Lev Grossman's final installment of his Magicians trilogy (not sure if that'll come out this year or next year though).

@avclub-85d8ce590ad8981ca2c8286f79f59954:disqus The Tool album?

Um, yes, I'd probably say that "I Think I'm Going Bald" is worse than "Alien Shore", but neither is half as bad as "Tai Shan".

Yeah, "Countdown" is pretty much pointless.

p/g is a fantastic album.  It's nearly on par with Signals imo.  "Distant Early Warning", "Red Sector A", and "Between the Wheels" are all awesome.  And "Afterimage" and "The Enemy Within" are both way underrated.  The bass on "The Enemy Within" is just so good.

Seriously, Peart hasn't been remotely Randian since Hemispheres.

Actually, "2112" is the only song on the album that tells a continuous story.  The rest of the songs are unrelated.

Or, maybe some people don't feel like listening to 19 studio albums in chronological order, and in fact find their discography daunting as newcomers to Rush, and thus would appreciate some advice on which albums to start with and which to avoid at first.  Nothing wrong with that.

Well, they named a song ("Anthem") after an Rand novel, and in the liner notes of "2112" Peart mentions that the song's lyrics were inspired by Rand, and "The Trees" is pretty blatantly Randian.  They're all still good songs, but all very obviously inspired by Randian philosophy.

Dream Theater is basically a bunch of Rush fans who think that the epitome of great music is playing the most technically demanding thing possible, and who probably hate every Rush album post-Signals.

This is the first time in a long time that this meme has actually made some sense.

But the people that like Nickelback are generally into really not-culty bands.  Like really generic stuff, like whatever stale, over-produced, singer-sounds-just-like-every-other-post-post-post-post-post-grunge-singer-out-there song is probably playing on your local modern rock station right this very moment.  Whereas…

But I thought Geddy and Alex were By-Tor and the Snow Dog, at least according to the liner notes of Fly By Night?

I thought they were just a theory of the scientists in the pockets of the liberal lamestream media, like evolution, or climate change, or gravity.

At the first Rush concert I went to, there were these two women in their 50s to my immediate left.  I remember one of them saying to the other before the concert:  "I hope they play "The Trees"'.

1.  Permanent Waves
2.  A Farewell to Kings
3.  Moving Pictures
4.  2112
5.  Hemispheres
6.  Signals
7.  Grace Under Pressure
8.  Clockwork Angels
9.  Snakes & Arrows
10.  Fly By Night
11.  Caress of Steel
12.  Feedback
13.  Roll the Bones
14.  Rush
15.  Vapor Trails
16.  Counterparts
17.  Power Windows
18.  Presto
19.  Hold Your Fire
20…

Feedback is a solid album.  Their covers of "Heart Full of Soul", "The Seeker", "Crossroads", and "Summertime Blues" give it more songs worthy of listening to than Vapor Trails, at least.

It's a decent first attempt at an epic nearly 20 minute song, that laid the foundation for superior epic works like "2112", "Xanadu", "Cygnus Book II", and "Natural Science".  It's not as good as "By-Tor and the Snow Dog" (which, I realize is on Fly By Night, but was their first truly proggy song) or "The…

Yeah, R30 is actually probably a great live album to introduce someone to a lot of their stuff from across all eras of Rush.  It sounds fantastic, and Geddy Lee's voice is a shitton more accessible on the older stuff than it was on the studio versions of those songs.

Have you been to a show on their latest tour?  Peart's drum solo was probably the only drum solo I've ever not been bored by the excesses of, including Peart's solos from previous tours.