are going to be a bit different now- it's a given, isn't it?  So what exactly am I looking for?  Of course I hear the drums immediately (and I'll come to the lyrics in a moment), but what I hear most of all is tone and structure.  From the start, this is a song performed by a three-piece.  Each strand of the music is clear (and all four parts are given equal weight - no more drowning everything in multi-tracked guitars).  This is a clean sound, and the song really benefits from it.  The structure is instantly more interesting than anything on 'Rush' - the various sections hang together, the instrumental parts are there for a reason, and the music works with the words, not just as a rhythmic device to distract you from their banality.

Words.  I'd better declare my position up front, because I'm going to deviate from it often enough.  I don't believe Neil Peart to be a poet.  I actually don't even think that he's the greatest wordsmith in modern music - and I don't think he's ever tried to be.  What I believe he is, is the most consistently interesting, thought-provoking and musical lyricist in rock music.  And the most important word in that list, for me, at any rate, is 'consistent'. This may not be the first song he ever wrote; it may not be the first Rush song he ever wrote, but straight off the bat you notice two things:

1. He's on the arrogant side of thought-provoking ("Don't let them tell you that you owe it all to me"? Er, hello, Mr Peart; I don't believe we've been introduced.  Who are you , exactly?)  From 30 years away, it's a familiar and somewhat wry comment on the perils of fame, but just think for a minute about the fact that it's the first time anyone's heard a Peart lyric.  Wow, that's confident.

2. You don't understand it first time out.  He doesn't use words like 'baby', does he?  How many other rock lyrics include the word 'wrought?'  I'm going to have to go back and listen again to figure out what's going on here.  The first time I heard this, I was studying the metaphysical poets.  This made me think almost as much to figure it out.  How can you not love something like that?

Best I Can

Woah, hold on there, guys.  Where did this come from?  One song into the new era, and we're right back among the dinosaurs.  It must be a hangover from the first album, and I suppose you might as well put it here to draw in those who loved that, and haven't quite got over the shock of 'Anthem'.  However, you do notice all that drumming poured all over it, which kind of raises it up the scale a bit, and there's a nice breakdown section.  But it's not the best thing on this album, is it?

Another 'last' - is this the last time we hear Geddy sing the words 'Rock 'n' Roll'?

Beneath, Between and Behind

Two things straight off.  When I heard this again for the first time in twenty or so years, I thought it was the riff to 'Lakeside Park', only to be brought up short.  It'll be interesting to hear how similar they actually are when I get there.  Then I thought I was getting 'Bastille Day', thanks to that initial yelp.  I'm not sure if that says more about my memory than it does about the song.

Actually, now I listen more carefully, it does seem to be a dry run for 'Bastille Day' - all that stuff about 'noble birth' and a certain briskness to the structure.  Considering I only dimly remembered the title, and thought it was two other songs, this has since stuck in my head quite pleasantly.  As someone might say, it's nifty.

By-Tor and the Snow Dog

Before I even start, I'm looking forward to this.  It's the first of the really extravagant songs, and I remember it well - there's something orchestral about it in my memory, and although I'm not the biggest fan of fantasy lyrics, there's something comforting about this because it is still, after so long, utterly familiar.

Incidentally, I was never a big fan of fantasy writing either.  Then I was introduced to Guy Gavriel Kay.  Trust me, you should try him.  He is Canadian, after all.

So, for an eight-minute epic, this doesn't hang about.  Two quick verses, fairly traditionally structured, and suddenly we're off.  Now I can see why Neil's writing works so well.  The complaints I had about the instrumental sections in 'Working Man' have all been addressed here - this is integral to the song, and all this musical sparring serves a narrative purpose.  How tedious it could have been to write (and listen to) "Then By-tor leaps at the Snowdog's  throat, but with one swipe of his mighty paw...' Yawn.

Instead we get thrilling musical battle, the greatest countdown in all of rock (6...5...4...3...2...Bang!. The timing is perfect, and the metre is maintained throughout), a wonderful funereal lament - mists slowly clearing over the battlefield, that sort of thing - a drum roll and a liquid bluesy solo, followed by the scrambled resurrection back into the verse.  It's a lot shorter than 8 minutes, I swear.

I'd write more, but I'm going to listen to it again instead.

Rediscovering Rush – Fly By Night I

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Fly By Night

History:

When I bought 'Archive', this was what I was buying.  I already had 'All The World's A Stage', and so I knew that all my favourite older songs were on this album.  The fact that it came chained to two others was just a bonus, really.  So, I look at the tracklisting, and realise that the problem I had with 'Working Man' is going to be true for most of this album; I can still remember most of these; I can remember lyrics from 'By-Tor', and I have absolutely no idea when I would last have listened to it.  These songs were part of my youth (for want of a better word; I was late teens - early twenties, I was living away from home for the first time; I had few ties, if any; I could spend all my money on Rush LPs if I wanted to) and they have stayed with me since then.

