CHRONICLES

Salmacis said it best...there's nothing rare here. So don't buy this collection thinking that you'll get an unreleased version of "Fly By Night" or something of that nature. If you do, you'll be in for a huge disappointment.

Collections, by nature, normally number in their ranks an assortment of "hits" or songs heavily played on radio. Rush are not quite that band. Too cerebral for most, too unpolished for others, they've always been in that middle ground; too "classic" for modern radio, yet too "modern" (save a precious few songs) for "classic" radio. So where does that leave this collection?

It's a great starter for the unintitated, much like the "Retrospective" series. This came at a time when Rush fans (such as myself and my boyfriend) weren't inundated with titles like "The Spirit Of Radio", "Gold" and the like. All the records, from 1974's "Rush" to 1989's "Presto" are well-documented and accounted for. So I can't really find a flaw. But I won't give it 5 stars, for a few reasons.

As I mentioned in my review of "Retrospective: 1981-1987", I'm thinking a tracklist change could've helped it out. Mind you, the songs here are flawless (with the general exception of anything off GRACE UNDER PRESSURE, something that does NOT get played in my household), but fans (diehard and otherwise) have heard most of this already, on the songs' respective albums. Instead of "Tom Sawyer", how about, say "Witch Hunt" or "The Camera Eye"? (Hey: they put "La Villa Strangiato" on disc 1...they might as well pad it out a bit more for disc 2.) Guess I'm a bit finicky when it comes to stuff like that. I made a Rush Mix CD a few days ago, and it has NOTHING of the tracks listed here, mainly because every track has already been heard and analyzed into oblivion.

So; four stars.