The Album Review Club - Week #147 - (page 1942) - Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan

[bennyboy]

You won't be alone.

You never know,might enjoy it.

 

[OB1]

You never know,might enjoy it.

Millions do.

 

[RobMCFC]

Incredibly, this album is not one of the Rush albums in that Larkin list, given that many fans and observers would rank it as their best. I do not necessarily think it is their finest album and it would not quite rank as my personal favourite of their studio offerings;

If I get invited to do more of these, the next will not be much of a surprise but after that I will probably choose something less obvious than a record by one of my absolute favourite bands. Cos I love Rush, which is why they top the list of bands I have seen the most in concert and the 40th Anniversary version comes with a full live show from 198?. I don’t intend to ask anyone to listen to that, but you should if you like the studio album.



I was struggling to choose what to review next, but the deciding factor was that, slightly belatedly, Rush recently issued a 40th Anniversary version of their 1981 album Moving Pictures and I took that as a sign.

Moving Pictures is an apt title for the record, given the images that it conjures us so majestically. It kicks-off in impressive fashion with perhaps the band’s best known and most loved song: Tom Sawyer.

The track was inspired by the famous Mark Twain novel and features lyrics that were a co-written by drummer Neil Peart and quirky Canadian poet Pye Dubois, who often collaborated with fellow Maple Leaf rockers Max Webster. Peart took Dubois’ poem “Louie the Lawyer” and produced a slightly autobiographical set of deeply philosophical words about personal independence and free thinking. Musically, the song is relatively short but still complex, featuring more time changes than Pep Guardiola makes formation changes in a match. It springs into life with a burst of synthesiser and a distinctive hard-hitting four on the floor drumbeat. The “main” instrumental section commences with Geddy Lee’s memorable synth line, melds into Alex’s face melting guitar solo and crashes out with the most air drummed break in the history of Rock and Roll (sorry Phil).

As much of an FM favourite as it is, Tom Sawyer is not for me the best song on the album: that honour belongs to track two, a widescreen mini epic by the name of Red Barchetta.

Introduced by Alex Lifeson’s guitar harmonics, the song starts with a gentle wistful air, suggesting a bucolic calm, but soon goes through the gears like Charles Le Clerc exiting La Rascasse, racing along on an adrenaline surge of turbo charged riffage. This is musical equivalent of a Disney roller-coaster. Inspired by Richard S. Foster’s short story “A Nice Morning Drive” this is a cinematic experience, a perfect fusion of words and music that creates moving pictures in your mind as the futuristic tale comes vividly to life.

Musical mastery is to the fore in YYZ, an instrumental piece inspired by the transmitter code for Toronto's Lester B. Pearson International Airport. The composition uses the morse code for YYZ as a motif and features phenomenal bass playing from Geddy that has more twists and turns than Snake Pass.

Side 1 ends with Limelight, a fairly straight-forward radio friendly rock track about Peart’s difficulties dealing with the glare of stardom into which the band had been thrust. It neatly borrows from Shakespeare’s play “As You Like It” with the lines:

All the world’s indeed a stage
And we are merely players
Performers and portrayers

and nods back to Rush’s utterly brilliant first live album (All the World’s A Stage).

Throughout the album, guitarist Alex Lifeson is in superb form but his solo in Limelight is a highlight as he wrings out every ounce of emotion from his whammy bar to produce a sense of isolation befitting of the songs’ theme – it’s his favourite solo to perform live.

Side 2’s lead off is the last track Rush recorded that was over 10 minutes duration, although it doesn’t feel long and musically has quite a sharp focus. The song has two halves lyrically, which are Peart’s musings about walking around two great cities (albeit not the greatest City): New York and London. Again, he paints beautiful pictures – I always imagine these to be in black and white. Rush left the song out of their setlist for nearly three decades, during which it was often the most requested song for the band to perform.

The sounds of a screaming mob usher in the highly produced track that is Witch Hunt. The rest of the album was put together to be played live but this number even featured the band’s album cover artist Hugh Syme on synthesiser and a host of overdubs. Part III of the Fear trilogy of songs, produced out of sequence across three albums, this is a dark number with a grinding heavy riff that has lyrics of enduring relevance and handles issues that go beyond folk in black pointy hats.

Peart’s commentary on technospeak, Vital Signs closes the album on a more uplifting note and signals what is to come sonically on the group’s next three releases as they deviate from their norm with a Police-like intro and a mix of poppy rock and reggae lite.

And that’s it, seven tightly constructed, superbly produced tracks that have garnered multiple accolades over the past forty years.





P.S. The 40th Anniversary version comes with a full live show from 1981. I don’t intend to ask anyone to listen to that, but highly recommended if you like the studio album.

