Review of Rush's 2112

Released 1976
"Attention all planets of the solar federation We have assumed control."

I'm relieved that I can now review an album which I can honestly say I adored from the very first listen. That it is still a firm favourite many years later shows that my initial enthusiasm was not entirely down to the various intoxicants I was imbibing at the time. They might of helped though.

My first week in Halls of Residence , typical of most students, was memorable due to the dizzying array of new experiences of all kinds which I was exposed to. Some of them legal. Staggering from party to party, pub to pub, room to room, picking up all the bad habits that Glasgow could throw at me, encountering new and diverse music was an inevitable and often a very worthwhile occurrence. As a non-prog aside, to this day I cannot hear She Sells Sanctuary or The Whole Of The Moon without a wry smile crossing my grizzled brow.

The most prog worthy musical introduction of that first week came about very late one night when a small group of drunken students fell into Tommy Shaw's room. Tommy was from Fife with an impenetrable accent, which became all but unintelligible when he was drunk and / or enthusiastic. Closing one eye in order that I could see straight, I fingered my clumsy way through his quite sizable collection of LPs. Amongst many regrettable discs such as Journey, Boston and Blue Oyster Cult, Tommy had amassed pretty much all the Rush albums released up until that point.

I had heard of Rush, but had never heard Rush. I was impressed by many of the album covers and attempted to make my opinion known to Tommy in my soft Cornish tones which were fighting a losing battle with the effects of cider and whiskey as well as the fragrant aroma gradually enveloping the room. Tommy looked up at me and said something which started with "Fit?" before becoming entirely incoherent. Realising meaningful expression was beyond us, he fumbled past me and pulled out his copy of 2112. He uttered a sentence which included "Fockin' dead on", or something and put the platter on his turnable, his hand managing somehow to push the volume dial to maximum before he collapsed in a heap, knocked over a drink and was kicked by an irate bedraggled female of no fixed abode.

Yes, I may have been artificially enhanced at the time, but the I'll never forget the impact of that (very loud) opening 'whoosh', the powerful, strident drumming, huge power chords and the lunacy of the opening few minutes of the epic side long title track. Initially, I thought it was merely much better than average hard rock, before I realised that the time signatures were shifting every thirty seconds and the level of playing was really rather good.

Tommy gave me a thumbs up through the haze, took a drag on the herbal roll-up and told the departing female contingent - clearly unhappy with the spilled drink and inordinately loud music - to "aw, fock off", before falling over into a deep sleep. To appease the occupants of the neighbouring rooms who were banging on the walls, I turned the volume down to a slightly more acceptable level and took a good look at the sleeve.

I was amazed that this considerable cacophony was being created by just three musicians. The moustaches, spandex and regrettable hair styles made me wince (although not as much as it must surely make their respective owners hold their heads in shame that their mothers ever let them venture out into the realms of prog rock world domination in such a state) but found myself nodding along to the highly infectious riffing that was going on. Then the vocals kicked in for the first time. I probably made a face as though I had found a dead fish when I first heard Alex's vocals. It didn't last long though. As the song slowed for the brief acoustic interlude, I knew I was in the presence of very accomplished prog. The remainder of the first side veered through a very complex, exciting, loud and highly ambitious heavy prog suite which culminated in dramatic power chords lifted directly from the Pete Townshend school of riffery, accompanied by scary robotic chanting (as quoted at the front end of this review) before crashing into a climax of exhausted feedback. Wow, this was very impressive stuff. Given that I was still in the process of emerging from the heavy metal and hard rock apprenticeship of my earlier teenage years, stumbling across a band who so successfully welded together the better elements of that largely adolescent genre with the more sophisticated playing associated with prog was a real find.

The second side, whilst made up of five shorter tracks was no less convincing. Although I was struggling with at least two of my senses, I warmed to the highly distinctive vocals and realised that the drummer was very different to the usual run of the mill tub thumpers that I might usually have associated with the heavier end of the rock spectrum. Not only was there more going on in the sticks department in one song than a lot of drummers might contribute in a career, I was intrigued to learn that Neil Peart was the primary song writer. I was certainly in no state to think of another band where this was also the case. Even now, in my sober middle age I'm still struggling.

The shorter tracks on the second side was still resolutely prog with a variety of styles; rock, pop and ballads. I'll have to admit that my attention wavered a bit towards the end of the album, but I put that down to the time of night, my state of dehydration and an onset of the munchies.

As I wandered off towards the vending machine I was humming the refrain from A Passage To Bangkok with a silly lopsided grin.

Still a firm favourite and a superb CD for the car, 2112 will, I'm sure remain a consistent resident in my top twenty albums.