Also - another confessional, folks - these are the songs I tried to teach myself to play.  I even bought sheet music, and earned the callouses I still carry on the fingers of my left hand trying to play these songs.  If the 'Rush' album was about rediscovery for me, then this one will be about remembrance.

Rediscovering Rush – Rush IV

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Some thoughts from the future:

I wrote these back in 2005; I was genuinely in a period of rediscovery.  Looking back at them (looking back at my looking back, if you follow me), I'm struck by how much of this really felt new to me.  This may be something of a spoiler, but the 'rediscovering' thing worked - I became fully immersed in the music of Rush again, and when I listen to these songs now, I am coming back to them having last heard them a few weeks, or at most, months ago.  This also suffers from the inevitable issues with starting a new project without having found a comfortable way to approach it.  I did, in the end, stick pretty much to the 'introduction - side 1 - side 2 - summary' structure (it gets a little trickier in the age of CDs), but I like to think that as time goes on I give a little more thought to the whole thing.

Since I wrote that, I have bought the 'Archives' vinyl set all over again - I have now, to my everlasting joy and delight, returned to the world of record-buying as it was meant to be - I still don't own a copy of this album on its own on vinyl; no doubt I'll get round to it eventually.  There's, of course, a pristine digital copy on my hard drive, and (perhaps equally unsurprisingly) I don't listen to either version all that much.  It remains, as I said, perfectly fine, but not exactly representative of the band, and while I'm glad it exists, and hearing any of the tracks makes me smile, I don't reach for this if I want a slice of early Rush.

 

NB: these 2018 reflections will be posted as if I'd skipped back in time, to keep them in a logical place in the flow - I actually wrote this in February 2018.

Rediscovering Rush – Rush III

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Side 2:

What You're Doing

The first thing I notice, before the song has even started, is that it's not called " What You're Doin' " - it's a small thing, but it's indicative of a certain class, I feel.  We plunge straight into a familiar riff - do I remember this, or does it remind me of something else?  I can't pin anything down, so perhaps my memory is still pretty good.  Odd, random things occur to me as we go along - that drumming is actually pretty damn good; this is a song assembled in sections, and I can hear some of the joins; are Geddy's vocals going to be echoed all the way through?

Turns out they are.  Not sure that I'm too fond of that effect.  Still, I like the song.

In The Mood

The first song I've heard more recently than 1984, this was one of the ones I put on my original selection, mostly because it is absolutely the perfect rhythm for powerwalking to.  It's a lovely riff and a great middle eight, just don't take the lyrics too seriously.  Actually, there's a thing:
Another of those things which bother me: The word 'baby'.  I mean, please.  Last taken even remotely seriously around the time of The Beatles' "Drive My Car", all it is by 1974 is a placeholder for those moments when you can't work out how to fill those two beats - goodness knows what purpose it serves now.  I suppose it's probably gone through the ironic, 'Austin Powers' thing, and is now a kind of post-ironic cool thing to say.  I wouldn't know; I'm middle-aged.  Still, with any luck that will be the last time we hear Geddy singing 'baby' to anyone.

Before and After

Before and after what, I wondered to myself.  Then I got about halfway through the song, and all became clear.  I have absolutely no memory of this song, yet it is exactly of the type that the 20-year-old me would have loved - a lyrical instrumental gradually building to flat-out rock.  I was a real sucker for that kind of thing back then.  Thing is now, I can't hear the charms for all the thoughts crowding in on me.  Firstly, that lyrical beginning; it takes three listens to work out what's bugging me - the skipped beat in the repeated measure at the beginning.  They do it something like eight times, and it sounds odder each time I hear it.  It's quite a good idea, because otherwise that repeated phrase might sound a bit bland, but it's a little unsettling to listen to at first.  This is not a bad thing, you understand.

Secondly, the two halves don't seem to gel - I don't hear the relationship of the second to the first really.  That's probably from listening to too much classical music, where every theme is developed, and all the strands seem to relate.  These two sound a bit too much like two half-finished songs glued together in the studio.  I don't think they were two half-finished songs; but they sound a bit like it.  Also, more doubled guitars, and now I realise what it reminds me of.

Wishbone Ash.  No, really - I wonder if there was any conscious or unconscious influence there?

Also, guess what?  Back there, that wasn't the last time Geddy sang 'baby'.  Let's hope this one is...

Working Man

This is the first track which is difficult to sort out in my mind.  First of all, I have heard it many times over the years; it's kind of a standard; part of the mental furniture.  Also, it's a genuine classic, isn't it?  So what can I bring to it save for some  idle speculation about the mid section.

Well, what the heck.  Let's do that:

I may be old and cynical, but this seems to me to be a triumph of expediency over intention.  The record needs to be in the vicinity of 40 minutes long (20 per side, kids) and here's a song which, without the middle - it's not a middle eight, really, more a sort of middle sixty-four - would be a simple, one-riff plod.  So this extended jam got shoehorned in; once again it doesn't really fit the rest of the song, but it doesn't half show off the musicianship of these three guys, and when we get back to that Black Sabbath-like riff, its an old friend.  Having said that, it works superbly well; much better than it ought to.

