This might already be a thread so if it is, feel free to delete this one.
But pretty much anyone who knows anything about Rush know that their career can be split up into 5 distinct sectors.
1 The early Led Zeppelin and Cream inspired era Rush/Fly By Night/Caress of Steel/2112 and All the World's a Stage
2. The difinitive Rush sound that helped define Progressive Rock (along with Yes amd others) Farewell/Hemespheres/Waves/Moving Pictures and Exit...
3. The synthy 80's era Signals/Grace/Windows/Fire and Show of Hands
4. Return to a more "balls to the wall" sound Presto/Bones/Counterparts/Echo and Different Stages
5. Rebirth with Vapor Trails/Feedback/Snakes/Clockwork Angels and all the live albums and remixes in between.
To me, Sector 1 marked the landmarks that made up Rush and I acknowledge them as important albums, but to me Secor 2 is The Difinitive Rush era. It was the perfect blend of prog and hard rock and every song just shone with great musicianship and lyrics. Sector 3 experimented with more melodic driven songs and some of them work really well! Grace under Pressure would be the only miss with me though. The whole album feels a bit dark for my taste. Sector 4 I didn't quite get, half the songs are forgettable and I really didn't connect with Neil's lyrics around this time.
Vapor Trails was when I got introduced to Rush so thats a very important album to me. Feedback was okay. I feel they screwed up Summertime Blues and A Heart full of Soul sounds so much better on R30 but it still has 7 and 7 is and The Seeker but other than that it was okay. Snakes and Arrows was another dark heavy album but the Lyrics are really great and the instrumentals are really tastey. Faithless relates to me so much and I use it when I try to explain my views on religion.
Clockwork Angels I felt was a return to the 2 sector and I felt it was really good! I just wish they didnt milk it so much. An okay novel that turned into an okay graphic novel series and the book got an okay sequel and... Okay guys, thats enough clockwork angels... I'll stick with the album. I was afraid Dream Theater was going to do this with their Astonishing stuff too. God I hope not.
And releasing a new 3CD length album every single tour felt like it was getting too much. True I do love the exciting moments that are special for that tour, but there are so many songs that get overburned that I was starting to find it hard to find a reason to buy the new albums, but Clockwork Angels tour added the strings, R40 reintroduced Hemispheres, and so on. I keep buying them for Neils drum solos

So what is your favorite sector of Rush? Which would you recommend to a friend as their first taste of Rush?