Nice choice and write-up. I'm familiar with the album (I should be, given that Rush are in my Top 10 artists) but I only listened to the full album as recently as two or three years ago! Bonkers I know, but there you go.

Anyway, I'll save all the details for my review.

 

[journolud]

I do have one Rush album in Permanent Waves. Like 10cc who’ve just gone and only have one album of I’ve never really felt I needed to explore the back catalogue but this is a good opportunity to do so. Train journey back up north from London tomorrow will give me first chance to listen.

 

[Saddleworth2]

Incredibly, this album is not one of the Rush albums in that Larkin list, given that many fans and observers would rank it as their best. I do not necessarily think it is their finest album and it would not quite rank as my personal favourite of their studio offerings;

If I get invited to do more of these, the next will not be much of a surprise but after that I will probably choose something less obvious than a record by one of my absolute favourite bands. Cos I love Rush, which is why they top the list of bands I have seen the most in concert and the 40th Anniversary version comes with a full live show from 198?. I don’t intend to ask anyone to listen to that, but you should if you like the studio album.



I was struggling to choose what to review next, but the deciding factor was that, slightly belatedly, Rush recently issued a 40th Anniversary version of their 1981 album Moving Pictures and I took that as a sign.

Moving Pictures is an apt title for the record, given the images that it conjures us so majestically. It kicks-off in impressive fashion with perhaps the band’s best known and most loved song: Tom Sawyer.

The track was inspired by the famous Mark Twain novel and features lyrics that were a co-written by drummer Neil Peart and quirky Canadian poet Pye Dubois, who often collaborated with fellow Maple Leaf rockers Max Webster. Peart took Dubois’ poem “Louie the Lawyer” and produced a slightly autobiographical set of deeply philosophical words about personal independence and free thinking. Musically, the song is relatively short but still complex, featuring more time changes than Pep Guardiola makes formation changes in a match. It springs into life with a burst of synthesiser and a distinctive hard-hitting four on the floor drumbeat. The “main” instrumental section commences with Geddy Lee’s memorable synth line, melds into Alex’s face melting guitar solo and crashes out with the most air drummed break in the history of Rock and Roll (sorry Phil).

As much of an FM favourite as it is, Tom Sawyer is not for me the best song on the album: that honour belongs to track two, a widescreen mini epic by the name of Red Barchetta.

Introduced by Alex Lifeson’s guitar harmonics, the song starts with a gentle wistful air, suggesting a bucolic calm, but soon goes through the gears like Charles Le Clerc exiting La Rascasse, racing along on an adrenaline surge of turbo charged riffage. This is musical equivalent of a Disney roller-coaster. Inspired by Richard S. Foster’s short story “A Nice Morning Drive” this is a cinematic experience, a perfect fusion of words and music that creates moving pictures in your mind as the futuristic tale comes vividly to life.

Musical mastery is to the fore in YYZ, an instrumental piece inspired by the transmitter code for Toronto's Lester B. Pearson International Airport. The composition uses the morse code for YYZ as a motif and features phenomenal bass playing from Geddy that has more twists and turns than Snake Pass.

Side 1 ends with Limelight, a fairly straight-forward radio friendly rock track about Peart’s difficulties dealing with the glare of stardom into which the band had been thrust. It neatly borrows from Shakespeare’s play “As You Like It” with the lines:

All the world’s indeed a stage
And we are merely players
Performers and portrayers

and nods back to Rush’s utterly brilliant first live album (All the World’s A Stage).

Throughout the album, guitarist Alex Lifeson is in superb form but his solo in Limelight is a highlight as he wrings out every ounce of emotion from his whammy bar to produce a sense of isolation befitting of the songs’ theme – it’s his favourite solo to perform live.

Side 2’s lead off is the last track Rush recorded that was over 10 minutes duration, although it doesn’t feel long and musically has quite a sharp focus. The song has two halves lyrically, which are Peart’s musings about walking around two great cities (albeit not the greatest City): New York and London. Again, he paints beautiful pictures – I always imagine these to be in black and white. Rush left the song out of their setlist for nearly three decades, during which it was often the most requested song for the band to perform.

The sounds of a screaming mob usher in the highly produced track that is Witch Hunt. The rest of the album was put together to be played live but this number even featured the band’s album cover artist Hugh Syme on synthesiser and a host of overdubs. Part III of the Fear trilogy of songs, produced out of sequence across three albums, this is a dark number with a grinding heavy riff that has lyrics of enduring relevance and handles issues that go beyond folk in black pointy hats.

Peart’s commentary on technospeak, Vital Signs closes the album on a more uplifting note and signals what is to come sonically on the group’s next three releases as they deviate from their norm with a Police-like intro and a mix of poppy rock and reggae lite.