Summary:

Well, I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed time-travelling back to 1974.  That album which I didn't play all that much even in my Rushaholic phase turns out to be a fine example of its time - wearing its influences on its sleeve, to be sure, and lacking a certain something in the lyrical invention department, but if you're in the mood (sorry) for a little early seventies bluesy rock, you could do a lot worse than this.

Baby.

Rediscovering Rush – Rush II

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Side 1:

Finding My Way

I wonder how many people there are who bought this when it first came out?  How many of them stayed the course, and are still here, endlessly rocking?  What can it have been like to know nothing about this other than what you can read on the sleeve, to put the needle carefully down on Side 1, Track 1 and hear this riff?  What I hear now is the stereo separation - I realised, as I was powerwalking around the village earlier, that I had probably never really heard this through stereo headphones before.  I genuinely didn't know that the guitar sound wanders from channel to channel at the start.  It's really rather effective and means that the entrance of the rest of the band is particularly satisfying, having been prefigured like that.

(look, I'm going to try not to be pretentious, but sometimes it'll just come out.  Sorry.)

Pretty much all the Rush ingredients are right there: the voice, the bass, the guitar sound, the-

Oh, hang on.  What's the one thing we know about this record? That's right - it's The One Without Neil.  Well, you know what - the drumming is just fine.  Not pyrotechnic, but all things considered, it's more than just OK.  The lyrics - well, that's a whole other story, quite literally.  But, actually, on this track, there's nothing wrong.  It feels right, it rocks along very nicely, and it stops.

Personal quirk no.1 in a series of way too many:  Why can't people write endings to songs?  If you're going to play it live, you're going to have to work out an ending, so why not do it right from the start?  Where did this practice of the fade-out come from? And why does it irritate me so much?

I think I'm going to like this project - first track, and I'm ready for more.  Of course, that's how it always used to work, wasn't it?  The strongest track goes at the start of Side 2; the next strongest at the start of Side 1, and the complex, difficult one goes at the end.  Do bands still do that?

Need Some Love

The first track I really don't remember, and it's really not what I was expecting at all.  Now I've heard it again, I still don't remember it, but I can easily fit it into the time and place - here's a bunch of guys who have been listening to lots of British music, and extrapolating from it.  I think this is what they used to call a 'fast-paced rocker' with a nice changedown into the chorus.  Doesn't really do much for me - maybe it's the lyrics - but I have a clear vision of a sweaty club, and this song getting everyone bouncing. And are those guitars double-tracked?  How did this sound live?

Take A Friend

Hoo, you're trying to annoy me aren't you?  Fade - in? Eep.  All together, boys and girls - can we say Led Zeppelin?  I think that the ambience of hearing this on a mono record player with a dusty needle would have improved the lyrics no end; they really don't need to be heard in clear stereo, piped directly into my ears.  Meanwhile, it's gradually dawning on me that the production on this is pretty damn fine, considering the time and place it was done.  It's fun, but it's not going to be in the top ten personal favourites at the end of this, I can tell.

Here Again

Ah, yes - that's the other given, isn't it?  The obligatory 'slow-burner' at the end of Side 1 - look; we don't just rock out, you know.  Actually, this is pretty odd, hearing Geddy's voice over an instrumental track which could have been laid down by - I don't know, Mountain?  Time I paid a bit more attention to the guitar solo, I think.  And that just reinforces my first reaction to hearing this all again - musically, Geddy and Alex hit the ground pretty much fully formed, didn't they?  That bass sound is already distinctive, and the lead is derivative, sure, but full of ideas.  You can't help seeing this through the lens of 30 years of music, but they've definitely got something.

Rediscovering Rush – Rush I

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Rush

History:

Not the first Rush I heard, this has always felt like an oddity to me.  I often wonder what would have happened if I'd picked this up instead of Deep Purple's 'Burn' when I was trying to impress my friends at school - would I have been disappointed by everything that came after, and pined for the rough, raw sound of this?  Would it have led me to Led Zeppelin and all that clearly influenced this?  I'll never know.  What I do know is that I am a completist.  I had several Rush albums, and I had to have this.  Then I found it in a record shop in Edinburgh in the 'Archives' triple-set, so I bought it, and instantly completed my Rush collection.  This must have been early Eighties - I owned pretty much everything Rush had released in the UK, including copies of 'Battlescar' and 'Take Off'.

I can't honestly say that I listened to it much - I was much more of a 'Moving Pictures' kind of guy, but it was there.  I would have last listened to it all the way through about 20 years ago - probably more.  I remember three tracks here, but I have absolutely no idea what any of the others sound like.  I'm ready; let's go.