MOVING PICTURES

"Moving Pictures" represents Rush at their very best in the eyes of many fans and along with '2112' remains one of the most popular and time enduring hard rock albums ever. Moving Pictures is a more radio friendly album than usual from Rush and it features many songs around the four-minute mark. There is still a Rush mini-epic to be found here though in "The Camera Eye." Rush is as popular now as they have ever been as people are beginning to miss quality music and look back to the 70's and early 80's for real music. By 1981 punk music was at an all-time high as was pop/rock music, there were few bands who dared to be different. For this very reason Rush have turned out to be one of the most ensuring bands from the period.

"Moving Pictures" goes down as one of the greatest hard rock albums ever and it has an undeniable progressive rock flavour. The band of Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Pert is undoubtedly one of the most influential prog bands, the quality and driving intensity of the music is hard to over look. Several classics emerged from this album such as "Tom Sawyer", "Red Barchetta" and "Limelight" which remain among the best in the Rush repertoire. The remaster of the album comes with amazing clarity and sound quality which is most evident on "Red Barchetta." "Red Barchetta" is about a guy who burrows his uncle's Ferrari 166 MM Barchetta for a Sunday drive, the song was inspired by a short story called "A Nice Morning Drive."

Like most Rush albums the musicianship is extraordinary and the band seems to be able to work together as if they had been playing together their entire lives. Some of the instrumentation in "Red Barchetta" and "The Camera Eye" is stunning and leaves one wondering. The best stuff for me on this album is "Limelight", "Tom Sawyer" and "Red Barchetta" while others have memorable moments but are unable to equal the others. Also, due to the ability to make a song "flow", that is writing a song in a manner which everything melds into each other, makes "Moving Pictures" easy and accessible. The instrumental "YYZ" was nominated for a Grammy and is a very technically difficult song to play.

The album was a great success and like all Rush studio albums achieved gold status (except 'Vapour Trails.') The album then went on to become Quadruple- platinum and has sold over 4 million copies which makes it the most successful Rush album. It was also the highest US charting album reaching number 3 and similar positions round the world. This success was in many ways due mostly to the singles "Tom Sawyer" and "Limelight" which are now trade mark Rush songs.

1. Tom Sawyer (4/4) 2. Red Barchetta (5/5) 3. YYZ (4/5) 4. Limelight (5/5) 5. The camera eye (4/5) 6. Witch hunt (Part III of Fear) (4/5) 7. Vital signs (4/5) Total = 30 divided by 7 (number of songs) = 4.28 = 4 stars Excellent addition to any prog music collection

"Moving Pictures" is a progressive hard rock standard now a days and many modern progressive bands carry heavy influences from Rush. "Moving Pictures" is one of the best progressive rock albums, though in my opinion it falls slightly short of "Hemispheres" and a five star rating. I'd recommend "Moving Pictures" to all prog- metal fans to see where all the popularity started. Great album (bad review)!