FBO: 'Astral Week: Message for Kings, Na-Na-Na-Na, Hey-Hey'

Yes, it's still 'Astral Week' at the FBO, and we really are trying to sit through and say something on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks by tomorrow. Meanwhile, we couldn't resist -- after many many years -- a return to Rush's 1977, seven-song epic A Farewell to Kings.

Here, Rush matured on 2112's juvenile futuristic concept -- 'what is this? a guitar?' -- without completely abandoning the Dungeons & Dragons crowd: in particular 'Madrigal's dragon slaying, and 'Cygnus X-1: Book One's overworked black-hole itinerary.

The album doesn't always work. 'Madrigal' -- even at just 2:34 -- is unbearable, while the disappointing opening title track telegraphs the pass, by introducing the feudalistic subject with Shakespearean guitar picking on a classical guitar. But the 37-minute album did produce the band's most enduring 'chick-friendly' song -- and most accessible song between 1975's 'Fly By Night' and 1982's 'New World Man' (their only Top 40 song) -- with 'Closer to the Heart.'

It also gave us one of their most underrated epics, with gorgeous segways connecting the dots of the 11-minute 'Xanadu.' Lyrically, Neil Peart once again looks way backward for inspiration, reworking Samuel T-Dog Coleridge's hit poem from 1797 'Kubla Khan': more or less a journey for immortality in Mongolia. (Yes, it's the same Sam who directed Iron Maiden to 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner.')

'Xanadu' was Rush's first serious show-off, multi-instrumental platform -- everyone does double duty in the musical sea of synths, wood blocks, bells, tom fills, double-necked guitars syncopating accents with staccato cymbal splashes.

It starts, mercifully, vocal free for a breathless five-minute musical trip that pulls us into the domain of Mr Khan. For two minutes, we wake into a meandering landscape of tapped guitars and birdsong, before the Ontarian trio lead us into a triumphant spider-crawl, King Crimson-esque riff backed by wind effects and big Neil Peart accents and tom fills. It then erupts into an upbeat, charging, faintly 'The Song Remains the Same' riff (with Alex Lifeson's open chords and superb Geddy Lee bass lines). Much is guitar driven, yet Lifeson shows restraint in allowing no solos in the 11 minutes.

You can almost dance to 'Xanadu' till it finally winds down to Lee's vocals ('to seek the sacred river Alph'), which plod over burpy synths, then shifting into a syncopated guitar/cymbal/bass accents in a harder chorus ('from an ancient book, I took a clue!'). Most of the vocals color dream-like, slower melodies -- an area best suited to Geddy's shaky voice, which gets irritating at higher levels (like the unlistenable wails towards the end of 'Freewill').

Conjuring Mongolian emperors in an 11-minute song at the same time stop/start punk rock and coked-up disco dominated radiowaves and livehouses? Not bad.

--> Sadly, it's a song that can't be downloaded as an individual song, necessitating a full $7.99 purchase of the album on both Amazon.com and iTunes.


FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY

FBO: 'Yet Again Rush Creates Love'

VALENTINE ROCK
REM's barnburning tour across South America will likely be a hit, and a lot of fun for the three-piece with bad hair, but in no way will it compare with another gringo three-piece band's success down here: RUSH.

The top progressive rock band of all time, according to a recent FBO poll, pulled out peppy classics like 'By Tor & the Snow Dog' to delight over 100,000 mostly 20-year-olds in Rio for a triple-live album. If you don't believe that model-looking young women and men can't go ga-ga for Rush, watch this priceless video of 'YYZ':



I mean, really.

Today in a north Bogota hotel's breakfast area, FBO overheard a young Venezuelan/American couple -- maybe 21 or 22 -- chatting over eggs. The Venezuelan guy suddenly broke into this, copied into the FBO diaries in real time:

'In Canada there's this progressive rock band with an unreal drummer. Some drummers just sound like drum machines [simulating a 10-tom fill], but this band Rush's drummer is different. Neil Peart. I don't have any of their music on my iPod, but I have some songs from my old band like that I can play for you. Our drummer was like that too. It's amazing.

The Colorado blonde countered:

'Sounds cool.'

For REM, everybody hurts. But only Rush fosters young love, young international love.

Rush4ever.

FBO Admin
Mobile HQ -- Bogota, Colombia

* More evidence of how well Rush translates to the southern America:

FBO: 'Inducts Rush to FBO Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame'

CONFORM OR BE CAST OUT
Is there really any doubt that Canada's RUSH should be in the actual Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame? They're consistently among the top-drawing concert acts, and still churning out the digital stubs in their fourth decade (they recorded a triple CD set in RIO recently, and about, oh, a million people came out for it -- possibly the greatest thing in recent history: Brazilians listening to Geddy Lee screach 'I will choose free will!').

Known for overworked time signatures, overly thought out lyrics and themes, and album covers with kids and a naked-buttocked man, RUSH deserves the hall for making reasonably unique music -- occasionally inspired, never not sounding as something fashionably unlike their reasonably unique music, allowing scientific nerds a soundtrack, and delighting Canadians for decades.

According to Wikipedia:

Rush boasts 23 gold records and 14 platinum (3 multi-platinum) records, making them one of the best-selling rock bands in history. These statistics place Rush fifth behind The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, KISS and Aerosmith for the most consecutive gold and platinum albums by a rock band.

How can a band without a pop hit -- OK, 'New World Man' made #38 for a week in 1982 -- and those numbers not have some credibility? Particularly with Jackson Browne and Bob Seger in the Hall?

