Retrospective I: 1974-1980

by

Rush

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There are two Rush compilations available. One is 'Chronicles', a double CD set. Another is Retrospective. This album is the part one of the Retrospective set. Retrospective set gives certain flexibility... you can opt for the early period or later period or BOTH.

This album covers the following albums

Rush(1 song), Fly by night(3 songs), Caress of Steel(1 song), 2112(3 songs, actually 1.25 songs), A farewell to kings(2 songs), Hemisphere(2 songs), Permanent Waves(2 songs).

No point to argue regarding the track selection. Only point is whether you should buy a compilation by Rush or not! Rush being a very much album band, you should buy albums. So you should go for one of the famous six (2112, A farewell to kings, Hemisphere, Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures, Signals). Still there is one point that promotes the compilation, Rush is also a 'love them' or 'hate them' kind of band (I love them). So you may need to decide which kind are they. So in that case you may need one of this as a starting point. If you interested in rocking. Go for Retrospective 1. For the keyboard sound try Retrospective 2.

If you like them start buying the albums. They are G-R-E-A-T.

This album and its companion volume Retrospective II: 1981-1987 are rather pointless exercises. Rush had already released an admirable comprehensive retrospective back in 1990, the excellent double-disc Chronicles, which took two songs from each of their studio albums (three in the case of Moving Pictures) and augmented them with selected tracks from each of their three live albums at that point in their career. Now years later, Rush's money-grubbing manager Ray Danniels convinced them to milk their past again by releasing two separate (and therefore more expensive when purchased together) compilations rehashing most of the same songs and adding in a few of their more epic pieces ("Xanadu", "By-Tor and the Snow Dog") which were too long to cram onto Chronicles. I know Danniels is the mastermind behind this, because when he later became the manager of Van Halen he tried to convince them to do the same, releasing two volumes of greatest hits separately compiling the David Lee Roth and the Sammy Hagar eras. He lost that battle, only managing the milk the fans for a single-disc VH best-of.

Diehard Rush fans will tell you to skip both Chronicles and the Retrospective volumes and instead purchase all of the Rush CD's, since that is the context in which they are best enjoyed. As an in-betweener, I can tell you that the Chronicles set is a more broad overview, even if it's at the expense of some of their longer songs with mutliple movements and time signature changes (plus, Chronicles includes the excellent "Working Man", missing here). But then if it's the longer stuff you enjoy and not their shorter, more commercial material, then you DEFINITELY have no business looking at either Chronclies or the Retrospectives. Start collecting all the Rush CD's!

3 stars because it's still great material, but the way it's been repackaged yet again is kind of shameless.