On the coattails of the wildly successful 2112, Rush decided to put out a quad-side, triple-gatefold live LP, named with a Shakespeare reference, recorded in their home town. This began a cycle where the band would release four studio albums, then bookend the era with a double live album. This time around, the band summarized their early career, an era that began as a bar band belting out Led Zeppelin-esque music, and progressing to a full-on art-rock band, complete with long-form concept pieces.

This album was recorded in historic Massey Hall in Toronto, a 2700-seat venue with a vivid past, serving as the location of classic acts from Charlie Parker to Frank Zappa. Terry Brown and crew captured their June 11-13 1976 shows on tape, from the tour supporting 2112, restructuring the order of their set into an hour-and-ninteen-minute series of two LPs’ worth of live tunes.

The older, hard rock side of Rush is solidly displayed here. They start by rocking out “Bastille Day” and then pounding through live versions of stuff like “Anthem” and “Something For Nothing,” plus medleys, like starting with “Fly By Night” and segueing into “In the Mood.” All of this shows Alex’s ability to plow through the rhythm and then switch to a screaming bluesy solo and back, without the aid of overdubs or a rhythm guitarist behind him. This is helped with Geddy’s bass, which is chunky and follows the guitar well.

If you’re looking for more in the prog vein, there is a truncated version of the first side of their latest album at the time, 2112, which removes the “Oracle” and shortens the “Discovery” sub-songs, clocking in at just over 15 minutes. (And a minor gripe is that this is tracked on the CD as a single song, so you can’t skip around easily, which sucks, because sometimes I’m in the mood to just jump to “Grand Finale” and rock that part out.) On the tail of that is a twelve-minute rendition of “By-Tor and the Snow Dog”, which is pretty faithful to the album version.

A big reason I like this album more than the other Rush live albums is there’s a lot more of the human element shown here; it’s probably the most honest of the live albums. The band isn’t spot-on perfect here, which is good. You can see the holes where overdubs weren’t compensated with walls of Taurus synth and triggered MIDI and other sampled wizardry. They got around the limitations the old-fashioned way: by improvising, cutting corners, and making it sound good. Add to this that Massey Hall isn’t a huge place. I myself am by no means a talented musician, but in college, I played bass (for one gig) for a band that played in a sold-out hall twice the size of this one. For me to think of Rush playing in a theater half that size boggles my mind. And you can hear it; There isn’t constant audience noise. For some numbers, the crowd is quiet, and then waits for the end of the song to applause. This is much more appealing to me than a giant arena where people are cheering for every second because Rush is the biggest thing in the world, or a “live” album recorded in a studio with a constant crowd sound dubbed in from a stock audio reel. This small venue dynamic shows them as a working band, just starting, still struggling. And I like that.

The small things add up, too. A few times, Alex gets a touch of feedback in places where it didn’t sound planned. Neil fills in with his cowbell here and there, and sounds like he’s having fun on the set. When they go from the slow to the heavy part of “In the End”, Geddy counts off with “one, two, buckle my shoe”. There are a lot of little fills and runs at the ends of songs that shows that they’re still organic.

Probably my favorite bit is the medley of “Working Man” and “Finding My Way,” which completely rocks out both songs, and adds a trademark drum solo by “the professor on the drum kit”. I have to say, compared to later stuff, you can tell Neil is still building his chops here. This is a pre-electronic, pre-trigger, pre-MIDI drum solo, nothing but skins and a little bit of cowbell.

A minor nit: the old CD had to clip the quad-side album at 75 minutes, and that meant dropping “What You’re Doing,” and also dropping this bit of chatter between the band members as they ran offstage and then slammed a door behind them. This got fixed in the 1997 remaster/reissue.

Overall, this is a nice time capsule and a great way to end the early hard rock era of the band. From here, things got a lot more proggy and the band left behind the desire to be another Zep clone. But it’s still fun to go back to this every once in a while and see a recap of what the band did for those first four albums.

Rating: 8

Most people who even know anything about Grim Reaper only know them from an episode of _Beavis and Butthead_that savagely made fun of a video of their most popular tune, “See You in Hell,” with one of the cartoon duo saying that they looked like a band you’d see at the county fair. If I was a typical metal fan that required total allegiance to bands that weren’t good but were still an “influence” or whatever, I would have been pretty upset by that cartoon. But, I’m not stupid like that, so I thought it was pretty damn funny, because face it: for the most part, Grim Reaper really did suck.

