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...Live Album News...November 7th, 1998
Be sure to tune in to your local radio station November 4th @ 10pm EST
for the album premiere of Different Stages!! SonicNet will also be providing a LIVE INTERNET fancast of the album release with Geddy & Alex from NYC on November 15th @ 7pm EST. More details will be posted here when they become available
Rush - Different Stages Live
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DIFFERENT STAGES LIVE
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1998
Produced by Geddy Lee and Paul Northfield
Disc Three recorded at the Hammersmith Odeon, London (February 1978)
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DIFFERENT STAGES TRACK LISTING
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Disc 1
- Dreamline *
- Limelight *
- Driven *
- Bravado %
- Animate *
- Show Don't Tell #
- The Trees $
- Nobody's Hero *
- Closer to the Heart *
- 2112 **
* recorded June 14, 1997
World Music Theater. Chicago, IL
% recorded April 30, 1994
The Spectrum. Philadelphia, PA
# recorded February 27, 1994
Miami Arena. Miami, FL
$ recorded May 24, 1997
Starplex Amphitheater. Dallas, TX
** recorded June 23, 1997
Great Woods Center. Mansfield, MA
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Disc 2
- Test For Echo *
- The Analog Kid @
- Freewill *
- Roll The Bones *
- Stick It Out *
- Resist +
- Leave That Thing Alone **
- The Rhythm Method **
- Natural Science *
- The Spirit of Radio *
- Tom Sawyer *
- YYZ *
* recorded June 14, 1997
World Music Theater. Chicago, IL
@ recorded March 22, 1994
The Palace. Auburn Hills, MI
+ recorded July 2, 1997
Molson Amphitheater. Toronto, ON
** recorded June 23, 1997
Great Woods Center. Mansfield, MA
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Disc 3
- Bastille Day
- Bytor & The Snow Dog
- Xanadu
- A Farewell To Kings
- Something For Nothing
- Cygnus X-1
- Anthem
- Working Man
- Fly By Night
- In The Mood
- Cinderella Man
all tracks recorded February 20, 1978
The Hammersmith Odeon. London England
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DIFFERENT STAGES
(preview taken from Atlantic Records website)
Geddy Lee * Alex Lifeson * Neil Peart
Live albums have become a tradition, even an inevitably for Rush. Long
recognized as the quintessential touring band for years their tours averaged
ten months and over 200 shows they carved out a unique niche for themselves,
independent of the quixotic tastes of trendsetters, taste makers, and radio
programmers alike. With the release of EXIT... STAGE LEFT in 1981, a pattern
emerged. After every fourth studio album (Greatest Hits sets wouldn't count) a
recorded document of the most recent tour would be released. ALL THE WORLDS A
STAGE was the first in 1976 and A SHOW OF HANDS came out in 1988. With the
subsequent completion of PRESTO (1989), ROLL THE BONES (1991) , COUNTERPARTS
(1993), and TEST FOR ECHO (1996), tradition dictates its time for DIFFERENT
STAGES.
But each of Rush's live albums have played a much more profound role than
merely marking the passage of time or capturing a sonic snapshot of a
particular tour. Each release indicates the end of one phase and the beginning
of another in the groups still-evolving musical growth. Rush's recording career
can be readily divided into four phases. The early years were purely and
simply heavy metal. Then followed the experimental years, when the trio
pushed the boundaries of progressive rock and established their reputations
as virtuoso musicians. The third phase was a reaction to the second the group
pulled back from their all-encompassing love affair with technology and studio
wizardry and reclaimed their reputation as innovative songwriters. The fourth
phase, captured on DIFFERENT STAGES, proves Rush has found the place between
rock n roll simplicity and hi-tech complexity while retaining the most
attractive elements of both.
Geddy Lee comments: I remember when we recorded our first live show at Massey
Hall [in Toronto, 1981]. It was over two or three shows and that was it. What
we got was what we got and if you happened to be nervous or out of tune,
well... it was warts and all. For the next live album we recorded more shows.
We reacted to our first live album by having everything polished and repairing
the bad notes. It was almost too cleaned up. We overcompensated for the
rawness of the first one and wound up with this album that was sterile, I
think. By the third live album we reached a happy medium.
