CARESS OF STEEL

My gosh do I love this album. This is one of the first Rush LPs I bought. "Bastille Day" is totally rocking, and I love the guitar solos and guitar tone. "I think Im going Bald" is a great riff in the vein of "In the Mood" & if you cant find a little humor/nostalgia in music at all I'm sorry, the lyrics to the tune are great, IMO. Maybe its hard to buy because such a young Peart wrote it, but still.

"Lakeside Park" is a Rush classic, with great interwoven & punch guitar & bass lines, a killer guitar solo and great middle breakdown.

"The Necromancer" is a masterpiece, with a Tolkien-inspired story line. Admittedly, in the 80s I was very into D & D, & this song seemed to go perfectly with that! The middle fast section & guitar solo is blistering.

"The Fountain of Lamneth" this tune brings me sublime tears of joy. The intro & outro acoustic bits with vocal are haunting. "Didacts & Narpets" is too short to really criticize, but the words are great, once you figure them out, featuring binary oppositions that challenge all when growing up and considering fantastic adventure versus banal normality " Learn! / Live! / Work! / Give! . . . Listen".. then it segues perfectly into "No One at the Bridge": a great and often copied guitar chord/arpeggio, not many bands used E minor 9 prior to that. "Panacea" is very moving, and features Alex's standby C major 9 open chord in the chorus. The words are very moving and paint a picture of naivety and longing and desire, which moves into "Bacchus Plateau" a rite of passage for the hero whom indulges in the finer nectars available to him. Finally, our hero reaches The Fountain of Lamneth and is disillusioned by the reality of it. I am always moved by the line "I thought I would be singing but Im tired, out of breath" honest souls would admit to knowing that feeling if they've been around awhile and have had dreams and lovers come and go. "Still, I am...."

Apart from the tunes, I LOVE the guitar sound on this album. It has a unique tone different than any RUSH album, and it seems the GIBSON-335 must've been employed a lot. Very warm, very bottom end, awesome. The bass and drums sound great: a bit sparse, but it fits the record perfectly.

I really like the cover art and inner sleve design (as in, its written in stone!).. the pics couldnt be any better, especially the one where Geddy looks positively witch like. As a youth, I always wondered what trick Alex was employing where he has his picking hand extended above the soundboard-- something awesome whatever it was.

Only if I were a bit older, I have a pal in San Antonio who saw the "Down the Tubes" tour in San Antonio at age 19 or so, said there werent many there, that it was an awesome show & my pal took the boys to a pizza place for grub & beers afterwards. Said they were the nicest cats he ever met....I know that isnt relavent to this LP opinion, not even sure if its the truth, but a cool story anyway. Wish I coulda been there!