nicmos:
I remember my first listen to Counterparts on its release day. When the bridge came in Animate and that bass came to the front, I had a huge smile on my face. Probably the best moment on that whole album if you ask me.
I woke up wanting to hear Animate myself this morning so I popped in the Toronto show and basked in a 110 minute Counterparts Tour extravaganza.
KevShmev:
On another note, after finally seeing the R30 Blu-ray, which has the entire concert (unlike the DVD), I can safely say that it is easily the 2nd best Rush live concert release since their hiatus (behind only Rio). I used to think S&A live was better, but the crowd and band are way more energetic on R30, which results in a far greater overall performance. For whatever reason, Alex looks stoic and bored out of his mind for a lot of S&A Live, while on R30, he is smiling non-stop, moving around a lot and generally having a blast.
I know the set list of the S&A tour was majorly awesome for most people, including myself, but a superior set list alone cannot make one concert better than another. And I wouldn't even say that the S&A set list was better than R30, but S&A brought back a bunch of songs either never played before or not played in a long time, while R30 repeated a lot of the VT tour set list, but so what? Any concert video that has 2112, La Villa Strangiato, By-Tor and the Snow Dog and Xanadu all played in succession is .
That's odd. I think R30 is the worst concert DVD in the last 12 years. My reasoning for this is I think their performances, while solid, aren't as amazing as the other live releases during that time period.
Now, I don't have the blu-ray (Which I suppose I'll get eventually) so whatever I don't have (Is it 6 songs?) may be up to snuff.
But aside from stellar performances of Earthshine, Red Barchetta, Roll The Bones, One Little Victory (from the Working Men set) Between The Wheels, and Overture/Temples/Xanadu, I don't they they consistently reach the high level that we've become used to over the last 12 years. (and even since the Test For Echo Tour.)
Now worst in this case isn't bad, I just don't think the performance level is as good as the others although the fun is certainly there.
Hmm, I wonder which album will get the 5.1 treatment is they keep with the format they used for the other sectors. Shouldn't be Snakes as it already has one, so I would think either Roll the Bones or Test for Echo would be most improved by the 5.1/
Considering it's an Atlantic release and not Mercury, I don't think it'll match or be similar to the Mercury Sectors box sets. I'm expecting the Atlantic Years box set to be released one of two ways:
-1 HUGE box set with all 7 albums
-2 Box sets that go Presto-Test For Echo, and then VT-FB-S&A.
It's unusual considering, unlike the Sectors sets, the Atlantic Years one does not (yet) include Different Stages. Then again, the other box sets' live albums all ended with single-disc live albums where as DS is a 3-disc set, so I can see why they wouldn't include it. It's also a fairly recent live album (in terms of being from the last 20 years).
Honestly, if they wanted to really sell the box set, they wouldn't include Feedback and Snakes & Arrows. They're really recent and I don't think they need a physical remaster release.
Just release a 5-disc box set from the Atlantic Years of Presto-to-Vapor Trails.
-Marc.
I'm waiting for the CD.
I don't think Atlantic is going to invest too much as far as elaborate boxed sets. It would be nice if they did. Snakes and Arrows will probably just be repackaged as that was already done is they are going to follow the Sectors blueprint. (as they kind of did with the 2004 Altlantic remasters...although in true Warner-Elektra-Atlantic fashion, the artwork was subpar because they probably junked it.)
Admittedly they did do some nice work on Reptrospective 3 (and the art for Working Men was nice too).
As an aside, Different Stages is out of print for whatever reason and Roll The Bones and Counterparts have already been released on Audio Fidelity Gold disc (Roll The Bones is an improvement and I still can't make up my mind about Counterparts) with an Audio Fidelity Presto release on the way.