........priests praise my name on this night.

Ah, 2112. The concept album that inspired a really bad computer game . . .

I can remember vividly when I heard "The Spirit of Radio" on the radio for the first time. I had been heavily into Rush since the release of "All the World's a Stage" and had always felt kind of special because I knew how great they were and few people outside of Canada even knew who they were. (I lived in New Jersey). When it came on the radio, I was sooo excited, but then I got sad. I realized they weren't "My" band anymore. I had to share them with the rest of the world. Oh to be a teenager again!

Favorite album: Caress of Steel

I think "I'm going bald."...as I lay down at Lakeside Park, admiring the Fountain of Lamneth, on Bastille Day. The Necromancer paperback flips open to page one as I read the dedication to Rod Serling........... Still, I Am. Yeah Caress Of Steel ROCKS!!!!!!!!

Especially on the 24th of May.

Exit Stage Left has to be one of the most incredible live albums done by anyone.

I'm listening to Caress Of Steel now. They don't make albums like this one anymore, folks.

Take off, eh?

Cookie for the ref.

Too easy, Scott. Bob and Doug Mackenzie's novelty hit, "Take Off", featuring Rush's Geddy Lee on vocals.

I LOVE THIS GROUP!

I LOVE THEIR MUSIC!

(Primarily the '80's stuff, however.)

Geddy's bass and keyboard playing rocks, and so does Neil's drumming and Alex's guitar riffs!

(I also like some of the '70's stuff, most of the '90's stuff, and almost ALL of the '80's stuff! It all sounds just so excellent!)

But what will happen to the band now? Alex was arrested for drunken brawling in Naples, Florida last New Years'. With his son and daughter-in-law in tow, he assaulted police, shoved one down some stairs, spit blood at one, and had to be subdued with a stun gun!

I just can't believe it! What I had always liked about Rush is that they were not your "average typical rock group". They make music for the intellectuals, the thinkers of society. And they're all married with grown children!

I really do wonder just what will come of this, whether or not it will affect the future of the band. But, as I found out last week, their record label has just released an EP of cover songs, which I am not interested in buying, at all.

Will anyone else care to contribute to this thread, and talk about this group's greatness, and musical geniusness in general? (At least that's how I feel about it.) I hope so!

I sit here corrected! I DID buy "Feedback", and I like it!

"Cause there ain't no cure for the SUMMERTIME BLUES!!!!"

I await their next one!

Well, I'm back, once again. Hmm, I see that nobody else has contributed to this particular thread in a little while, so I thought I would return and list my favorite Rush songs! ANd here they are:

First, from the '70's. I must admit, though, that I have not yet actually heard every song from every Rush album from this decade. Just a few. I thought that I'd mention that! Anyway...

"What You're Doing"
"Working Man"
"Anthem"
"By-Tor & The Snow Dog"
"Fly By Night"
"Bastille Day"
"Lakeside Park"
"2112" (in it's entirety, of course, not the cut, edited version classic-rock stations play!)
"A Passage To Bangkok"
"Something For Nothing"
"Closer To The Heart"
"Xanadu"
"La Villa Strangiato" (instrumental)

I suppose now with 1980's "Permenant Waves", this begins the '80's, my favorite decade for Rush music!

"Freewill"
"The Spirit Of Radio"
"Tom Sawyer" (perhaps the most well-known of the band's songs)
"Red Barchetta"
"Limelight" (This is the song I first heard on my classic-rock station in the mid-'90's that got me interested in this group in the first place!)
"Subdivisions"
"The Analog Kid"
"Chemistry"
"Digital Man"
"The Weapon"
"New World Man"
"Losing It"
"Countdown"
"Distant Early Warning"
"Afterimage"
"Red Sector A"
"The Body Electric"
"Kid Gloves"
"Red Lenses"
"The Big Money"
"Grand Designs"
"Manhattan Project"
"Marathon"
"Territories"
"Middletown Dreams"
"Emotion Detector"
"Mystic Rhythms"
"Force Ten"
"Time Stand Still"
"Open Secrets"
"Prime Mover"
"Lock And Key"
"Mission"
"Turn The Page" (no, NOT the famous one By Bob Seger, later covered by Metallica!)
"High Water"
"Show Don't Tell"
"Chain Lightning"
"Scars"
"Superconductor"
"Anagram (For Mongo)" (Fans of the movie "Blazing Saddles" should understand this reference!)
"Hand Over Fist"

And now for the '90's. Rush did not release as many albums during this decade as they had done before, and I was not as impressed with some of the songs from their '90's albums as I had been with their '80's ones. Anyway.....

"Dreamline"
"Roll The Bones"
"Face Up"
"The Big Wheel"
"Neurotica"
"You Bet Your Life" (no, not the quiz show hosted by Groucho Marx, and later by Bill Cosby. This song ended the album quite nicely!)
"Alien Shore" (this was the only track I liked from "Counterparts", overall my least-favorite Rush album. Oh well, I suppose they can't all be winners!)
"Test For Echo"
"Time And Motion"
"Resist"
"Limbo" (an instrumental, with references to Boris Pickett's "Monster Mash" throughout.)

And now, we go into the 21st Century, with "Vapor Trails" the first regular album released by the trio so far this new millenium. I didn't dislike it, I kinda sorta liked it!