RUSH's Five Best Songs
1981's 'Tom Sawyer' is generally their best-known song but their best five songs are:

1) "Spirit of the Radio" (1980). There is no doubt this is number one, with the absurd burst of Van Halen lift-offs in the opening lick, and the reggae break, and Geddy generally not screaming too much. It's energetic and compact. People who don't like Rush tend to like this.
2) "The Body Electric" (1984). Alex Lifeson got a hipster haircut for this very under-appreciated album with nods to acid rain (before REM did it), a fake U2 solo or two, and a ska break-down. This underrated song's ending -- where Geddy sings 'the mother all machines!' the second time -- is a spine chiller, and the whole build-up part sounds a little like Pete Townshend's 'Rough Boys,' which is of course good ground to borrow from.
3) "Subdivisions" (1982). This mall-culture, teenage-wasteland single shocked us Rush fans back in '82. Not so much for the synths, but that someone other than Geddy got vocal duties. Alex Lifeson leaned to the mic in the video to speak 'subdivisions...' but -- the FBO hears -- it was actually Neil Peart doing the honors. **Note: Relistening to the song after the post, the FBO Admin regrets placing this so high. Consider 'Limelight' from '81 as an obvious replacement. --FBO Admin, 7/16**
4) "Cygnus X-1 (Part II)" (1978). Recently, in a California bar, FBO Admin heard the opening notes of the full vinyl-side song -- records were so good for that: 'cool, there's only one track on the whole SIDE!' -- and saw a bearded bartender air-drumming the Peart fills. The overlooked Hemispheres album inspires such. Imagine starting a five-song album with a 18-MINUTE SEQUEL to an already sprawling song ABOUT A BLACK HOLE. I wouldn't think there was that much to say about one -- it's weird, sprawling, consuming; avoid at all costs -- but Peart knew better.
5) "Fly By Night"(1975). Rush with a little three-minute song. If you play the D/D-suspended notes with a little swing (impossible with Peart on drums) it can almost pass as alternative rock.

Hall, put them in now (or apologize for Lawyers in Love).

FBO Admin
Mobile HQ -- Hue, Vietnam

FBO: 'The Deconstruction of REM'

AN APOLOGY WOULD BE NICE
We've alluded to this before -- that REM was the USA's great alternative hope of the '80s, cordially bouting with Europe's own alternative hope, U2. The results are painfully obvious to see, for the American-centric music fans in us all: U2 by a KO.

Consider these facts:

REM made a few good albums -- 'Murmur' (1983), 'Reckoning' (1984), 'Fables of the Reconstruction' (1985), 'Life's Rich Pageant' (1986) **ed note: remember when bands made albums every year?** and debatably (very) 'Document' (1987). By their first major-label release, the patchy 'Green' (1988), REM lost its edge. By the still-enigmatic power-fuzzy 'Monster' (1994) the singles stopped being hits, and the band slid into horrible sludge it's never shown any sense of rebounding from.

Of REM's 12 or so studio albums, only four are very good. That means 66% of their original work has been questionable. In a 25-year career, 20 years are marred with suspicious output. That's a seriously unimpressive track record.

Why?

--> Mike Mills' Ego
The smart dork in the classroom, a Paul McCartney without the talent, suddenly found his confidence, right before the penultimate song in a fairly remarkable 'Unplugged' peformance for MTV in 1991. Michael Stipe said, before they started 'It's the End of the World As We Know It', something like 'we have one more song for you,' and the audience 'ahhhed'. Mike Mills chipped in: 'Oh, we can stop now if you like?' This generated much doting, polite laughter. And Mike Mills took note. By the time the awful 'Automatic for the People' came out, with burgeoned confidence, he had long bleached hair, was wearing cowboy suits, and his back-ups seemed even higher in the mix.

--> Michael Stipe's Ego
Stipe was his best when he was down in the mix, slurring his words, with lyrics that skirted the meaning -- leaving what he was talking about a 'best guess.' Compare the 'acid rain' anthem 'Fall on Me' (1986) with 'Everybody Hurts' (1992) which has about the subtlety of a punch to the groin. Somewhere, Stipe got his confidence -- we don't have the exact location but it likely involves a successful MTV awards or his bad haircut from the 'Green' tour.

--> Pete Buck's Laziness
Long a liar -- note the photo of him playing piano on the back of 'Reckoning' (1984), or hear his repeated claims that the next album 'doesn't have any guitar'; both lies -- Buck's worst offense is that he just doesn't try anymore. Take 'Everybody Hurts,' where he goes for a blues slow-pick to telegraph the 'sad' tone of the song's listeners. Where are the 'Seven Chinese Brothers'?

--> Departure of Bill Berry
REM's only infallible, almost critique-proof member -- Bill Berry -- left the band in 1997 after suffering a brain aneuryrsm. The band has never been the same.

If you think REM deserve props, and its recent induction into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, and believe REM is tops...

--> Compare U2's 'One' (1991) with REM's 'Everybody Hurts' (1992) -- The winner in these partner testaments to soaring emotion, 'One' is an anthem of reconciliation amidst differences, the other is included in mockery in movies and films when an over-sensitive character breaks down (eg The Simpsons, The Office (US), 'Bewitched').

--> REM copies Canada's great trio Rush on acid rain. Rush sung about it on songs like 'Distant Early Warning' in 1984. REM's 'Fall on Me' came out a year later.


The FBO asks either that REM apologizes for 'lacking luster' in the past 20 years -- seriously they had five good ones, and 20 dodgy ones -- OR to return the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame ribbon to Cleveland. Their choice, which.


FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY