CHRONICLES

Rush was never a great music video group, but still they made them. This collection, originally released in 1990, is a compilation of all of their major promo video releases. Some of the videos are completely ridiculous, some of them have their moments, but on the whole it's not a necessary video for fans of Rush to own. What we have here is a collection of videos spanning from A Farewell to Kings to Hold Your Fire, so you can see (literally, in terms of looks) the evolution of the band and how they changed their sound within those ten years. The songs that are on this set are amongst the best in the Rush catalogue, but the videos range from utterly ridiculous to completely cheesy.

Closer to the Heart opens the set with an extreme close up on Geddy's eyes, while famous figures from history are portrayed in pictures around him (Chairman Mao for example). It's nothing more than a simple in the studio version. This goes with the next four videos, with The Trees, Tom Sawyer, and Limelight all being in the studio versions of the song, with nothing truly interesting to add. Red Barchetta's video is the exact same one as on the video for Exit... Stage Left, including the cheesy proto 3D effects. It's a fun version, none the less. Subdivisions is the first true video on the set. With a nice use of filming of a troubled teen throughout a cold city. It's one of the better videos of the set, in my opinion. Distant Early Warning suffers from a completely ridiculous video that features Geddy Lee's son. It's laughable, actually. Red Sector A benefits from another concert version, taken from the Grace Under Pressure Tour video. It's a top notch performance with some incredible drumming from Peart.

The Big Money and Mystic Rhythms, despite being excellent songs, are not excellent videos. More incredibly dated and cheesy 3D effects are used, and the band are at their most ridiculous looking. The Hold Your Fire videos suffer from the same problem, they are just too cheesy and overblown. In the end, though, it was the 80s and you can't really expect the best of videos in that decade (despite awesome ones like Sledgehammer). The two bonus videos on this set are both from the Grace Under Pressure album, but they both have the same amount of cheesiness as Distant Early Warning, so there's nothing truly spectacular about them.

In the end, Rush was never a great music video group. Their in the studio videos are cool, and their concert videos are of interest, but their music videos are nothing but ridiculous film. Not to say there isn't anything good about this set, the songs chosen for the videos are among the best in their catalogue, but you'll probably get a good laugh at the videos that accompany them. This set is really for Rush fans and collectors. If you want a good Rush dvd, start with R30 or Replay X3. 2.5/5.

The start of Much Music...?

Those Canadians with any sort of knowledge on te subject know that when MuchMusic made it's debut on the tube the first video they ever played was Rush's Closer to The Heart. Quite an honor, I must say, paying tribute to one of Canada's most successful bands like that. Off that subject what we have here is a collection of music videos from Rush's early days ranging from A Farewell to Kings (1977) to Hold Your Fire (1988). The videos range in everything from simple performances to Rush's attempt at making mainstream videos. While some of these are quite good, others come off as simply strange or even corny, but hey, this is the 80s! Anything goes!

While some songs such as Closer To The Heart and The Trees chose to simply put Rush on a stage and perform some others actually attempt some MTV style stuff. This sometimes works fairly well, as seen in the Dire Straits-esque video for Big Money (which still comes off as corny, but eh), and the actually very well done Lock and Key and Mystic Rythems (which is actually a kind of freaky video). Others such as Distant Early Warning come off as poor 80s videos. They're fun to watch almost because they're fairly laughable! Time Stand Still is likely the best example of this, with the band members flying around the screen and dancing in their Miami Vice suits while growing and shrinking and, well, flying around. Good times. Subdivisions is likely the best of the MTV videos as it is fairly simple. Some of us nerds may feel this one hits a bit too at home, actually!

The two hidden videos are fairly well done and kind of avant gard/sci-fi-ish, and both fit into the MTV category. They're both from the Grace under Pressure album, which, if you count, means that half the album has videos to it! back on track now, the remaining videos are all concert footage or live performances and therefore are actually the ones most worth watching. However, these days most of the performances can be found on the recently re-released concert videos in Replay x3. So, in the end this is really just a package for those who really want to see some music videos by a great rock band and don't mind having a laugh now and again.

Painfully absent, however, is all the videos past Hold Your Fire! The band has many from their albums Presto, Roll The Bones, Counterparts and T4E, most of which are actually very very high quality! Being that this package was reissued in 2001 you'd think that they would have updated the track listing. But apparently not. Some videos missing from this package would more than redeem for the funny 80s videos. Driven, Half The World, Stick it Out, The Pass... all these videos are quite well done, and yet not available on Dvd! Why? I beseech thee! Fans who want to see these videos can luckily check them out on youTube, but for some of us that's just not good enough.

Okay, score time.

This particular compilation receives 2 stars for the simple fact that it's not likely that anyone but Rush fans will really enjoy this one. You Rush fans out there, though... you will enjoy it. The rating on this would be much higher too if Rush's good, post eighties, videos were available. Hopefully the record label sees fit to release another compilation that finishes off what this one started now that Far Cry has gotten itself a video. Recommended to fans of Rush and 80s music videos.

With only two preceding (and overview- oriented) reviews for this RUSH video compilation originally released as a VHS tape in 1990, here's my view with a closer song- based approach. It must be admitted that visually these promo videos between 1977 - 1987 aren't very good, on the contrary, most of them look kinda worn-out and lacking of the more ambitious side of the music video art. But that's not so bad thing after all; one can enjoy the pretty good track list and see how the image of Rush -- ie. the looks of Lee, Lifeson and Peart -- was gradually changing. Like a time machine with a window of ten years wide.

'Closer to the Heart' sees the long-haired trio playing in studio. By the way, there's a movie poster of Eraserhead on the wall. 'The Trees' briefly features beautiful forest landscapes after which the video (perhaps the most worn- out one) shows the band on stage. The editing work is poor, the overlapping of images leads to a mess. On 'Limelight' some screen-splitting is used. The similar "band in action" approach continues in 'Tom Sawyer', with a snowy landscape behind the studio windows.

The terribly outdated computer graphics are accompanying the live performance of 'Red Barchetta'. 'Subdivisions' has a good balance between the band playing and the narrative nature of (sub)urban/school imagery. As a music video, perhaps the most memorable and visually succesful is 'Distant Early Warning' with the little kid riding on a missile. 'Red Sector A' concentrates on the modern- looking band on stage, laser beams flashing. 'Big Money' is packed with colourful cheesiness of the 80's, a weaker equivalent to Dire Straits' 'Money for Nothing'. 'Mystic Rhythms' and especially 'Time Stand Still' have some kitchy copy-paste trickery... good grief.

'Lock and Key' is fairly OK as a typical music video; the big red ball is a nice detail, referring to a certain album cover. The DVD should have two bonuses, 'The Enemy Within' and 'Afterimage', but my copy must be faulty as the "Special Features" section only contains the choices for PCM / Dolby Digital 2.0 and Continuous Play On/Off. I really can't find them!

Well, Rush definitely weren't any innovators of music video, but for an exceptionally enjoyable set list, especially for a video compilation, I'm generous and rate this with one star more than the previous reviewers. In fact I prefer this DVD over Grace Under Pressure 1984 live DVD, which has quite a poor visual quality all the way.