a good selection for the new fan

if you like the Rush songs you hear on the radio, they are all here. This really is all of their best stuff, no question about it. but their two instrumental tracks from this period, "la villa strangiato" and "yyz" are missing! this is big mistake, because Rush is better at instrumentals than anything else. Also, there is no track representation from their 90's period. I could do without their biggest hit "new world man" (which is a pretty weak song of theirs) but of course it was included, since it was a "hit" by definition.

overall, for the new fan I strongly suggest this cd, and if you like everything you should get Different Stages, which has many great songs that are played well.

Sawyer And Co.

Rush is one of the 70's and 80's rock which is almost forgotten. They have two classic albums "Permanent Waves" and "Moving Pictures" they are famous mostly for. At least "Moving Pictures" is something for my taste. There's three songs from it in this collection "Limelight", "Tom Sawyer", and "Red Barchetta" and they all are great choices. This collection have a good scene to all the Rush albums apart from "Caress of Steel" from which there's no songs in this collection. There's two songs from "Permanent Waves" ("The Spirit of Radio", "Freewill"), three songs from "Moving Pictures", two from "Signals" ("Subdivisions", "New World Man"), two from "Hold Your Fire" ("Force Ten", "Time Stand Still") and one from other albums. I think there's great songs like "Fly by Night", "Tom Sawyer", "Working Man", "Time Stand Still", "The Spirit of Radio", "Limelight" etc. but there's also some songs that I cannot understand why they are so great ones: "The Big Money", "Closer to the Heart", "New World Man" are these kinds of. Although "New World Man" is their biggest hit, I think there's many other songs that are much better than it but are not in this collection. I think their style has changed only a little between the years 1974 and 1987...they didn't start to make commecial music although "Moving Pictures" was such a success. I think a good collection but could have been much better...they have much better songs.

Stars: Tom Sawyer, Limelight, Fly by Night

The Greatest Hits of a Band Long Gone...

Never has a band been more helter-skelter than Rush. From Heavy Metal to solid Prgressive, to Techno-Pop to New Age Jazz- Fun and even RAP- all surrounded by the ever-present Canadian trio of Lee, Lifeson and Peart- Rush was, and IS an enigma. I found Rush in 1977 during my prog years with YES. Hooked immediately, one can see why this album is a road-travelling must-have. It doesn't contain the longer cuts, but instead- the more ear-friendly cuts up to the band's demise after "Hold Your Fire."

This is it, the quintessential RUSH without the immersion into self indulgence- and prior to the band's dive into complete obscurity with a collection of non-stop disasterous albums that border on unlistenable.

Even for older fans, this is a great CD to keep from mixing a CD-R of faves. New fans will find some of this material unbelievable. ("Working Man" for example, in it's Led Zep glory!)

It is now 2005 and it has been awhile since I said farewell to Rush, way back in 1989. Hearing "The Spirit of Radio" still sends shivers down my spine from a band that should have been much much more- but got caught in it's own illusion of itself. You can blame that on Neil Peart himself. Give it a listen, or better still, buy the albums up to 1987. To go beyond that- would be listening to aliens who abducted Rush. Either that, or they just got old.