Rush - Chronicles
Performance
Production
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Rush - Chronicles
Performance
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Chronicles is a collection of 14 Rush promotional videos that were released between 1977 and 1987. The videos range in style between live concert footage, live studio footage, and full blown concept videos. Rush made a name for themselves from being a dynamic live rock band. Like clockwork, the band would follow up every four studio albums, with a new live album, which would highlight their most recent work. Each period between live albums saw the band's sound and style evolve significantly. Rush started out as a raw, guitar-dominated, power-trio, during the mid-70's, and gradually evolved to a more melodic, progressive-rock sound, by the mid-80's. The late 80's through the early 90's saw the band's sound evolve even more drastically, as they introduced a more keyboard-dominated, techno-laden rock and roll sound to their fans. Starting with the release of their Counterparts album in 1993, Rush came nearly full-circle again, back to their crunchy guitar and thunderous bass dominated roots of the 70's, while still maintaining their progressive rock edge. Five live albums later, Rush is still going strong, and are currently in the middle of their 30th Anniversary world tour. The videos run in chronological order, with "Closer To The Heart", from the band's 1977, epic, A Farewell To Kings album starting things off. "Closer To The Heart" features Rush lip-syncing the song in front of a live audience, while "The Trees", from the follow-up album Hemispheres, features an actual live concert performance circa-1978. "Limelight" and "Tom Sawyer" primarily capture the band performing live in Le Studio, with a few brief cutaways to a live concert performance during "Limelight". "Red Barchetta" is an excellent concert recording taken straight from the Exit...Stage Left video, and "Red Sector A" is a live concert performance taken from their Grace Under Pressure Tour video. The rest of the videos are all MTV-style, concept videos that Rush released during the 80's, in an attempt to win over some of the MTV crowd. This was the time when MTV was first beginning to explode, and even heavy metal bands were seeing their videos in heavy rotation. My, how things have changed. "The Enemy Within" and "Afterimage" are included as hidden bonus videos, for some stupid reason, and can be accessed by selecting the "Rush Chronicles" logo on the DVD's "Play Videos" menu. The audio and video transfers came out reasonably well, considering the limitations of the old source material. The audio on many of the tracks, especially the earliest songs ("Closer To The Heart", "The Trees"), leaves much to be desired, as there were some noticeable cutouts and skips during these videos. Overall, the Dolby Digital 2.0 and PCM stereo mixes sounded decent, considering the age of the source material, with the PCM track providing a slightly bolder mix. This is obviously an excellent supplement to the Rush In Rio concert DVD, and serves as a nice nostalgic look back at the days of MTV rock videos. If they can manage to transfer this material to DVD, then they can certainly manage to transfer the Exit...Stage Left, Grace Under Pressure, and A Show Of Hands concert videos to DVD. Put a Rush on it! (Hah! I made a funny). Reviewed by Paul M. Roy - August 2004 |
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Running Time: 71 Minutes |
DVD Release Date - September 2001 |