Back when I was a wee lad, my sister owned "Fly" thru 2112 on LP, I knew them all about the sameish but my brother had 2112 on cassette so this was the first Rush album that I knew by heart. I never get tired of hearingthe entire 2112 side 1, or the whole album for that matter. The 2112 Overture is legendary, one of my top 10 fave Rush tracks ever. It's a shame they omitted "Oracle: The Dream" from most of their live shows back in the 70's (I have about 40 different boots of this from the 70's and I think only 1 or 2 include "Oracle: The Dream") and about half exclude "Discovery" as well. The "Grand Finale" at the end of side 1 is so awesome, even after they stopped playing the entire 2112 suite by 1981, they still included "Grand Finale" in assorted medleys during that tour. How cool is that!.
As for "Passage To Bangkok", it's weird how they didnt play that track live during the '76-'77 tour for whatever reason, but started playing it for the "Farewell To Kings" tour and didnt stop playing it for 4 or 5 years after that; they even used it to represent this album in their 2004 R30 Overture. All that for a song that didnt even make it to their first live album. oh, and even me, a huge Rush fan, didnt even know about the TOKE before the solo until just now. I gotta hear it again right now!!
I have couple live versions of "The Twilight Zone" from '76 boots but they sound horrid so the studio version is gonna have to do probably from here on out. Great song, a bit weird lyrically but I guess with that title, you'd expect that. Nobody Ive talked to knows who does the whispering on that track. One has to assume it is one of 3 possibilities: Neil, Geddy, or Broon.
"Lessons" is and always will be one of their most underrated tracks, I love the solo break at the end. Good work, Lerxt.
"Tears"....well, it IS better than "Rivendell" so it cant be that bad. No really, I've always liked it for nostalgic purposes. Everyone has to go mellow once in a while, it makes your hard rock moments seem harder.
"Something For Nothing" rocks, it's kind of a signature song for them, at least for the 4 years they would play it live. Unfortunately, with each new album some songs dont make the cut for the live set and unless Rush played 5 hour long shows, eventually this song had to go by the time "Moving Pictures" came out with a whole slew of hits and live favorites. Alot of 70's Rush songs died when that tour started and even more by the time it ended. But that is later down the road.

OK, I tend to get long winded with Rush but we all have some interesting things to say on them.

You'd talk about this lp at school or in somebody's gargage before jamming and ALL the musicians would get a woody or something

I remember seeing them in late 76' and the whole show my eyes were fixed on Peart. He is phenominal but has never been a favorite.


Me like this lp alot too !

This is one of my "desert island" albums and is also the album I've bought the most time in the most formats.

I first bought "2112" on cassette so I could listen to it on a band trip to Disneyworld when I was in junior high. The next year I bought it on vinyl and played the crap out of it. My freshman year in college, I played it for my new roommate and he loved it so that vinyl copy got played even more. Eventually, all the pops and clicks got so annoying that I had to buy a new vinyl copy.

Since I had a ton of vinyl, I supplied a lot of the music for the off-campus parties. One weekend, I grabbed my precious copy of "2112" and took it to a party. When the party was over, I discovered someone has spilled something on the record that had marred the vinyl. The next day I bought my third vinyl copy of "2112".

Enter the compact disc. Of course, when I started converted my vinyl collection to CD, one of the first albums I bought was "2112". It was a direct analog transfer copy and sounded like crap but I was ecstatic because now I could easily skip "Tears" when playing this album.

Then came the wave of remastering old CDs and actually improving the sound so I bought a remastered copy of "2112". Not long after that came the short-lived fad of "gold audiophile" cds so of course I had to have "2112" in this format (not that I could actually hear any difference).

So there you have it, a brief history of audio media as told through "2112". Definitely in my top 5 albums of all time.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I think I used to have an 8-track version of "2112" too.

what about the music, Toho? You were rushing me along just to talk about the media formats.

We all know how great the music is. I just wanted to demonstrate my committment to this album by pointing out how many times I've had to buy it. I haven't bought that many copies of any of the thousands of other titles I have.

And as I said before, even on 2112, Rush perpetuated the unfortunate tendency of dropping a turd in the middle of the filet mignon. The first time I listened to "2112", and "Tears" started, I kept waiting for it to "kick in". No such luck. That song is simply dreadful.

Plus, because you posted this after I'd gone to bed, by the time I saw it, anything I have to say about the music is superfluous.

I was joking.

Though Moving Pictures is what made me a fan of Rush, 2112 was the first album I actually bought. Instantly loved it. Tears is the only low point here, aside from the stupid Ass Raymd inspired lyrics. Other then that, everything is pure excellent classic Rush, Something For Nothing in particular is one of their all time best songs, and a real motherf***er squared.

Well, I never owned the vinyl but I did own the cassette twice and the disc. Easily one of the best if not the number one prog albums of the 70's and it has a full spectrum of music with the more thoughtful numbers to the heavier almost metal songs. While this sounds a little pretentious to me now it still has a couple of their best songs with Syrinx and Passage To Bangkok. And I never hated Tears.

Great, great album. I think this must be one album that every single one of us here agrees on! It's just fantastic!

Then again, I like all of Rush's albums, but this is no exception! I'd probably place this one in my top 5 favorite Rush albums.

I even like the song "Tears". I'm with Nazgul on this one!