I actually did listen to these guys back in the day, mostly because a friend of mine made a mix tape called “Heavy Metal Hell” and it had a cut from each of the English band’s three albums. That made me rush out and buy their third (and last) album, Rock You to Hell, which made me think that even though they weren’t very original with their song titles, they sounded okay. This was also at a point when I was buying a lot of thrash metal, and maybe in comparison, it didn’t seem that bad. I lost or sold the tape a year or two later, and didn’t think much of it for a long time.

When trying to buy back a lot of my old favorites on CD, I picked up this compilation, which offered 17 cuts on one disc. As far as representing their three albums, there are most of the basics here, like “See You In Hell,” “Fear No Evil,” “Rock You To Hell,” “Waysted Love,” and “Suck It And See.” (ugh…) As you can see, these guys were not exactly prolific in the ability to come up with neat song titles. Maybe if they would have taken a note from Carcass and bought a medical thesaurus, their career would have lasted a bit longer.

Upon listening to the tracks, I really wonder why I ever liked these guys. As far as the basics, these guys are a typical NWOBHM-influenced early thrash band, with a very standard chorus-verse-solo-repeat style, nothing more. Their lead singer, Steve Grimmett, mostly belts out a bad falsetto that sounds like someone trying to imitate Don Dokken, although he occasionally does some “sexy” homoerotic grunts and “uhs” in various places. And Grimmett isn’t exactly the kind of guy you’d want up front in spandex, thrusting his codpiece against the mic stand. I guess other English frontmen like Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickenson or even Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott have been able to front a band with an equal lack of physical glam, but it just doesn’t work here. Maybe I liked this band so much in the 80s because back then, MTV didn’t play their videos, and I just didn’t know how Spinal Tap-eque they looked.

As for the actual songs, some of them are surprisingly similar, almost like they found a good melody and structure and just re-used it over and over. “See You in Hell” and “Now or Never” have such similar introductions, I thought my CD was messed up for a minute. Older stuff like “See You in Hell” sounds almost like a demo in quality, very compressed and tinny. They predictably have the cliched heavy metal “rain and thunder” intro on the song “Let the Thunder Roar”, and “Final Scream” has this weird intro with a screaming girl and a synthesized voice that is possible the worst King Diamond rip-off ever.

That said, some of cuts from their third album, Rock You to Hell, aren’t bad. I think they got the production figured out by then, with a much thicker sound, and the lead guitar work is more Dokken-eque, with good leads and tappy emphasis stuff here and there, but without totally showing off. The title cut, plus “Lust For Freedom” and “Waysted Love” are particularly decent metal from 1987. Grimmett’s vocals aren’t howling or shrieking, and although it’s not exactly Rob Halford or anything, they’re a dot or two ahead of the curve. I can’t ignore their song “Suck it and See”, though. Aside from the fact that this is a completely hilarious yet stupid song title, the actual song itself is pretty bad. You’d think with a title like that, it might be some sort of brutal, sexist theme song, like a thrashier version of “Ram it Down.” Instead, it’s this half-speed, swingy number that makes absolutely no sense.

In retrospect, I probably should have listened to these songs online somewhere and realized that it wasn’t worth having the first two albums, then bought the third and called it a day. It’s sad that a 17-song collection by a band that only had 26 published songs could actually not have two or three songs that I really wanted to hear. It’s even more sad that those 26 songs would probably fit on a CD with 40 minutes to spare. I think this whole thing is an exercise on how to not put together a collection.

Rating: 4

I’m a sucker for “unofficial releases” that are nothing more than a journo’s taped interview with a band, later set to CD-R boot. And here’s a classic example of this non-canon release: a half-hour chat with Alex Lifeson. Although the internets give this a release date of 1992, the conversation dates it at 1987-ish, around the time of Hold Your Fire.

Listening to Alex talk is always an interesting proposition for me. I always think of Geddy as the voice of the band in the literal sense, but so much of what I’ve read over the years, both in books and in the actual lyrics, are written by Neil. So the thought of Alex doing anything other than playing the six-string is out of sorts for me. But it turns out he’s a wonderful conversationalist in this interview. A good chunk of the talk deals with how the band approaches music, and he details their unique writing process. When the band hides away on a Canadian farm for a few weeks to write, Neil is in one end of the house, shuffling papers and penning lyrics, while Alex and Geddy are at the other end, noodling on their stringed instruments, taping riffs and jamming away at embryonic songs. It seems strange that a band with lyrics and complicated music twisted tightly together can write like that, but it works well. Each night, the band regroups and laminates together the raw pieces into well-crafted songs.

