Feedback (2004)
1.Summertime Blues
2.Heart Full Of Soul
3.For What It's Worth
4.The Seeker
5.Mr. Soul
6.Seven and Seven Is
7.Shapes of Things
8.Crossroads
Trivia Question:
Throughout Rush's long illustrious career, how many cover songs, or
songs exclusively by outside writers has the band recorded?
A true fan won't have any problem answering the question. Not only had
the band never recorded cover songs, they never performed any
during their shows. Occasionally, Neil Peart may have co-written some
lyrics on an album with an outsider, but that was the limit.
Therefore it seemed a bit of a shock when, thirty years after they
began recording, they released a "mini" CD entirely of covers. The
great thing about the band Rush is that they never seemed to care what
anyone else thought about them, nor what they were attempting to do at
the time. Although they never gained commercial success, and the
critics overwhelmingly snubbed them time after time, the band always
figured that if they were happy, and they continued to pack
arenas with thrilled fans, then that was just fine for them.
For whatever reason, they deemed that now was the right time to pull
out some songs that they enjoyed in their youth and probably played in
their early heyday. All of the songs here are from the 1960s and some
are well known, whereas other tracks are a bit more obscure (I must
confess that I had never heard the track Seven and Seven Is
before I heard this compilation). The thing that makes this such an
enjoyable listen is that Rush isn't simply copying the material. They
adapt the songs to where they could have easily been tunes that the band
penned themselves and recorded the material without ever hearing
the original song. This is a great way to pay tribute to your heroes,
while not alienating your core fan base.
What also seems to work well is that there are only 8 songs that
clock in at less than 30 minutes total. Again, it's almost as if the
band realizes that "too much" of this type of excursion will only cause
listeners to become restless. This is a great case of "you don't fill
up a CD with 80 minutes of material simply because there's room".
During the band's 30 year anniversary tour that followed, they included
a handful of songs from this realease and they were received
enthusiastically by the hardcore disciples - proof that the whole thing
worked quite well.
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