"Peaceable Kingdom"
"Ghost Rider"
"How It Is"
"Earthshine"
"Secret Touch"

And now for the most RECENT project the group undertook, an EP of cover songs called "Feedback", which, as you can above, I listened to and gave a thumbs-up to last summer. ANd I liked all eight of the songs! They were:

"Summertime Blues"
"Heart Full Of Soul"
"For What It's Worth"
"The Seeker"
"Mr. Soul"
"Seven And Seven Is"
"Shapes Of Things"
"Crossroads"

Whew! Well, there they are, my favorite Rush tracks!

Before I go, I'd also like to list my favorite tracks from both Alex Lifeson's and Geddy Lee's solo albums.

In 1996, Alex Lifeson and a few other musicians (including his son, I believe) relased a CD called "Victor". It was a one-time (so far) project with the title track being a song with music by the band, and the lyrics recited by Alex, originally written by poet W.H. Auden. Interesting, huh? Anyway, here are my favorite tracks from that one...

"Promise"
"Start Today"
"At The End"
"Sending Out A Warning"
"Strip And Go Naked" (instrumental)
"The Big Dance"
"Victor"
"I Am The Spirit"

And FINALLY, here are my favorite tracks from Geddy Lee's solo album from 2000, "My Favorite Headache"!

"My Favorite Headache"
"Working At Perfekt"
"Runaway Train"
"Moving To Bohemia"
"Grace To Grace"

For you trivia buffs (and fans of Canadian Comedy), Geddy also sang the lyrics to Bob and Doug Mackenzie's "Take Off" from their 1981 comedy sketch/song album of the same name. Cool, huh?

So, there you have it. My favorite Rush stuff. I hope that others will contribute to this board as I have done. Later, now!

Whoops! I was looking over my former posts and I found in this one on this board that I forgot to include the key '70's track "The Trees" on my list of favorite Rush tracks. Oh well! Now you know!

"There is unrest in the forest,
There is trouble with the trees,
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas."

Heh heh! Later, now!

Uuhhh, and exactly what does this have to do with the great Canadian rock trio??!!

Could the webmaster please remove this garbage?! There's a time and place for everything, after all!!

Andre, it's a spambot. If you look at the Misc. Emergencies thread in the Kitchen Sink, you'll see that NitCentral was overwhelmed by it.

The moderators are working on it, just be patient.

Hey! MAJOR Rush update since that whole spambot nonsense of last year!

They just came out with "Snakes & Arrows"! It's pretty cool, I really like the "Far Cry" hard-rock single.

Check it out!

I just saw Rush at Blossom Music center outside of Cleveland on August 30th. If you've seen this show, then you know there isn't anything I can say that would do it justice. If you didn't know any better, there'd be no way to tell, by looking or listening, whether it was 2007, 1997, 1997, or 1977. They've had the occasional setback, but when it's time for business, they never fail to deliver and then some.

I was unfamiliar with a lot of the material, since I haven't heard the Snakes & Arrows album yet, but no problem, and now I just want the disc that much more.

It's funny; I always leave a Rush show minutely disappointed, because I can always name some of my favorites that they didn't play (Red Barchetta and Roll the Bones, two name two that WERE played on the 2004 show). Then I realize that's only because there's so much great material to choose from. Far better that than the alternative.

If you have a chance to check this show out, do it. Most of the remaining dates are in Canada or Europe, but I believe they'll also be in Madison Square Garden.

PS: Hey Andre, I guess Summertime Blues is now officially a Rush song; they played it again this year, so I guess it's now part of the canon. Fine by me.

I also really like their version of "The Seeker", even better than The Who's version.

Also, they did a good "For What It's Worth" too.

I always thought they were one of the best live bands, even though I like to listen to their studio stuff more often.

In case it was not known, two years ago, John Rutsey, the band's original drummer (you heard him on their debut self-titled album) died. I think it was from cancer of some kind. He also suffered from diabetes throughout his life.

He will be missed!

Well, I now have the DVD "Beyond The Lighted Stage", the long-awaited and much-anticipated documentary about the great Canadian trio.

And I shall post my review after I see it and its additional features!

They have recently announced that their next album, "Clockwork Angels", will be coming out in Spring 2012.

And in the meantime, the band released a live CD called "Time Machine 2011: Live In Cleveland". I will probably pick that one up at some point.

Also, their first fifteen albums that were recorded for Mercury have been remastered and released in three seperate box sets: "Sector 1", "Sector 2", and "Sector 3", with five CDs and one DVD in each one. I dont need them myself, but anyone who is not familiar with their early work (the 70s and 80s) would do well to pick up these three sets.

As long as Sector 7* isn't involved, I'm OK with it!

*reference to trilogy of Transformers films directed by Michael Bay. If you haven't seen them, trust me, you're not missing much of anything!

Well, this past summer "Clockwork Angels" was released. I liked it a lot. Not as much as "Signals", "Power Windows", "Hold Your Fire", "Roll The Bones", or "Snakes & Arrows", but it was still really great.

It was a concept album, much like "2112" that followed a common theme throughout all twelve of the songs. I thought that was interesting, as they had kind of left their progressive rock roots behind in the early 80s when they began to use keyboards and synthesizers in their songs, starting with "Moving Pictures". They were known for performing really long tracks on their 70s albums as part of the prog-rock style, and in the 90s, they were doing a more regular hard rock sound.

While I'm on the subject of prog-rock, I also happen to like other groups who were popular in the 70s and 80s that had a similar styles such as early Yes, early Genesis (with Peter Gabriel), Emerson, Lake & Palmer, The Alan Parsons Project, and of course, Styx.

I cant think of anything else to say about them right now, so I end with these classic lyrics:

"You can choose a ready guide or some celestial voice,
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice,
You can choice from phantom fears or kindness that can kill,
I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose Freewill!"