Rush - Exit...Stage Left

I have Rush's second live album, Exit...Stage Left. After my merciless tirade against last night's album, i need something positive to talk about. It's a lot of their best (and best known) songs, the cover art has allusions to every previous album, and it's Rush. They are quite simply masters of prog-rock as an artform. They weren't simply a band, and they didn't simply write songs, they were true composers for their ensemble (the progressive part of the genre).

They aren't simply "jams," the pieces have real complex structures, different sections, moods, functions, Peart's lyrics are more narrative than rhyming couplets (and rarely just verse/chorus modules with an interlude or two).

I tend to avoid live albums for the simple fact that hearing most bands "perform" their music live serves no purpose. Not so here (and not just because i don't have any of their studio albums). Hearing them perform this incredible music is special, in most part because they are amazing players. I don't mean virtuosic, i mean so dedicated to their playing that you can hear how hard they work together. What comes across is the sound of "this is exactly what we think great music is, and we wouldn't dare play anything less in front of you good people."

So, it's a great band working as hard as they can to be a great band, and that really does come across. Not everyone is wired to adore all their stuff (and some of their songs don't speak to me either), but it's all completely authentic; they never half-ass anything. There's no "filler," every track they ever wrote is a sculpture in sound, and i think that really comes across in a live context where the physical battle with sound and gear and audience enthusiasm takes place.

I'll say the same thing i said about Thomas Dolby: any Rush you come across is worth obtaining and listening to twenty or thirty times. Plus, the title is an intentional Snagglepus reference (and we all know how much i like those).

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