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Steve Goldberg's avatar

One of my favorite Rush tunes. I'm kind of surprised they never released all their instrumentals as an album. I'm going to create a playlist of them and see how I might order the tracks! I can see this one being used in a movie for sure.

Lara, you are in Canada, right? I wish I woke up to this song every morning! If I actually used an alarm, I'd set it to this song for sure.

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Lara's avatar

No, I'm in the U.S.! I grew up in the DC area, and this was played on my favorite radio station, DC101. Even hearing it now is better than an alarm clock :)

Please do share when you create that playlist! I'd love to listen to it too

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Steve Goldberg's avatar

As I suspected, someone else on Spotify beat me to it. Here you go.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5tCE8ASAC3lCuWLQvPX85T?si=805ac1e338d74b39

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Lara's avatar

What a cool playlist! I see a few drum solos even made the mix. I'd still be interested in seeing YOUR curated take though.

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Steve Goldberg's avatar

Will do - I was also thinking of writing (not for EW&SL, but maybe as a guest post for you?) a piece about red Rush songs. I was listening to "Red Lenses" recently for the first time in a long while and marveling at how adventurous it is. How is sounds unlike any other tune in the Rush catalog. And then I remembered "Red Sector A" and "Red Barchetta" of course. I was sure there was another red song (or two, but it ended up being only one), and when I looked it up, I found "Red Tide." Your recent attention to Presto had me replaying that album, giving us our last "red" song. I suppose there's probably songs about Russia and/or China, but I'll keep it to those 4 songs.

I haven't thought deeply about any of this, but it seemed a fun idea to pursue.

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Lara's avatar

YES! I would love to have your voice on this blog!!! Let's take it to DMs. :)

What a fantastic idea for a post, too. Red Lenses, Red Barchetta, Red Sector A, Red Tide all have red in the title, of course. But red is also a theme in "The Anarchist" (the scarlet mist as a malevolent force); the "Red Star" is the symbol of the Priests of Syrinx; there's obviously blood in "Bastille Day"; and there's that beautiful line, "crimson misty memory," from "Fountain of Lamneth", the part where the narrator's drinking away his pain... I'm sure there are some other red images/allusions elsewhere, particularly in the Cold War era tunes.

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Jackie Ralston's avatar

It's been far too long since I've listened to this banging instrumental.

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