Rush - All The World's A Stage

Strangely, my first exposure to Rush also came during my first exposure to the opposite sex. It was the fall of the eighth grade when myself and another classmate found ourselves in the company of two other eighth grade girls with no parental supervision.
One of the girls invited us over to her house while her parents went out to watch a high school football game. The four of us were supposed to be there too, but the very idea of unsupervised liaisons was, obviously, more enticing than football.
The girls had already invaded the liquor cabinet by the time we arrived, so any notion of heavy petting was quickly reduced as both of them had trouble standing upright, let alone removing undergarments.
But believe me, I tried my best. On the unmade bed of the host’s older brother (who happened to be playing in the football game we should have been at), every advance was met with her unfocused ramblings and drunken stalling.
As she excused herself to use the restroom, I understood that I wouldn’t be losing my virginity on that evening. This frustrated me. I noticed her brother’s stereo next to the bed and my eyes glanced over some of his collection. In a fit of selfish revenge, I took his 8-track of Rush’s All The World’s A Stage and put it in the pocket of my blue jean jacket.
A few months later, I was fortunate enough to have another opportunity present itself, this time in my own bedroom. During the time that I had A.T.W.A.S., I played it continually. Rush’s Permanent Waves was the current album, but I was content with this double-live overview of the band’s first four albums. Since the album’s rightful owner was actually a high school senior who also happened to be a varsity football player, I immediately associated A.T.W.A.S. with coolness. In an act that now seems completely stupid, I instinctively put in that album on my stereo as we prepared to make out on my twin bed. And even though the voice of Geddy Lee didn’t get me any closer to losing my virginity, I did end up with a prominent hickey that I would proudly display at middle school until it healed four days later.
If you’ve ever heard All The World’s A Stage, you’ll understand that it’s by no means a “make out” album. In fact, it’s a fairly strange anomaly in the Rush arsenal: coming after their first four studio albums, it’s the sound of a young band finding some headway in terms of sales while still discovering what kind of band they ultimately want to be.
The recording is from the tour that supported 2112, Rush’s first foray into conceptual themes. That album is adequately represented here, as Geddy announces “We’d like to perform for you side one of our latest album.” before the power trio breaks into a five-part suite of 2112.
It also includes substantial workout of “By-Tor And The Snow Dog” (originally on Fly By Night) Rush’s first attempt at tip-toeing into the progressive rock world of lengthy songs composed of smaller suites/parts/movements.
But the rest of the album is pretty much straight-ahead smart rockers (“Bastille Day,” “Fly By Night,” “Something For Nothing”), with a helping handful of straight-ahead dumb Zeppelin rockers (“Working Man,” “In The Mood,” “Finding My Way”) taken from their un-original debut. Sure, it had been done before (and done better) but it’s a fun album nonetheless.
Arguably, the best songs happen to be the softer ones (“Lakeside Park” and “In The End”) where the trio gets to show of their dynamics and melodics, two characteristics that they later exploited quite successfully after Peart ditched his pretentious epic lyrical phase for more streamlined A.O.R.-ready material.
Rush has suggested that their “routine” of following four or five studio efforts with a live album somehow signals an end to each phase of the band. While that looks good on paper and on the liner notes for the live albums, it isn’t always the case. When you consider live albums like Exit…Stage Left (where the songs sound exactly like the studio renditions) and A Show Of Hands (ditto), the band never really demonstrated much noteworthy change afterwards.
They did after A.T.W.A.S., which makes it such a pleasure and an anomaly at the same time. The performances rock and they aren’t perfect; there are flubbed notes, rushed tempos and even (gasp!) sounds of the band tuning in between songs. They never sounded like this again: a young and hungry band with an eye on where they were going while managing to work through their past material with impatient ferocity.
It may not be one of the best albums of all times, but for Rush, it may very well be their best live document ever.