The Moving Pictures Tour started 12 days after the album's release, from February 19th, 1981 to July 5th. They only toured North America during these five months, but they would hit Europe on the next tour in support of their 2nd live album,
Exit...Stage Left.
They toured with fewer opening bands, at least that I am aware of. According to Eric at the Power Windows website, they opened with FM, Max Webster, and Ian Hunter.
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Linked just below is the well-known Chicago audience bootleg from this tour, which has gone through many versions, but this is the "Definitive Edition" of the show. It's one of the fairly good and complete audience bootlegs from this tour, and any early tour for that matter.
www.nickeh.com/botm/rush1981-03-01.rarRush - Moving Pictures Tour - 114:47
(Live In Montreal, QC on 3/24/81)
(Exit...Stage Left Album/Video Source)
Disc 1 - 61:02
1. 2112 Overture^ 4:31
2. The Temples of Syrinx^ 2:11
3. Freewill 5:36
4. Limelight 4:32
5. Hemispheres: I. Prelude* 4:21
6. Beneath, Between And Behind* 2:51
7. The Camera Eye* 10:57
8. YYZ 2:21
9. Drum Solo 3:12
10. YYZ (Continued) 2:05
11. Broon's Bane 1:37
12. The Trees 4:33
13. Xanadu 12:15
Disc 2 - 54:05
14. The Spirit Of Radio 5:03
15. Red Barchetta 6:37
16. Closer To The Heart 3:28
17. Tom Sawyer 4:44
18. Vital Signs 5:19
19. Natural Science* 7:58
20. Working Man* 1:17
21. Hemispheres: IV. Armageddon* 0:54
22. By-Tor & The Snow Dog 4:05
23. In the End 1:42
24. In The Mood 1:33
25. 2112: VII. Grand Finale 2:09
26. La Villa Strangiato 9:16
^ - Live In Edmonton, AB on 6/25/81
2112 Deluxe Edition Bonus Tracks
* - Live In Chicago, IL on 3/1/81
The Definitive Edition - AUD
New Peak Amp for both sources = -3.0
28:18 - Non-SB Sourced
Like with the PEW Tour show I did, I knew I needed to start with the ESL CD for the MP Tour tracks, and then I added the ESL Video tracks, and that gave me a good chunk of the show in great quality! The rest of the tracks I pulled from the Chicago show, which include the 18-minute chunk of "Hemispheres: Prelude", "Beneath, Between And Behind", "The Camera Eye" in the first half, and the 10 minute chunk of "Natural Science", "Working Man" snippet and "By-Tor" in the second half.
Originally, I used the Chicago show for the opening "2112" bit, but then the
2112 Deluxe Edition was released and they added tracks from the Moving Pictures Tour on to it, so it was a perfect excuse to add them to the beginning to give the show a more soundboard-quality sound. And so, with less than 23% of this compilation in audience-quality, I was greatly satisfied!
As for the show itself, those with the ESL CD and Video will know how great those tracks are. Obviously, I can't get enough of the "Broon's Bane/The Trees/Xanadu" chunk of songs, one of my favorite runs of songs on this tour. And then there's the outro-medley that starts with "Working Man" (now degraded down to a minute-long snippet), segueing into an odd section of "Hemispheres", then going in to a chunk of "By-Tor" (no longer preceding "Xanadu"). The main show ends with "2112: VII. Grand Finale", in a very fitting fashion as it started with the first two parts. If they wanted to be REALLY clever, they would have thrown in "Discovery/Presentation" somewhere in the middle of the show!". And the encore remains to be "La Villa Strangiato" as leftover from the previous tour.
Overall, it's a good tour, but not as great as the previous two. We do get 6/7 new songs from the new album, including the their 'last epic' in "The Camera Eye", and we're treated to truncated versions of songs, snippets, but it seems like they really tried to squeeze in a lot but shortening things. The previous tour had 20 songs/tracks on it, but this one has 26. It was here that the band started rotating out their epics in favor of shorter songs, and with longer sets, they were able to fit in more songs as the years would go on.
-Marc.