Fun question:
On the six tours from 2002-2015, Rush played 86 of their 165 original songs from the studio albums (a handful or so in abbreviated form), but which five songs are you most surprised didn't make the cut on any of those tours?
Note: I don't mean what songs do you wish they would have (which should eliminate anyone saying The Necromancer or something like that
), but songs you think would have gotten played by them at some point, but for whatever reason they didn't.
I will go with:
Vapor Trail - seemed like one of the most natural and obvious songs to play from Vapor Trails, yet it never got played. If you had told me before the last tour that they were gonna play a song from it that they never had before, I would have bet good money on this one, not How It Is.
The Enemy Within - The short shelf life of this in the 80s doesn't surprise me, since they weren't doing "evening with..." tours yet, and you only had so much time in the set list, but this seemed like a no-brainer to come back at some point this century.
Nobody's Hero - When I first heard this song, I thought, "This will be one of those songs that they play on nearly every tour till they retire." Boy, was I wrong. After getting played at every show on the CP and TFE tours, it never saw the light of day again post-hiatus. I wonder if that first line being so lyrically jarring for a rock band was something they looked back with regret on.
Test for Echo - While I am happy it was never brought back - solid tune, but not one I ever needed or wanted to see again - I will admit to being shocked that it was a "one tour and done" song. Nearly every Track 1 from the studio albums got played a ton over the years (except for a couple from the 70s and Show Don't Tell), but this is the only one that got the "one tour and done" treatment.
In the Mood - Has not been played since the Presto tour, which really surprises me. Not that it's a noteworthy or great song or anything, but it's a simple, crowd-pleasing tune, that is easy to bust out in abbreviated form in a medley. I think once Working Man became their go-to song from the first album on the tours this century, this one never stood a chance.