Rush

Certain Songs #2148: Rush – “Time Stand Still”

July 15, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Hold Your Fire
Year: 1987

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After “New World Man,” I lost the plot. I got swept in the alt-rock world of KFSR and college radio, and basically stopped paying attention what Rush was doing. For about 30 years.

I know I saw some videos on MTV and heard songs on the mainstream radio when I was stuck listening to it, but I just wasn’t interested anymore, even as their music continued to keep pace with the times, as albums like Grace Under Pressure and Hold Your Fire doubled down on the keyboards and 1980s production values. Ironically some of those synth-heavy 1980s production values song might have gotten Rush airplay on some of the more synth-oriented college and alt-rock radio stations, had they not been, you know, Rush.

Certain Songs #2147: Rush – “New World Man”

July 14, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Signals
Year: 1982

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After Moving Pictures, Rush sought to cap their highly successful run of albums by recording their second live album, Exit… Stage Left in late 1981. It was a record that I was actively looking forward too: I’d seen and enjoyed the Moving Pictures tour, and if you look at the track listing for Exit… Stage Left, it’s pretty much impeccable. So I was surprised at how much I disliked it.

Certain Songs #2146: Rush – “Limelight”

July 13, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Moving Pictures
Year: 1981

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All things considered, “Limelight” is probably my favorite Rush song, and is definitely on the short list of Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, Prog Divsion.

I did a fair amount of reading about Rush in prep for all of this, and of my takeaways was that Alex Lifeson was the always-joking extrovert, and Neal Peart was the bookish introvert. Which left Geddy in the middle like Derek Smalls, I guess. Anyways, after Permanent Waves made Rush huge stars once and for all, Peart penned a set of lyrics that perfectly described his ambivalence about the whole situation, kind of a precursor to the things future reluctant rock stars like Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder and Billy Corgan might say in interviews.

Certain Songs #2145: Rush – “Red Barchetta”

July 12, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Moving Pictures
Year: 1981

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Back in my arcade-haunting days — approximately 1978-1982, ending abruptly when we discovered one of our CB radio friends had rented a house with three other women — my favorite thing to do was play the racing games. Night Driver was my first love, of course, followed soon by things like Monaco GP, Pole Position, Turbo and, of course, Red Barchetta.

Certain Songs #2144: Rush – “Tom Sawyer”

July 9, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Moving Pictures
Year: 1981

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It’s funny: Rush are known for getting a big sound out of just three guys — though Geddy Lee is three guys just himself, I guess — but they never met a musical space they couldn’t fill to the brim. I mean, that’s their thing, right? And so it’s ironic that their most feted song has plenty of space in it. And that space is created almost immediately: “Tom Sawyer” opens with an instantly iconic drum beat / synth wash which immediately got your attention seconds before Geddy starts singing.

Certain Songs #2143: Rush – “Freewill”

July 8, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Permanent Waves
Year: 1980

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While one might assume that calling your album Permanent Waves might be a dig at what folks called “new wave” music, Rush would spend much of the 1980s making records that were their spin on new wave as surely as their earlier records were their spins on metal and prog.

That said, very few new wave bands — the Police, yeah, X possibly, Hüsker Dü or the Minutemen probably — had the chops to mix all of the different time signatures that Rush crammed into a song like “Freewill,” which, on Permanent Waves, spins out from “The Spirit of Radio” with a cool Alex Lifeson opening that lands into the main guitar riff for the song.

Certain Songs #2142: Rush – “The Spirit of Radio”

July 7, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Permanent Waves
Year: 1980

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The thing about writing album-side long multi-part epics and/or concept albums is that they’re hard. Which is one of the reason that a lot of the biggest prog bands of the 1970s abandoned them as the 1970s crashed into the 1980s. Instead, they subsumed their considerable chops into shorter songs, some of which were pop songs, and in the cases of Genesis and — for one weird moment, Yes — incredibly successful pop songs. Hell, an entire band, Asia, formed specifically for this purpose.

By the way, this isn’t necessarily any easier. Genesis’s pop success was initially viewed as a fluke, even as they’d been traveling in that direction since Peter Gabriel left, Asia crapped out after their second album, and Yes were essentially one-hit wonders for the second time in their career. And, lets not let Emerson Lake & Palmer off the hook for their still dogshit Love Beach, which tried to “balance” six terrible pop songs on one side with a side-long epic that was somehow even worse. (And they didn’t do themselves any favors with that album cover, either.)

Certain Songs #2141: Rush – “La Villa Strangiato”

July 6, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Hemispheres
Year: 1978

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In the summer of 1977, I started doing something that we called “mobiling.” I’d gotten on the CB radio and basically discovered a bunch of other weirdos on it — my first foray into social media! — and, naturally started meeting them face-to-face. It was called “mobiling” because people with CB radios in their cars as well as their houses would often be the ones making contact.

I, of course, didn’t have a car, but Craig from across the street as well as Larry (whom I met via the CB radio.) both had cars. And so we drove around northwest Fresno that srping and summer putting faces to voices. It was during one of those forays that I met my first Rush Guy, who turned me on to their double-live album, All The World’s a Stage.

Certain Songs #2112: Rush – “2112”

May 24, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: 2112
Year: 1976

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Sorry, but if you know me at all, you’d know that there was literally no way I could resist doing “2112” as the 2112st Certain Song post. Especially since we’re only a month or so from Rush, anyways.

So let me start with this: right now, there is at least one kid in the world who will get to listen to “2112” in the year 2112. Mind. Blown.