CHRONICLES

Those Canadians with any sort of knowledge on te subject know that when MuchMusic made it's debut on the tube the first video they ever played was Rush's Closer to The Heart. Quite an honor, I must say, paying tribute to one of Canada's most successful bands like that. Off that subject what we have here is a collection of music videos from Rush's early days ranging from A Farewell to Kings (1977) to Hold Your Fire (1988). The videos range in everything from simple performances to Rush's attempt at making mainstream videos. While some of these are quite good, others come off as simply strange or even corny, but hey, this is the 80s! Anything goes!

While some songs such as Closer To The Heart and The Trees chose to simply put Rush on a stage and perform some others actually attempt some MTV style stuff. This sometimes works fairly well, as seen in the Dire Straits-esque video for Big Money (which still comes off as corny, but eh), and the actually very well done Lock and Key and Mystic Rythems (which is actually a kind of freaky video). Others such as Distant Early Warning come off as poor 80s videos. They're fun to watch almost because they're fairly laughable! Time Stand Still is likely the best example of this, with the band members flying around the screen and dancing in their Miami Vice suits while growing and shrinking and, well, flying around. Good times. Subdivisions is likely the best of the MTV videos as it is fairly simple. Some of us nerds may feel this one hits a bit too at home, actually!

The two hidden videos are fairly well done and kind of avant gard/sci-fi-ish, and both fit into the MTV category. They're both from the Grace under Pressure album, which, if you count, means that half the album has videos to it! back on track now, the remaining videos are all concert footage or live performances and therefore are actually the ones most worth watching. However, these days most of the performances can be found on the recently re-released concert videos in Replay x3. So, in the end this is really just a package for those who really want to see some music videos by a great rock band and don't mind having a laugh now and again.

Painfully absent, however, is all the videos past Hold Your Fire! The band has many from their albums Presto, Roll The Bones, Counterparts and T4E, most of which are actually very very high quality! Being that this package was reissued in 2001 you'd think that they would have updated the track listing. But apparently not. Some videos missing from this package would more than redeem for the funny 80s videos. Driven, Half The World, Stick it Out, The Pass... all these videos are quite well done, and yet not available on Dvd! Why? I beseech thee! Fans who want to see these videos can luckily check them out on youTube, but for some of us that's just not good enough.

Okay, score time.

This particular compilation receives 2 stars for the simple fact that it's not likely that anyone but Rush fans will really enjoy this one. You Rush fans out there, though... you will enjoy it. The rating on this would be much higher too if Rush's good, post eighties, videos were available. Hopefully the record label sees fit to release another compilation that finishes off what this one started now that Far Cry has gotten itself a video. Recommended to fans of Rush and 80s music videos.

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