Rush - Moving Pictures (1981)

Dan:

My colleague in Florida, Bill, liked songs about different ways of learning. At the time, popular self-improvement gurus referred to the creative self as "right-brained," in contrast to the more structured "left-brained" self. This was a vastly oversimplified distinction, largely challenged by current neuroscience, but it led me to Rush. Bill liked their 1978 album, Hemispheres, because of its right/left-brained theme. He called it his "anthem," and he even played the 18-minute "Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres" for our class, which gave at least one student a headache. I wasn't sure the exercise was worth the time it took for unprepared listeners to plow through it, but I applaud the creative impulse of my dear colleague.

Hemispheres also included the song "The Trees," which also appeared as the B side of the single "Closer to the Heart." While the latter is a wonderful song from A Farewell to Kings (1977), "The Trees" somewhat clumsily celebrates Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy, using the forest as a metaphor for society. The solution to the "unrest in the forest" was to cut all the trees to the same size, which Rush reasoned was the solution prescribed by socialism. Most of the world had already seen through the veneer of Objectivism after its heyday in the 1950s when Rand's books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were favorites among wannabe intellectuals.

Politics aside, I learned a lot about Rush so when their classic Permanent Waves was released in 1980, I was ready. "The Spirit of Radio" was an obvious favorite for FM deejays and listeners, as was "Freewill." Some of Rand's philosophy remained but was packaged into better tunes and stronger playing, I thought. 

Moving Pictures, for me, is the best Rush album on the strength of its songs and playing. "Tom Sawyer" kicks off side 1 with an anthem to a modern-day version of Mark Twain's famous character. Today's Tom Sawyer is a confident, free-thinking lad who needs only to be judged against his own standards. Then comes "Red Barchetta," which is a story about a boy visiting his uncle who houses a red Barchetta automobile on his farm. The "rush" of driving the car is conveyed literally in the lyrics. 

The instrumental "YYZ" (named after the call letters of the Toronto airport) offers brief respite before one of the best songs on the album - "Limelight." It captures the mixed emotions of performance, not only by rock bands on stage but also in ordinary human interactions. My favorite verse is: "All the world's indeed a stage / And we are merely players / Performers and portrayers / Each another's audience outside the gilded stage."

Side 2 continues the run of great songs with "The Camera Eye," whose lyrics are more poetically obscure, involving contrasts between New York and Westminster. The instrumental intro states an ominous theme with deep synthesized sounds. The multi-part suite returns to the intro midway through, a typical arrangement for many prog compositions. There's so much here to digest, but it's worth spending time on it. "Witch Hunt" and "Vital Signs" close the album and seem like lesser material compared to all the other tracks. While their themes (fear and mental anguish, respectively) certainly belong on the album, I don't enjoy the music as much as the splendid earlier tracks.

Steve:

I was an enormous Rush fan in high school, particularly in the ninth grade, when I and several friends would constantly quote Rush lyrics. One of my proudest moments was approaching the basketball court during lunch hour, whilst others (including Peter, a Rush-fan friend of mine) were engaged in a game of Horse. One of the kids, Tor (short for Victor), had just gotten "out" and his friends jeered playfully at him, "Bye, Tor!"  Without missing a beat, I jumped into the scene and screamed, ".... and the Snow Dog!" in my best Geddy Lee voice. My friend Peter fell on the floor laughing - my timing couldn't have been better. Yeah, I know I'm a dork. [Dan comment: "By-Tor and the Snow Dog" is a song from Rush's Fly by Night (1975). I had to look it up because my own dorkiness is specialized in jazz trivia.]

Moving Pictures was and still is a perfect album. For the prior seven years and seven studio albums, Rush had been building up to something, first mastering the Led Zeppelin-esque hard-rock-with-a-brain style, then upping the complexity with sci-fi epics (e.g. "2112", "Cygnus X-1" Books 1 & 2), and finally introducing Permanent Waves, a more concise complexity where the dazzling musicianship enhanced radio-friendly and easy-to-follow songs with lyrics about real human concerns ("The Spirit of Radio", "Freewill"). With the first track on Moving Pictures, "Tom Sawyer", it is immediately clear that Rush perfected that latter phase in their development. It is still their most popular song, and the fact that it is also undeniably one of their best songs (i.e. at the top of both the artistic and the commercial totem pole at the same time) is a testament to how well Rush's sharpest instincts coincided with the "spirit of the radio" at this time.

Although Moving Pictures is their finest work, many of their numerous subsequent albums are quite fine too - first fully exploring synthesizers in the 80s without sounding foolish, then moving back to a guitar focus just in time for the 90s. Their final album, 2012's Clockwork Angels, was a fitting capper to their career, and I'm glad I got to see the tour. 