And that’s it, seven tightly constructed, superbly produced tracks that have garnered multiple accolades over the past forty years.





P.S. The 40th Anniversary version comes with a full live show from 1981. I don’t intend to ask anyone to listen to that, but highly recommended if you like the studio album.

Not obvious at all. :-)
They are not on my list of prejudices so I’m looking forward to listening. Great review btw.

 

[RobMCFC]

Whilst everybody [looks forward to/grimaces and prepares to listen to] Rush, I have an apology to make to @Saddleworth2.

I was away this weekend and thought that I'd collected and tabled all the scores when I was trawling through the pages, but on double-checking, it seems that I'd missed a 9. This makes a massive difference, with 10cc scoring 16 votes at an average of 6.88. With this corrected score, Mr Saddleworth blasts his way into the top 3.

I update the table on page #1 every week, but let's take a look at the top 10 here:-

Pos	Nominator	Week #	Album	Artist	Year	#Votes	Average
1	OB1	5	Physical Graffiti	Led Zeppelin	1975	19	7.47
2	RobMCFC	1	The Lonesome Jubilee	John Cougar Mellencamp	1987	19	7.05
3	Saddleworth2	35	10cc	10cc	1973	16	6.88
4	FogBlueInSanFran	2	Let It Be	The Replacements	1984	14	6.86
5	BlueHammer85	3	The Masterplan	Oasis	1998	18	6.81
6	Mancitydoogle	14	Southeastern	Jason Isbell	2013	10	6.80
7	Bill Walker	24	Bare Wires	John Mayall's Bluesbreakers	1968	10	6.80
8	Saddleworth2	4	Before The Dawn	Kate Bush	2014	14	6.79
9	Marklr	8	Foxtrot	Genesis	1972	20	6.75
10	Onholiday(somemightsay)	7	Rage Against The Machine	Rage Against The Machine	1992	22	6.68

 

[BlueHammer85]

Only feels like we had Rush not so long ago, mentioned at the time be interested in hearing their other stuff... so here we go!

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

Whilst everybody [looks forward to/grimaces and prepares to listen to] Rush, I have an apology to make to @Saddleworth2.

I was away this weekend and thought that I'd collected and tabled all the scores when I was trawling through the pages, but on double-checking, it seems that I'd missed a 9. This makes a massive difference, with 10cc scoring 16 votes at an average of 6.88. With this corrected score, Mr Saddleworth blasts his way into the top 3.

I update the table on page #1 every week, but let's take a look at the top 10 here:-

Pos	Nominator	Week #	Album	Artist	Year	#Votes	Average
1	OB1	5	Physical Graffiti	Led Zeppelin	1975	19	7.47
2	RobMCFC	1	The Lonesome Jubilee	John Cougar Mellencamp	1987	19	7.05
3	Saddleworth2	35	10cc	10cc	1973	16	6.88
4	FogBlueInSanFran	2	Let It Be	The Replacements	1984	14	6.86
5	BlueHammer85	3	The Masterplan	Oasis	1998	18	6.81
6	Mancitydoogle	14	Southeastern	Jason Isbell	2013	10	6.80
7	Bill Walker	24	Bare Wires	John Mayall's Bluesbreakers	1968	10	6.80
8	Saddleworth2	4	Before The Dawn	Kate Bush	2014	14	6.79
9	Marklr	8	Foxtrot	Genesis	1972	20	6.75
10	Onholiday(somemightsay)	7	Rage Against The Machine	Rage Against The Machine	1992	22	6.68

Can I lower my rating on 10cc so that they don't go above The Replacements? :)

 

[BimboBob]

Never got into Rush, no idea why, as technically they are brilliant. Maybe that's it...still, happy to give them a proper go. I have a farewell to Kings in my vinyl collection, bought it to give them a go, don't remember being much of a fan...

Let's see what happens!

 

[homerdog]

Great choice and great review OB1!

I saw Rush on the Exit... Stage Left tour in 1981, which I think was effectively the UK tour for Moving Pictures. At the time, many Rush fans (at least most of the ones I knew!) were claiming that they had sold out, firstly with Permanent Waves and subsequently with Moving Pictures. Well, what a difference a few decades make, with the latter arguably being their best and most revered album, even when compared to 2112 and the appearance of the legendary Starman!



I still marvel at how 3 band members could produce such a wall of sound and, in particular, how Geddy Lee managed to combine both bass and keyboards when playing live, to such great effect.

So, my wife and I are now being treated to the full high resolution (and very loud!) experience of one of the greatest rock albums of all time. That's my view and not hers, she hates Rush with a passion, so it will be interesting to see how this album will be judged! What I will say is that, after Permanent Waves, this is probably their most approachable album!

An easy 10 from me.