One of the funnier bits in the interview is a discussion about the early days, in which Alex admits that back in the day, he used to work at a gas station pumping gas during the week, and then the band went out on weekends to gig. He also said in the early years (the mid-70s), he was barely making rent on a tiny apartment, and when he wasn’t on tour supporting albums like Caress of Steel, he was working as a plumber for his dad. It’s hard to imagine Rush as anything but successful, but according to this interview, they struggled until Moving Pictures.

Lifeson seems to have his head on straight, even if they are somewhat more famous by this point. He emphasizes that the music is most important to them, not the partying, which kept the band together for so long. He also talks about family, and how his then-17-year-old son was more of a friend than a kid to him (he was 34 at the time). He also mentions his son’s teenaged attempts at music and bands, which is humorous.

This interview sounds like it was recorded in a restaurant. Alex is recorded well, but the interviewer’s voice is a bit muffled and has a heavy accent, so it’s hard to hear exactly what he’s asking. There’s not a smooth start or stop on this, and it is by no means a pro release, but it’s an interesting snippet of conversation. You’ll have to hunt to find this one, but if you’re a fan, it’s a nice little view into the late-80s world of Rush.

Rating: 7

Following a self-titled debut of Led Zeppelin-clone originals and immediately before a tour, John Rutsey, the drummer of this Canadian three-piece walked away from the band, citing health reasons and/or a lack of interest in touring. This could have been the end of the struggling band, but a dude selling tractor parts with his dad showed up with a carful of drums, and became a key component in this band’s huge future.

Neil Peart, fresh off an 18-month stint of starvation, dead-end musical attempts, and a demeaning job of selling trinkets to tourists in London, joined Rush two weeks before their first US tour. In addition to adding his manic drum stylings to the band, he also became their chief lyricist. Both skills are obvious from the get-go on this eight-track LP, with the first song, “Anthem.” Even in the first sixty seconds, we hear Neil Peart’s drumming can drive more complex rhythms than the simple 4/4 Cream/Deep Purple rip-off beats of his predecessor. And the song’s about the Ayn Rand book of the same title, showcasing Neil’s bookworm-dom which would become apparent over the next few albums.

If you compare Fly by Night with the band’s first effort, there are many similarities. Although production is more consistent and solid, it still has the mid-70s echoey sound, as opposed to the cleaner recording on later albums. This was also recorded at Toronto Sound Studios, but instead of a one-inch 8-track, they used two-inch 16-track tape on a Studer deck with a Neve console, which gave it a warm sound and let them be more flexible with overdubs. And behind that Neve console was Terry Brown, the band’s long-time fourth member, who would produce this and the band’s next eight albums.

This album is split almost down the middle into two types of songs: “Life is rough on the road being a rock star,” and “I bet it would be smart to market ourselves to nerdy 15-year-olds who play a lot of D&D.” Case in point on the latter is “By-Tor and the Snow Dog,” a near-nine-minute literary epic that introduces the band’s use of concept in their album-oriented music. It’s a prototypical rock music battle, much like “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” except it was never featured in a John Travolta album, and the lyrics are more suited for the kind of guy who tries to make his own chain-mail out of soda can tabs and wear it to high school for yearbook picture day. Musically, it’s pretty impressive stuff; Peart is all over the place on the drum kit, and Alex Lifeson contributes a lot of shrieking guitar, including a very bluesy solo towards the end.

The band also showcases their love of J.R.R. Tolkien in the song “Rivendell,” which features some of the stupidest lyrics possible in a song. “Lying in the warm grass / feel the sun upon your… face.” Ugh. And I should clarify for those of you born in the 1980s that back in 1975, it was not cool in any way to like Tolkein. This was long before the films made it cool, and you were looking at a serious ass-beating if you sat in study hall and perfected your Elven calligraphy between readings of The Two Towers. Taking metal music, the art form of Satan and Ozzy himself, and taking a sudden turn into dreamy poetry about Elves was prime grounds for your parents to whisk you away to some kind of backwater evangelical reprogramming camp, where the ex-con counselors could beat the living shit out of you until they were certain you were heterosexual and would never roll a 2d12 again.

