Into this social and personal morass came "Tom Sawyer", the first rock single I ever paid attention to and the most important. Being black, I was used to R&B/soul/funk. Now I realize that the uninformed, uninitiated listener can find much about Rush to criticize, but to me, "Tom Sawyer" was a clarion call and a rallying cry. By the 3rd time I heard it on the radio, I had to buy the album (remember those?). When I was able to collect enough money (about $8.00 - remember that?), I went to the record store and was transfixed by the cool looking cover. I didn't get the depth of the cover concept - the "moving pictures" inside joke, but the surface appealed. Notice the gothic architecture, the recutrring theme of 3, the Clockwork Orange-looking men moving pictures, the burning witch, the black/red satanic lettering, and the 'bad seed-looking' little girls with their parents? Rush were the master manipulators here - luring teens in to ponder what evil lurks underneath, while affirming the teen desire to rebel, to piss off your folks, thereby reclaiming your desire for power. Then you turn it around and it's literally and figuratively the reverse - no evil intents, just a film shoot - a motion pic shoot. It's still one of the all-time greatest album covers for me.

Then the inner sleeve offers those oh-so-cool pose pix of them in motion laying down some of the wickedest and hardest music in rock. I was held captive to the stereo system with the first track, "Tom Sawyer". Another reviewer questioned why it was first on the album. He may as well ask why a the door to a building is on the first floor. It literally is a song intended for an audience like me then. Figuratively, it became the soundtrack for my teenage life. It suggests a dark, aloof cynicism, and a preternatural desire to avoid conformity. It has a sound that is singular, distinct, and unique. The middle keyboard part that morphs into that intense jam is like a drug trip. There is an obvious love of technical proficience, a holdout for artistic quality, and a very masculine love for gadgetry and technology. It tows the line between European lyricism and the African hypnotic beat. It also was complete - the images, words, rhythms, ideas all were dynamic and interplaying, and justified the high art of production. And it covered a wide spectrum of sound - the puglistic punches and the shimmering, brassy crashes of the percussion. That impossible-to-duplicate fat, distorted bass sound. I still marvel at Geddy's vocal performance on this record. Lifeson's solos in "Tom Sawyer", "Red Barchetta", and "Limelight" are classic, yet all of his work is incredible here. His effects are equally incredible - the digital delay ending his solo in "Limelight", and his dead-on 'shrieking tires' starting his solo in 'Barchetta'. That's one of those moments that make your arm hairs stand up. It's one of many moments on this album where you realize you're listening to true artists who have thought long and hard on how to manipulate our senses for a desired effect.

Then there's that feeling that you are a witness to the recording (just what are they whispering to each other before the solo of "Camera Eye?"). Read the credits and you'll note the album was recorded digitally - in fact they're probably the FIRST to do it - 4-5 years before CDs became the norm. And that production had a strangeness to it - a haunting sense of light and shade, like an Ansel Adams photograph.

Rush were a breath of fresh air for me. I wanted to be a part of the cool trip they were on then. I began to teach myself the drums, and I proceeded to collect every one of their albums and I studied them like a monk studying the New Testament. In 2 years I began to master Peart's power, and subsequently I discovered the Police, Zep, Iron Maiden, Yes, Ozzy, etc. I became a rock student and a musician, dabbling with the bass and the guitar.

So thank you, Rush. This album was the raft on the Mississippi for me. I was Huck and I was Jim, and the drumsticks were my paddles.


Electronic Progressive   August 15, 2003
 21 out of 23 found this review helpful

Some have said that The Moody Blues brought bombast to rock music. Rush takes the progressive bombast of The Moody Blues to loftier, even more excessive and electronic heights. In the process they have created one of the most accessible progressive rock albums.

"Tom Sawyer" kicks off the album with one of the three most progressive songs on the album, with the other two being "The Camera Eye" and "Witch Hunt." All three glory in being bombastic and pretentious with exquisitely overblown keyboards of multiple types. This song, with its hard driving guitar and synth driven music, is about what Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer would be like in today's world. One of the best lines from this song is:

And what you say about his company
Is what you say about society.

The truth of these lyrics is that however uncomfortable today's Tom Sawyer may make you feel, it is your criticism of him that is at the heart of society's problem; a grandiose variation on a theme that goes back at least to Janis Ian's "Society's Child." The music and lyrics are incredibly catchy for a progressive rock song.

Science fiction is often a theme in much progressive music, and "Red Barchetta" is in this category. The song is about a future where gasoline-powered cars are banned. The song's protagonist likes to visit his Uncle's Farm where a Red Barchetta is hidden in the barn. Our hero loves to go for joy rides, racing back to a one-lane bridge to avoid the police cars that are too wide to fit onto it. Once our hero returns, he dreams with his Uncle at the fireside. While we do not know for sure what they dream about, we can guess it is a dream of the time when fast cars ruled the road, and joy rides were about how fast one could drive rather than whether one could drive at all.