It wasn't my intention to do another. I thought enough was enough with three
double live albums out there already. But it also wasn't my intention to have
the band keep producing records for this many years down the road. Who knew?
DIFFERENT STAGES was culled from over 100 performances digitally recorded on a
72-track system during the TEST FOR ECHO tour of 1997. (Three tracks Bravado,
Show Don't Tell, and Analog Kid are from the 1994 COUNTERPARTS tour.) Concert
sound engineer Robert Scovill listened to every recording while transferring the
concerts to a more malleable 48-tracks and selected about a dozen versions of
each song for Lee, and his co-producer/mixing engineer Paul Northfield, to
choose from. Remarkably, we found a lot of the performances were coming from
the same night. If you look, almost 70 per cent of the album is from Chicago.
Its so ironic. You record over a hundred shows and you end up with an album
that mostly came from one venue. I don't remember it being a particularly
special night, but when I listened back to it, theres something about the
sound of that venue that sounded like an event. There was an excitement
in the air. Every time we out up the Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, or one
of the Detroit shows even if those performances weren't quite so good as
some others as long as they were in the ballpark, the excitement factor
made up for it and we would choose it. The irony of the whole thing is that
you develop a very extravagant method of recording, where you can record
over a hundred shows, and you only end up using about five.
The TEST FOR ECHO tour was unique in several ways. It was the first time Rush
had recorded every night of a tour. It was the first time Rush had ever
played all seven parts of 2112, the title of their seminal 1976 album. It
was also the first time Rush had ever toured without an opening act. It was
an incredibly liberating factor for a band that had long felt constrained by
the limitations of a conventional concert appearance. (Union rules and
volume restrictions generally limit the length of shows.) Freed to play two
sets over almost three hours, they were able to include selections from each
of their earlier incarnations and still introduce their audience to a wide
range of their newest material.
We could have done an hour-and-a-half and gotten in and out, but that's not
our style. Playing is the most fun we have out there on the road, Thats the
best time of the entire night. The whole day leads up to the performance,
and you can't really enjoy your beer after the show unless youve gotten a good
workout. We've always done at least a two-hour show and the idea of being
able to play for three hours and do an intermission was always a fantasy we
had.
It was not an easy decision. That was part of the system that gave us an
opportunity to do what we do. Being an opening act for other bands for years
turned us into what we are. It's not the best thing for the system to deprive
someone of a gig. We understood that. But, at the same time, we thought:
We've been around for a long time. Many tours later, I think weve satisfied
our debt to the system. So well take this one for ourselves and indulge
ourselves: we're going to do the two sets.
More than twenty years ago in a Melody Maker interview published on February
11th, 1978 Geddy Lee said something that still rings true today: I think
we're something apart from trends. We're neither a trendy nor fashionable
band; none of us feel that music is threatening us. More importantly, our
audiences are growing so it still has to be in vogue with those people. I
think we appeal to a mentality, and there's still a lot of that mentality.
The next day, a Sunday, Rush played the first of two sold-out shows at
London's Hammersmith Odeon.
The reason [a tape of] that show even exists is that we did it for some
radio show. I can't remember which. I remember at the time I had a cold and
my voice was really raw. During the early part of the show I had very little
control vocally so I changed a lot of the phrasing that I normally sang
with in order to compensate for the cold. Listening back to it at the time,
it probably seemed dramatically weird to me so it never made it on the radio
show and we just kept the tapes.
Twenty years later, I found them again and wondered, What do these sound
like? I couldn't remember the circumstances of the show. So Alex and I went
into the studio and we put them up and mixed them for fun about a
year-and-a-half ago. We were amazed at the energy of the live performance. It
was a particular kind of energy that's connected with the age that we were,
the kind of players that we were. Playing those songs today would not have
that same vibe.
So DIFFERENT STAGES proves to be just that: both a figurative and literal
commemorative of Rush's different stages of evolution, as performed on
different stages around the word. The 2-CD set of the album proper consists
of twenty-two tracks covering the entire scope of Rush's 25-year recording
career. The bonus eleven-track CD of the 1978 Hammersmith Odeon show
provides a dramatic counterpoint to the refined sound the group honed over
the next twenty years of recording experience. What new phase for Rush the
album heralds is still anyones guess.
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