Wednesday 18 February 2009

My favourite band

Since I'm going to be talking about music, I thought I should say a bit about my favourite band. Favourite album and favourite track is trickier - those tend to vary depending on mood, time of day, weather, ... Favourite band however has stayed constant since I was first introduced to them when I was fourteen - more than thirty years ago!

As far as I'm concerned, the best band in the world is Rush. I was first introduced to Rush by a friend who played me his brothers album: A Farewell To Kings.



I think it's fair to say it made an impression. :-) I bought the album and shortly after, bought tickets to see them in concert at the Glasgow Apollo. There are only three people in the band but when they play together, they sound like there's eighty-three of them! And this is not down to studio trickery - the three of them reproduce the sound live too. Individually they are stunningly good musicians but together they produce something greater than the sum of their parts.

A student asked me the other day what my favourite Rush album is. It was a question I could not answer. Obviously, I have a soft spot for A Farewell To Kings - the album that introduced me to Rush all those years ago but they are not a band who are content to just re-cycle the same sound over and over again. They grow and develop with every album and I like where they went next too with Signals and Moving Pictures being particular favourites.

However, if you want a good introduction to Rush, you could do worse than their latest studio album: Snakes And Arrows.



There are some outstanding tracks on this album. Thirty-five years on and they are still doing new stuff - brilliant!

{Note: I'm experimenting with the Amazon affiliate programme and I'm not sure what the etiquette is. Do I have to say that if you buy stuff after following these links I get some money? Or is that obvious from the link?}

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

For me, I think its a toss up between Hemispheres and Moving Pictures (I love the lyrics to Limelight)
I did have the Closer to the heart lyrics printed in the order of service at my wedding though !

Jaye

David said...

I am always slightly disappointed with side one of Hemispheres (I still think in vinyl). It's not that it is bad... it just isn't as good as I hoped it would be after Cygnus X1. Side two however is stoating!

Robert Jones said...

Nice blog David. A friend of mine plays in a Rush tribute band called "Tobes of Hades". They perform occasionally in Edinburgh.

David said...

Hello Mr Jones

There's a band that's played Glasgow a few times called "Tom Sawyer" but I've never heard of "Tobes of Hades". Are they any good?