Ok here's my take.... Love this album and had this one prepped for when we got here !!!

1976 saw the release of 2112. RUSHs true masterpiece and according to Geddy “2112 is probably the most important thing we’ve ever written.” He went on to say that “without that song we probably would not have continued as a band.”

Well I for one am glad that they wrote it. This record was done in 4 weeks, on 8 tracks according to Alex. (which if you listen carefully to the song Twilight Zone you can hear Alex starting to play a guitar part but stop because it’s was early.) Lot’s of powerful stuff here that has endured for over 30 years. “Passage to Bangkok”, the aforementioned “Twilight Zone”, “Something For Nothing” and the slightly less powerful “Tears” (their attempt at a ballad) and finally the long forgotten “Lessons”.

The music here is powerful and driving. The sound that Terry Brown was able to get for this record is slightly more polished, but still has that raw edged intensity. The band was pissed off because the record label wanted them to try another ‘RUSH’ album. Even their management was urging them to try something more accessible along the lines of their first bluesy release. The band themselves didn’t want that.

Rush indicated in Martin Popoff’s book “Contents Under Pressure: 30 Years of Rush at Home and Away”, if everyone else wanted a blues rocker that was not what they were going to get. Rush had determined if they were going to go down if flames, it would be on the bands own terms. Well whatdya know, this album became their first ‘hit’ as it were and gave them their first Gold album.

This tour blended in with the release of “All the Worlds a Stage” and made for a continuous 15 month treck…. Starting in March 76 and continuing all the way to June 77… tourmates on this jaunt would include the following Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult, Boston, Kansas, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Ted Nugent, REO Speedwagon, Styx, Thin Lizzy, (Rush supported them all) and headlined over the following Angel, Artful Dodger, Be-Bop Deluxe, Tommy Bolin, Cheap Trick, Chilliwack, Stu Daye, Derringer, Fat Tuesday, Head East, Max Webster, Rex, Roller, The Runaways, Smokehouse, Starcastle, Stray, Sutherland Brothers Quiver, T Rex and Wireless……..

WE ARE THE PRIESTS !! of the Temples of SYRINX !!!!.... I can still remember playing this album over and over one night…. 3x’s while I was lying in my bed listening to every nuance and perusing the lyrics…..

great post 'lectric!!

When is the next review coming?

This is where I always mix up the chronology of Rush releases. Which one is next, Hemispheres or Farewell To Kings?

A Farewell to Kings came out in 1977 and then Hemisperes in 1978, man, those where the days when bands would release an album of new material almost on annual basis.

ok, people: someone has to keep this thread alive here. If nobody adds to this by later on tonite, I'm gonna do my own take on ATWAS.

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE - (released Sep 29, 1976)

Thankfully, the 70's trend of double-live albums provided Rush with the opportunity to release this monster. Recorded at Massey Hall (which was made famous on the album Jazz At Massey Hall) over the course of 3 days in June, this album captures Rush at their most primal.

The setlist does a nice job of summarizing their career up to this point, focusing on singles & choice album tracks from the 4 studio albums released thus far. Rush even indicated in the liner notes that this album "closed the first chapter on Rush".

Tracks like Anthem, Bastille Day, By Tor & Something For Nothing have an extra kick than their studio counterparts, just a hint of recklessness in the well orchestrated mayhem. A couple songs get their definitive reading on this album; What You're Doing is a great song on the debut album, but this live version smokes it. Same goes for Lakeside Park which always seemed a little tepid on the studio version, but comes to life on this album.

Probably my personal favorite track on the album is version of The End...that song was MADE to be played in arenas! Before the heavy part kicks in you can hear Geddy count down the intro with "one....two....buckle....my shoe".

The only bit of "controversy" surrounding this album is the abbreviated version of the 2112 suite. When I was younger this bothered me, but listening to the album again now the energy in the live performance makes up for the slightly shorter running time.

From this point on throughout the remainder of the 70's, Rush would strive for a more layered and polished sound, introducing more complex structures and instrumentation (adding keyboards to the sound on Farewell). But this album...this is pure ROCKIN' Rush! A must-have for Rush fanatics.

This was the first Rush album to crack the top 40 in the States and quickly went gold.

*note* - the original CD issue ommited the track What You're Doing, this was fixed on the remaster.

One of the all time great live albums!

I threw plenty of drumstix at the wall in the garage trying to "emulate" (transitive verb folks) Peart's technique's on this lp. Playing along to live albums was better practice than the studio counterparts.

This lp, like alot of other 70's live releases, hold a special place to me. For the most part due to I had seen the band on the same tour that the lp came out.

You could walk down my street, around the corner and down the block and either hear Rush blaring out of somebody's home stereo or some kids butchering their songs in the garage with other neighborhood musicians.

Those were the days........Laterz

Great live album, I love this heavy era of Rush.

Rush would never sound this heavy or raw again, and is when the great live albums of the 70's is mentioned this album deserves its place among the best live albums of that era.

This live album actually introduced to me the earlier Rush classics, at the time I bought this album the only album I owned was the self titled debut and 'Permante Waves' ( I was 13 at the time), and I must have worn the grooves off the vinyl release, I still have the original vinyl release and the remastered CD, anyone who wonders why Rush was labeled as a metal band, all you need to do is slap this one and they will wonder no more.