This album’s not all bad. The title track, with lyrics penned by Peart to describe his exit from Canada to London, is a bit foppish but has some decent soloing in it. “Beneath, Between, & Behind” has some cool drumming, including probably what’s the first double-bass on a Rush album. “In the End” has a great sound to it, especially the more-electric second half of the song. Aside from “Rivendell” and “By-Tor,” most of the album is only a slight progression from their first LP’s extremely straightforward hard rock sensibilities. But it’s a good progression, and the birth of what later became a very unique formula.

There are a couple of oddities on this album, so I’ll put them in a nice bulleted list for you:

• “Beneath, Between, & Behind” was the first song that Peart worked on, and the only Rush song that Geddy Lee did not work on writing-wise in any way.
• “Making Memories” is the only Rush song featuring slide guitar.
• “Rivendell” is the only Rush song that does not include drums.

This is a short one, clocking in at a mere 37

. But if you can overlook the dorkiness, it’s a decent $8 investment for a listen at the first shot of this band’s golden lineup.

Rating: 7.5

After the release of Keeper of the Seven Keys, Pt. 2, you’d think the world would be great for Helloween, since it cracked the top 30 in England, but instead, it turned into a world of shit for the band. First, their leader and guitar player Kai Hansen freaked out and quit the band on the verge of a tour. Then, they got a deal with EMI to buy them out of their contract with Noise Records, but it tied them up in a huge legal dispute for over two years. The product of that dispute was three live EPs, released by EMI to keep the band alive during their troubles.

I have to admit that I bought the US version of the EP when it came out. (There are also UK and Japanese versions, with different recordings, but only slightly different setlists. Oh, and the EPs have Kai Hansen on guitar, they were recorded before he split.) And for whatever reason, I listened to it a LOT. I still listen to it now and again. But I have to be honest with you: 85 percent of this 42-minute album is completely useless. I know, that’s heresey, but it’s true! Since it’s short enough, I will break it down for you track by track.

1: Intro/A Little Time: They waste a lot of time with the crowd chanting “happy Helloween.” Okay, I timed it, and it’s only like 25 seconds, but it’s such a huge waste of time, and this is a short album that’s only made to make us pay to keep thinking about the band until they put out another album, right? The song is not bad, with very Bruce Dickinson-sounding lyrics that are pretty tight, but then about three minutes in, there’s some vamping part that’s in there to kill time, probably while vocalist Michael Kiske slaps hands with people in the front row or something stupid.

2: Doctor Stein: Kiske spends TWO AND A HALF MINUTES babbling like a drunken idiot before the song starts. The song is okay, except where Kiske inserts a “1-2-3-4” before singing part of a verse, which drives me fucking homicidal.

3: Future World: About a minute and a half of rambling and guitar tomfoolery until the song starts up. Kiske tries to get the audience to sing the first verse, and only about three people know the words. For fuck’s sake, if you are singer, DO YOUR JOB and sing the song instead of trying to get the audience to sing it. Nobody cares. Seriously. He does this in one or two other places, with predictable results. Then about six minutes into the song, they go into one of those huge audience participation wastes of time where the drums keep the same beat, and the guitar does dumb shit for six bars, and then the singer tries to get everyone to sing, etc. Iron Maiden did it on the song “Running Free” and it wasn’t even cool when they did it.

4: We Got the Right: About thirty seconds of guitar noodling, which is actually better than the song. I hate this song for some reason. It’s just mid-paced ballady bullshit. I wish the US version of this EP had something better here.

5: I Want Out: Finally! A really good song, no stupid intros, no audience sing-alongs. Unfortunately, it only lasts four minutes, and then we get a bunch of chanting of “here we go, here we go, here we go,” as Kiske tries to rev the audience up for an encore. Another two minutes are wasted, as he sets up the next song.

6: How Many Tears: Perfect. Nine whole minutes, a great song, good solos, the lyrics are great, and it’s a great choice to end a set. THIS IS GOOD. I even like the fake finish and total speedy climax thing they do halfway through the song.

This album could be good. I’d up my score by two points if it was trimmed of all banter by the lead singer, and if track four was replaced, and maybe one other track was added to make up for the difference. I don’t have the other two import EPs, so maybe that’s what they did. But otherwise, this is just awful. This should serve as an example to all other bands who put out a live album that we really don’t care what is on your singer’s mind. Just play your damn songs. I’m sorry this is such a low review, and for some reason, I still listen to this a lot. But it’s also trained me how to operate the fast-forward on my iPod, so keep that in mind.

Rating: 5 (but the last track is like an 8)