Has Ozzy put out anything since Randy died? 
I’ve always liked that song. I saw Rush when I was in high school (1985) and it was a great concert. Wow, I’m typing this as I’m listening to a sports talk radio show and they’re playing Working Man as the bumper music. 
What other songs do you guys like on Signals? I’m personally a huge fan of “The Analog Kid”. I really like two things about this song in particular: the dreamy-sounding keyboards and Geddy’s singing in the chorus, and holy fuck is this one of Alex’s better solos or what?
Ah, the bridge is cool too.
Honorable mention: the keyboard hook/solo in “Countdown” and Geddy’s sick ass bass work in “Digital Man”.
Another thing: Signals seems to really have an etheral quality to it. I can’t put a finger on it, but its one of if not my favorite Rush album.
I like all of them to one extent or another. I find Losing It to be pretty haunting, lyrically and musically.
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Yeah, that’s one of my favorites too…love the unusual time signature and the lyrics. But I adore Subdivisions.
I agree. When I used to make “Deep cuts” Rush mixes (on Tapes; I’m OLD!), The Analog Kid was always on there. I also liked the dichotomy of the titles Analog Kid and Digital Man. That was a very Neil Peart thing to do.
The Analog Kid has always been at the top of my list of Rush favorites.
I agree about the haunting and beautiful qualities of Losing It. It’s also an example of outstanding lyricism. The writer stares with glassy eyes; defies the empty page. His beard is white, his face is lined and streaked with tears of rage. Thirty years ago how the words would flow with passion and precision. Now his mind is dark and dulled by sickness and indecision.
I loved Subdivisions, but I was a snob and tended to not like Rush songs that got “popular” (relatively speaking, of course). I sure loved learning to play that song on the drums, though. I wanted to be Neil Peart, and I had a China type cymbal that sounded great for the bit a the end of the song.
I’ve also been struck by the disdain that the members of the band have expressed for Countdown. I love the song, but they seem to be disappointed by it.
“We enjoyed the music Bob.”
Agree about the change in Alex’s sound. To me it was like he was trying to sound like Andy Summers (since the Police were HUGE at that time), and while I’ve got nothing against the Police, that’s not what I wanted Rush to sound like. I owned every Rush album up to that point but Signals was the last Rush album I bought until they released their Feedback EP a few years back.
Subdivisions is indeed one of my favorite Rush songs, perhaps my #1 favorite lyrically. Unfortunately, I didn’t come to that conclusion until later in life. I was introduced to Rush by a school friend when I was 14 years old (1980), right at the same time I was just starting to learn to play guitar. 1980 was the year of the “Permanent Waves” album, and the song Freewill was quite simply the coolest thing I’d ever heard (and ultimately the song that made me decide to become a bass player). My friend made tapes for me of Rush’s earlier albums, and I was completely hooked. “Moving Pictures” came out and it was awesome.
And then “Signals” came out. By 1982, I had started getting into metal and other hard rock, and when I heard “Signals” with all those synths, it felt to me like Rush had gone all “new wave” on me. I didn’t listen to any new Rush for more than ten years after that.
Somewhere around 1993, I was working in a bar and found Rush’s 1991 album, “Roll the Bones” on the jukebox. And while it wasn’t the hard rock of their early career, neither was it completely swamped with synths. And I liked it. They’ve only gotten heavier since then (and in fact their last few albums might be heavier than anything they recorded in the '70s), and as I started getting into their '90s output, I decided to go back and check out the stuff I’d missed from the '80s. That included re-listening to the “Signals” album, and wow, Subdivisions just blew me away lyrically.
Not a lot of love for the synth-y mid-80’s Rush here, it seems. I happen to love Power Windows and especially Hold Your Fire, precisely because on those albums, Rush shed the clunky Hard Rock-stumbles-into-New Wave, faux-Police style for the ultimate Prog Pop soundscape - clean, precise, masterfully executed, melodic, hooky and just poppy enough. Rush has reinvented itself over and over again because they have to. Their music so insular and tight they can’t go on very long without drastic changes in style. That I’m a bassist may explain why losing raunchy guitars didn’t impact me much. And Geddy never sounded better than with the Wals of the 80’s.
Mind you, I have all Rush albums until Vapor Trails and I listen to most all of them (on Presto and Roll the Bones, the ultra-smooth, tight 80’s Prog Pop turned into looser, blander 90’s Pop Rock, them being the lesser efforts IMHO).
Subdivisions is a huge shivers-down-my-spine song to me. Countdown is really bad, possibly the worst Rush ever made.
I don’t think “Countdown” is their greatest effort either, but its by no means horrible, especially within the context of when it was recorded vis a vis the first space shuttle launch, which was a momentous feat.
Plus, as I mentioned earlier, it has that cool keyboard hook/solo.
That’s one of the things I love about them … now. But for me, at age 16, the timing was quite terrible. For all intents and purposes I had just discovered and come to love the band, right in my most formative, impressionable period as a musician. And then they rather abruptly (IMO) changed their style. I also hadn’t taken up the bass guitar yet, so the relative lack of crunchy guitar on Signals turned me off (and what was there wasn’t the riffy stuff I liked — it was all “jazz chords” and arpeggios and I couldn’t figure out how to play it). And as I mentioned above, it sounded “new wave”, which was anathema to a hard rock/metal-loving teenager.
It was the musical equivalent of my parents promising me an action movie and pizza for my birthday (yay!) and instead taking me to a historical drama and Chinese food (boo!) As a 40-something I still love action movies and pizza, but I can also appreciate and enjoy a historical drama (maybe more than an action movie) and have discovered there’s more to Chinese food than chow mein. Once I was older I gave “synth-period” Rush another chance. And by that time (mid-to-late-nineties) I’d pretty much set aside the guitar and had been focused on bass for 10-15 years, and wow, Geddy’s bass work on those albums is just outstanding, and a hell of a lot of fun to play.
“Subdivisions” is great. But Signals can’t be the best Rush album because it also features the one and only turd of a song in an otherwise brilliant catalog- “New World Man.” Rush does ska, plus a chorus of repeated whole notes. Yeesh.
“Losing It” is outstanding, musically and lyrically. It’s also cool because it’s in 5:4 time.
Women who like Rush are awesome.
Ironically, it was also their highest-charting single. The interesting thing about New World Man is how it came to be written. They had finished recording all the other songs, and realized there was still room on the record for one more song. I seem to remember reading that they wrote and recorded that song in one day.
Don’t forget the electric violin solo in 11/8 time!
Agreed, 100 %.
Both ‘Countdown’ and Kate Bush’s ‘Hello Earth’ remind me of just how cool (and old) the space shuttle is.
I just wanted to thank this thread for reminding me of some great Rush songs I haven’t listened to in years.
+1 for loving Subdivisions!