What does it sound like?:
I remember buying this set on dvd way back on it’s original release in 2003, when it also appeared on cd – hard to credit that’s a whole fifteen years that have slipped by since then! It now makes a somewhat belated appearance on vinyl for the first time, coming as a magnificently presented four album set on 180 gram vinyl in a gatefold sleeve, and there’s even a download code thrown in for good measure. It comprises the full show of the last night of the band’s Vapour Trails tour in 2002, which marked their return after a long hiatus, and is supplemented by two further pieces recorded slightly earlier on the same tour. The show captures the band at the top of their game, and covers every era of their lengthy career. You want early Rush, there’s Working Man and By-Tor The Snow Dog, later period features among others Distant Early Warning, Red Sector A and Bravado, and from the then current era you get the likes of Ghost Rider and One Little Victory. However, for me, the band would never surpass their classic mid seventies to early eighties work – a run of seminal albums from which there are too many goodies to list them all – 2112, Tom Sawyer, YYZ, La Villa Strangiato and The Spirit Of Radio are just a few. I saw the band on this tour, and this set brings back lots of happy memories. Of course, there is no shortage of Rush live albums, indeed they used to release one after every for studio albums, but this is one of the best out there, spanning as it does, their whole career up to that point, although of course there were still a couple more studio albums to come before the band finally wound down.
What does it all *mean*?
A shame the band is done now, but the ravages of age finally caught up with them, as eventually happens to all of us.
Goes well with…
Remembering those days and reflecting that all good things one day come to an end.
Might suit people who like…
Rush! Or rock music with a prog edge to it – or maybe it’s the other way round!
I have the DVD or Bluray, not sure and I agree with what you say in your review Bargie. I also like Vapour Trails, the album, I had never really bothered much about Rush before VT, I had a greatest hits CD. Following VT I started picking up various albums in no particular order and I have to say I rate the band’s later albums highly. Good band.
What a crowd.
You got there before me – I was going to post the same clip. I love the bits where Geddy and Alex give each other little looks, as if to say ‘can you believe this lot?’
South American crowds are properly mental – AC/DC at River Plate is another DVD where the crowd is almost the best bit.