"YYZ" is an excellent rock instrumental. The rhythm is very catchy and accessible. YYZ is the airport code for Toronto, which is where the group went to make it big from their hometown of Sarnia, Ontario.

The next song was the last on the first side of the tape or album. "Limelight" was a bona fide hit for the group, and was sufficiently progressive to help convince people, along with Rush's other hits in the 80s, that progressive rock was not yet dead. While the song may have some elements of progressive, it also has elements of mainstream rock.

"The Camera Eye" is a perspective of New York and London in glorious electronic excessiveness. The lyrics take a back seat to the overwhelming keyboards on this piece; easily the most overblown piece on the CD, and also perhaps one of the most progressive. Rush typically enjoys artistic and descriptive lyrics, but here the lyrics are very understated with the music conveying the perspective of the birds-eye view of New York and London. This song has all the elements that critics of progressive rock love to criticize, which means it is one of my favorite songs on this album.

"Witch Hunt" is ominous and chilling. Keyboards lay a heavy bass track to chill you to the bone as you envision the crowd that hunted Frankenstein, or the Wolf Man, or the mob out after anyone who is NOT LIKE US. This track is the most cutting edge on the album and also the most progressive. The lyrics are reasonably accessible, but the sinister music takes some time to fully appreciate; another of my favorites from this album.

The last song is a bit of a departure from Rush's norm. "Vital Songs" has a sort of reggae beat in the style of The Police, for example the style of "Don't Stand So Close to Me." The song took me a while to get into because the style is very different from everything else on this album. Furthermore, it is probably the most mainstream in styling of any song on the album. I will avoid attempting to interpret the wonderfully obscure and poetic lyrics.

Rush managed to create a progressive rock album that was close to the edge of progressive rock, sometimes crossing more into the mainstream, so that the album is every accessible. Much of the music is catchy, though most of the lyrics take time to understand. Many fans consider this album Rush's best. I liked it well enough that in preparation for this review it remained in my car's stereo for two weeks solid. A truly great album.


Not Your Grandmother's Nirvana Foreign Ensemble Revisited   July 23, 2006
 20 out of 30 found this review helpful

Around the time "Moving Pictures" came out, Jimmy Page was asked who his favorite band of the moment was, a band that really impressed him and he replied Rush was the only one. It is not hard to understand why. Rush accomplished, at least with the late Terry Brown Albums, what Page was trying to do with Led Zeppelin, which is to turn them into a more progressive act without losing the edge.

It is important to note that at this time the members of Rush had gone from their early Zeppelin & Cream influences to being avid followers of various early 70s progressive rock acts such as Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Caravan, Camel, PFM, Hatfield & the North, National Health & Emerson, Lake & Palmer and from there even further into exploring the mostly instrumental offshoots of some of these bands like Phil Collins' Brand-X featuring the incredible bass/guitar combo of Percy Jones/John Goodsall and The Bill Bruford Band featuring the legendary Berlin/Holdsworth team. They were inspired by all of them and were trying to do work that measured up and they did.

They had nothing to worry about until they decided to "change direction" and pretend that regression into pop was somehow a bold Peter-Gabriel-Security type less-is-more progression with "Grace Under Pressure" and everything that came after (Gabriel himself fell prey to this anti-pomposity-at-all-costs manifesto starting with the "So" album and has been going downhill ever since). I would say that from "Hemispheres" up until the end of "Signals" they were officially a full-fledged card-carrying state-of-the-art prog-rock act well-beyond the ambitious hard-rock stage of "Caress of Steel" through "Farewell to Kings."

The zenith of all this absurdity in pursuit of imaginative sounds of inspired passion was the paradoxical hit-parade (4 songs that have each been played at least a million times on AOR radio stations) of supreme sonic assault and simultaneous enlightenment called "Moving Pictures." "Moving Pictures" was the perfectly refined, organic machine, the Mercedes or BMW, the ultimate driving machine of all arena hard rock, practical but uncompromising (Colosseum II achieved a similar unheralded engineering feat in Europe with the quite heavily intense progressive hard-rock album "Strange New Flesh" but didn't stay together long enough to get anywhere near arena-rock popularity levels, finally ending up an excellent mostly instrumental fusion group with the masterpiece albums "Electric" Savage" & "War Dance"). The perfect machine can still be improved on but only slowly and is a very delicate and fragile thing. One little part missing will ruin everything else. Parts started missing with more and more frequent regularity starting with "Grace Under Pressure" when one of the more important parts, Terry Brown went missing. Rush, almost overnight became an unhip band, and as the years went on and no previous glory returned, a ridiculous and even boring band just like Yes & Genesis in the 80s and 90s and yet they were still a huge live draw and a great live act (for the ultimate demonstration check out the crazy "Rush in Rio" pandemonium of a concert on DVD). Why? Because live is where they brought out the ultimate driving machines of 2112 through Signals and drove the hell out of them with the audience in the passenger seat. The large catalogue of songs from those albums are what the fans really pay to see and what they go the most ape-sheeioit for.