The Police - Ghost in the Machine (1981)

Dan:

I was convinced to buy Ghost in the Machine after reading a comment by Pat Metheny to the effect that this was the kind of rock music he enjoyed. Another Miami friend pointed out that Ghost in the Machine used reggae rhythms on certain songs. I heard each of these testimonials come to life when I played the album for the first time. It remains my favorite recording by The Police.

I'm unsure why the Police enjoyed almost universal popularity from the very beginning of their recording career. They seemed to offer a new take on New Wave by staying inside certain self-imposed guardrails of pop-rock while sounding completely unique. That's not an easy position to create and maintain, until they became acknowledged hit-makers and other bands began to copy them. I imagine that the charismatic Sting had a lot to do with the band's quick acceptance, as well as their undeniably memorable songs. 

The Police always seemed intent on sending social messages in their songs, for example, "Driven to Tears" and "When the World is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around." Those songs typically mingle with messages about love and loneliness ("So Lonely," "Message in a Bottle"). Romantic obsession is also a persistent theme, as in "Roxanne," "Don't Stand So Close to Me," and "Can't Stand Losing You." Regardless of message, The Police delivered a continuing run of hit songs beginning in 1978.

Ghost in the Machine is full of stunning songs. The condemnation of the material society, "Spirits in the Material World," is buoyed by the chugging reggae beat, but no answers to modern dilemmas are given. The mega-hit single "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" follows and is such a well-constructed tune, it's easy to forget (or ignore) what it's about:

I resolved to call her up

A thousand times a day

And ask her if she'll marry me

Some old-fashioned way

But my silent fears have gripped me

Long before I reach the phone

Long before my tongue has tripped me

Must I always be alone.

The album seemingly turns more hopeful with the thought of an "Invisible Sun," but in the end it's just a fantasy.

There has to be an invisible sun

It gives its heat to everyone

There has to be an invisible sun

That gives us hope when the whole day's done

Two of my favorite Police songs come at the end of Ghost in the Machine. "Secret Journey" is about meeting a holy man who offers wisdom to resolve the challenges of life in the material world. 

You will see light in the darkness

You will make some sense of this

And when you've made your secret journey

You will find the love you miss

The finale, "Darkness," is abjectly depressing. "I wish I never woke up this morning / life was easy when it was boring." It's a sobering end to the search for hope in a world out of control, at least for those who see no other way out. It's remarkable that any popular band could entertain such dark topics without spoiling it by offering a saccharine remedy (such as those offered by The Moody Blues). 

The follow up, Synchronicity (1983), was almost as grim. It featured perhaps the band's best single "Every Breath You Take," which took the obsession theme to an even higher level. I also love "Synchronicity II," with its frightening scenario of a dysfunctional family driven to madness while "many miles away" a mysterious creature crawls from a loch to threaten a cottage on the shore. I also had a single of "Murder by Numbers" which was the B-side of "Every Breath You Take" and was left off the Synchronicity LP but included on the CD and cassette version, and every released version since. Who would be so bold to sing about mass killings today?

You have to give The Police credit for scoring hits with material this far from the pop mainstream. 

Steve:

At the time of Ghost in the Machine, the Police were my favorite band in the world.  Before its release, I was vaguely familiar with "Don't Stand So Close to Me" from their prior album, but I had not heard a full album before. I remember hearing "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" on the radio and didn't know it was by the Police - I thought it was calypso music. Soon, the album was a huge part of my life (Dan bought it) and several of my friends were into the Police as well. Little did I know that the band's already considerable popularity would explode a couple of years later with Synchronicity.  

In retrospect, Ghost in the Machine stands out as The Police's most experimental album. Synthesizers and horns are everywhere. I believe Sting even plays saxophone here and there, taking after another early 80s experimental pop star, David Bowie. "Spirits in the Material World" was written on a cheap Casio keyboard, and the keyboard riff practically drowns out guitarist Andy Summers, which is unfortunate, but it is a unique sound.  

Summers, of course, was already expert at making unusual sounds with his guitar, and I definitely see a similarity between the synth-like chords in "Secret Journey" and some of the sounds on Summers' album with Robert Fripp from the following year, I Advance Masked (1982). I bought that album when it came out and was inadvertently introduced to the world of Robert Fripp and King Crimson through it. Many years later, I encountered Summers once again unexpectedly as a member of Eric Burdon and the Animals on their 1968 album Love Is. Quite a journeyman, that Andy Summers.

Back to Ghost in the Machine. My favorite tracks on the album include the minor hit "Invisible Sun" and the Stewart Copeland-penned closer "Darkness". Both songs sport a dark atmosphere and a resigned sadness that fits the cold and detached mood of the black album cover with its computerized display (which cleverly renders each of the band members' heads, a graphic concept common to each of their last three albums). The Police were clearly shooting for art-rock respectability here - the result was possibly their least pop-oriented album yet, which nonetheless became a huge commercial hit.