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Syllabus
- Moving Pictures
- Wikipedia: Rush, Moving Pictures,
- Lyrics on Genius
- I Love You, Man on IMDb
- Manhatta on YouTube and On Wikipedia
Bit of an irony that “Anthem”, being such a short book, inspired such a long song in “2112”.
What about the voice of Geddy Lee? How did it get so high? I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy.
I didn’t think I’d have much to say, because I find Rush tedious and uninteresting, but then you broached something that I do find interesting. While Moving Pictures may have been mentioned on Aqua Teen, I know for a fact it is mentioned in an early episode of Harvey Birdman entitled “Blackwatch Plaid.” In said episode, in a parody of the ol’ color coded threat level indicator that was popular back in the day, Phil Ken Sebben raised the threat level to “the cover of Rush’s Moving Pictures.”
Speaking of tedious and uninteresting, your comments about puns.
Rush was mentioned multiple times on ATHF in different contexts. IIRC Neal Peart was in Colon Movie Film For Theaters, and Geddy Lee was discussed in the episode where Master Shake writes a new birthday song with metal guitarist Zak Wylde. But yeah, with this album specifically it was the Harvey Birdman reference that came to mind for me too.
As someone who feels very differently, I do understand why one might find Rush tedious and uninteresting because that’s how I feel about, say, Game of Thrones.
I remember Zak Wylde, but I don’t recall Geddy Lee, although it certainly makes as much sense as anything else on that show. I just remember Aqua Teen being more interested in Foreigner and Loverboy and bands like that.
In following this thread (and hearing a well, actually from friend of the podcast Kyle L.), I think I was conflating the ATHF reference of Geddy Lee with the Harvey Birdman reference to Moving Pictures because I probably saw both very late at night around the same point in my life.
My favorite ATHF musician cameo is probably when Glenn Danzig buys Karl’s house (and refuses to wear a shirt).
A lot of thoughts on this episode. First, when Wrather mentioned the “cocktail party version” of Rush I actually thought that was when you were going to start discussing Ayn Rand, because that was the second thing I knew about them after the fact that my dad does not like them and neither did rock critics. And that leads to my second point, which was a thing you only hit sideways: especially for rock stars, Rush are profoundly uncool. The kind of adolescent attitude is one that only develops from a sense of doing a thing in a way that is not the way people like it done. (It’s odd to me that you contrast this with something “anarchic”, as it strikes me as much more authentically anarchic to fail to understand the social order than to yell about anarchy.)
I said a while ago (Talking Heads episode I think) that I sometimes see connections between historical acts and contemporary ones, and this is a case where I made the connection years ago. I think that in a lot of ways – the vaguely rebellious politics, the science fiction themes, the art-music pretensions, the tenor vocals, the Power Trio-ness, the massive cult popularity in the face of critical scoffing – the band Muse is my generation’s Rush. (Our generation’s? I’m 3 or 4 years younger than you but it sometimes feels like a huge gulf, and not only because Purple Rain came out months before I was born). The biggest difference isn’t just one of technical musicianship (although Rush are certainly superior in that respect), it’s actually gender. To circle back around, y’all’s first impression of Rush was as a “rock dude band”, but Muse nowadays are inextricably linked with Twilight and in my experience have a fanbase that is more heavily female than male.
Anyway, I think I have more to say but it’s after midnight and I’m losing my train of thought. Let me know if any of what I said makes sense to you.
The Muse connection makes a ton of sense; I’ve never really managed to be able to wrap my head around Muse, but I’m wondering if thinking them in this way will be a useful entry point. I’ll listen to some Muse albums and report back.
The other contemporary connection for Rush that I wanted to mention but forgot was a particular strand of early-2000s emo and post-emo, namely Coheed and Cambria and Mars Volta (and to a lesser extent At the Drive In). It is a very interesting example of things ourobourosing- bands coming a punk-oriented subgenre incorporating elements of production/vocals/playing style that draw on more arena-oriented rock of the 70s and 80s.
For one example of how the Rush/Coheed comparisons made their way into the discourse at the time: http://www.mtv.com/news/1486023/coheed-and-cambria-the-emo-rush-bring-prog-rock-to-the-mosh-pit/
Well actually: Camera Eye is probably a more specific reference to Dziga Vertov (although to be fair his films are very much like Manhatta.) The joining together of Manhattan and London, the idea that most people aren’t really seeing the city, the very phrase Camera Eye itself: “You’re walking down a Chicago street today in 1923, but I make you greet Comrade Volodarsky, walking down a Petrograd street in 1918 and he returns the greeting… I am kino-eye. I am a builder. I have placed you, whom I’ve created today, in an extraordinary room which did not exist until just now when I also created it. In this room there are twelve walls shot by me in various parts of the world… I am kino-eye, I create a man more perfect than Adam… from one person I take the hands, the strongest and most dextrous; from another I take the legs, the swiftest and most shapely; from a third, the most beautiful and expressive head — and through montage I create a new perfect man. I am kino-eye, I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it.”
(An interesting misreading/reversal on Rush’s part, of course, in that Vertov was hella socialist.)
Great point on Vertov-I definitely remember some of his stuff from the film studies class I took freshman year, but it wasn’t jarred loose until you mentioned it just now.
Yeah, Vertov was definitely on my mind, though I didn’t make the connection of Camera Eye and kino-eye, which is neat. I was thinking in the back of my mind about Kino-Pravda, specifically the relationship between manipulation of the filmed image—or rather of the hermeneutics of the filmed image—through montage and claims about depicting objective reality that verge on scientistic.
The topic of rock stars who nonetheless want nothing to do with performing reminded me immediately of Andy Partridge of “XTC”. I certainly hope they’re on your radar. The logical choice of album would be “Skylarking” from 1986, so they’re still a ways in the future.
Given that it takes us most of a year to cover a year (1980), we’ll likely arrive there before 2020.
I actually don’t know skylarking well- the earlier “drums and wires” is the XTC album that I’ve spent more time with. I’ll throw it on my Spotify list and in our planning document.
This doesn’t really add to the critical discourse around Rush and this album, but YOU GUYS, you gotta check out this video of a puppet drummer playing the shit out of “Tom Sawyer.”
http://gothamist.com/2015/04/15/video_puppet_drummer_rushs_tom_sawy.php