The reasons "Moving Pictures" rules over all other rock albums (with the exception of King Crimson "Red") are many. Here are a few off the top of my head. "Moving Pictures" rules because:

it is not just hard rock with a ball-busting, hyperactive rhythm section that is as ferocious and loud as it is mathematically precise, it is not just so wired and intense that you are amazed the entire band doesn't spontaneously combust from the energy, it is not just bizarre and mysterious and weirder than anything else this side of Captain Beefheart and Edgar Broughton Band, casting a spell with its surreal moods and screaming banshee vocals, it is not just tonally rich with beautifully recorded tones of pure `rush-inducing' organic orgasm out of very loud instruments, it is not just progressive and complex with more tempo and time changes and shifts of syncopation in it than all Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple albums put together, it is not just a collection of 7 peerless anthems (even the instrumental YYZ is an anthem, far beyond just a mere instrumental) that have the romance and power of myth and withstand literally a thousand listens and still shine, it is not just a unique combination of music and poetry that stands on its own in the larger sense and simultaneously connects deeply and directly with disaffected youth and whatever remnants of it remain in the so-called adult that has become of that youth instantly and painfully, it is not just corny and pretentious enough to make you smile in amazement that despite all its excesses it somehow works so majestically, making the corny an essential part of its charm like so many other great rock records, it is not just produced better than any other album of any kind of music ever and at the highest decibels possible (you need a minimum of 200 watts for a proper tearing-the-plaster-off-the-walls blast-off, I run a Bryston 4B ST through Polk Rti12s), it is all these things at once in subtle shifts and perfect, mysterious, transcendent balance. And if that's not the definition of a work of art, then nothing is.



Rush's Masterpiece   October 22, 2002
 14 out of 16 found this review helpful

The 1981 release of "Moving Pictures" was the culmination of Rush's efforts at achieving the perfect blend of hard-edged progressive rock with high concept. The remastered disk presents a highly listenable collection of songs that remain fresh some twenty years later. This disk also sees Geddy Lee's continuing emergence as frontman with brilliant bass guitar, more synths than previous outings, and more restrained vocals.

Focusing primarily shorter songs, between 4 and 6 minutes, this was a leaner and meaner Rush and all the better. The lone epic, "The Camera Eye" at 10:58, was to be their last, and even this song stands well today with its melodic structure, lyrical imagery and well-balanced instrumentation.

1. Tom Sawyer. Opening with some trippy moogs sounds a la "2112", our first glimpse at Neal Peart's continually evolving lyricism brings us a look at a modern boy anti-hero. "Though his mind is not for rent, don't put him down as arrogant..." gives the impression of the struggle against the status quo. Be an individual. Great trading riff on the instrumental between Lifeson and Lee, and some nifty time changes by the band that keep drummers counting. 5 stars.

2. Red Barchetta. A foray into a Orwellian future where cars are banned and one man commits a weekly crime by taking joy rides in the country, or is it just a dream? Nice images. Excellent building from the guitar harmonics at the beginning to the melodic bass during the fadeout. 5 stars.

3. YYZ. It was years before I learned that YYZ was the airport code for Toronto, the band's hometown. How appropriate. This instrumental is much more cohesive than "La Villa Strangiato", with a rock meets funk meets fusion blend. Nice work by all three players and awesome drumming by the Professor. 4 stars.

4. Limelight. An instantly recognizable guitar riff and Peart's lyrics admonition against getting caught up in wanting to be famous. "Living in the limelight, the universal dream, for those who wish to seem, those who wish to be, must put aside the alienation, get on with the fascination, the real relation, the underlying theme." Live your life and don't get caught up with the lives of actors and musicians. 5 stars.

5. The Camera Eye. This longer piece has two parts, one evoking a more modern era in New York, the other an older period in Westminster. Great lyrical imagery with "an angular mass of New Yorkers" and "they seem oblivious, to a soft spring rain, life an English rain, so light, yet endless, from a leaden sky."
Lifeson's guitar work shines here. 4 stars.

6. Witch Hunt (part III of 'Fear'). This piece has a very ominous energy, with the mob sounds and dark-sounding guitar build. Again, excellent imagery of the right-leaning vigilante group and allegories of those who "must rise and save us, from ourselves." Plus, the title indicates a foreshadowing of future additions to form a larger whole. 4 stars.

7. Vital Signs. This song gets a bum rap, but it's also an experiment that foretells some of Rush's experimentation with their next two recordings, "Signals," and "Grace Under Pressure" with the "white reggae" sound similar to the Police. I like the choppy guitar part, finger excercising bassline and especially the drum and snare work by Peart. 4 stars.