Ultimate Rush Album with Mike Portnoy & John Petrucci (Liquid Tension Experiment) - The Prog Report

all right well hi everyone we are back with another prog report podcast and a very special one as you can see from our special guests below mr mike portnoy and john petrucci uh mike of course is a regular by now on the uh prague report uh but thanks for being back on mike and uh jeff bailey as always he's probably been on more times than me [Laughter] but uh yeah and uh well to have you guys together on this is really uh it's really cool and and uh probably when we started this podcast uh many many years ago um never would have anticipated that we'd have the two of you together on something like this so it's really special and very cool and uh and of course we are here to talk not only about our uh special topic that we have for the podcast but about the new liquid tension experiment uh album that uh is coming out on march 26 lte3 with uh jordan rudis in 2011 also and um i should give some insight i had the amazing privilege to uh interview you guys and the full band um back when you guys were recording in the studio and some of that footage may or may not be out by the time we air this podcast so uh that was amazing um but you know we want to give a little bit of background into the album um so just a quick sort of recap on on how it got together who's who started it let's start there you wanna go john uh yeah you could i was a hold out by the way that's that's john petrucci hey he's below me i don't know where where where he's being viewed in the square but my brady bunch oh yeah well if it's my camera that's recording it he'll be to your uh left or that way the other way that left yeah hello everybody yeah you could take it um well you know it's hard to really pinpoint who initiated it because we all have been wanting to do it for for years so i think it was on all of our minds uh i i think the simple answer is um i guess you know over the past couple of years uh i've been spending a lot of time with john and got to spend some time with jordan as well so the relationships were really starting to you know feel comfortable and good and and and and you know i i played on john's solo album and uh played with jordan on cruise to the edge so it really was at this point just kind of a matter of timing um and i think we all wanted to do it and once the pandemic it it gave us a window of opportunity because none of us were touring and we were all home and um i mean that's that's the short answer you know i think we all wanted to do it i think jordan and i kind of probably went to john and you know kind of had to nudge him and just see when when he'd be available and you know interested because he was dealing with his solo album yeah i remember you you made a really really funny comment you were like we were texting or something and you i said something i just have to finish this after i do the solo album or something what do you say like okay like so 15 years from now right all right so maybe 2030. yeah yeah those guys were texting back and forth and and uh talking about it a lot i mean it's come up so often in interviews you know for forever and ever when are you gonna do another will there be a liquid tension experiment you know reunion and uh we always said you know yeah eventually there's no plans but it would be nice and then finally you know no no more excuses like mike said with the pandemic nobody was on tour and it was just a matter of making it happen so um and thankfully and where i'm sitting right now is the dream theater studio we had this place so it was kind of like man just let's just do it here it's it's all set up so we didn't have to deal with any uh logistics in fact the drum kit that mike used on my solo album we just left here and uh yeah i used that same one for this album so sometimes that can get in the way like how we actually gonna make this happen especially during the pandemic like if we didn't have this studio i mean would it suck to do something remote or whatever that was right you know so everything came into you know fell into place very cool it's funny because i ended up using john john's drum set john has a kit and uh i just got asked by some german drum magazine a couple days ago they wanted my gear specs for the for the lte album and i was like i don't even know i don't have no idea it was just it was just like a hodgepodge of gear like john had some drums i brought some cymbals where there was some i think we had a tambourine like duct taped onto one of the stands and because it was the middle of the pandemic so we couldn't even get like tama or any companies to ship anything or send anything everything all the all the endorsement companies were shut down and the shipping you know the cartage companies were shut down so we just had to put together you know between what i had at my place and what john had at his place and the studio you know we just made it work it sounds great i mean you you got me there back when i was outfitting my studio at home yeah many years ago you got me that kid through tama and uh it's just been at my house and you know um i mean rain has had many band practices on there and we've recorded on it and stuff but it hasn't moved it's got a lot a lot of history on it now there's it's got the terminal velocity album and the lte three yeah i took a picture of it mike how about this it looks like yeah yeah so guys it i mean it's been what but whenever that process started it had been about 12 years since you had done the reunion tour with 22 years since you had you know actually recorded in the studio you know john what i mean mike talked about you know the relationships and the friendships were kind of in a good place what was it actually like playing with the guys you know for the first time in a very very long time i suppose from the perspective of someone who's been in a band for a a very very long time as well i i mean it was awesome on all levels you know we we had i mentioned the studio here my solo album was kind of the guinea pig album to work out the kinks and so we knew that it would the setting would be right and we were set up drums would sound great guitars would sound great so there was none of that going in so we can literally just get started and you know one of the first things we did is we just jammed and we had these long jams and it was like man i know we've said this and all the press releases and everything but it really was like no time had passed um and we just the chemistry of us playing together i mean obviously mike and i have tremendous history with dream theater and that chemistry doesn't go away it was just like fun to see each other you know keep in mind it was over the summer of 2020 you know full-on pandemic just to be able to do something creatively in the same room with other musicians um there was that there's the friendship mike and i haven't you know played together and written together in so long we've been hanging out and doing some fun things with the family but to do something musically creative together um was amazing as it was to do it with tony as well we all haven't seen tony in so long and you know it was literally like continuation of the last one he brought his espresso machine in as he always starts making espresso we start jamming joe martinez's you know keyboards and there's no paper and we're off to the races so it was amazing on on every level it really was a lot of fun um mike what do you think what do you think was the difference between uh mike portnoy 1998 who you know who last recorded and and mike portnoy 2020 who who came to the new album well my my hair was long again i and the beard was longer the hair is grayer um i think you know when we made those first two lte albums uh all those years ago it was the first time that any of us had stepped out of dream theater uh you know it was the first time that john and i had done anything other than dream theater and uh you know it was very early in our career i think we were when we made those first two albums it was after falling into infinity um so we you know we were still early in the dream theater um you know uh career and uh you know i i think we were at least i know i was a very different person back then i think uh you know i i think uh i was always a bit more controlling back then a little bit more you know i think i think i've mellowed out with age a little bit i i hope so at least and uh you know obviously making this album there's so much that has happened you know since we did those first two albums you know then after we did those first two albums jordan joined dream theater and there was like a 10-year window with jordan and and john and myself together in dream theater and all that we did over those years and all those albums and then then i left and and uh you know it's been 10 years since that so there's been everything that john's done john and jordan have done with dream theater without me and there's all the stuff i've done since dream theater so i mean there's just been so much history in those 22 years between albums um and but you know as far as a different personality i think you know i think the chemistry was the same i think john the way that john and i work together and also as well as with jordan and tony there's a great great musical chemistry a very easy quick camaraderie and a fast-paced way of writing uh together and that's still very much the same i mean that style and that chemistry is still there and kind of the same in 2020 i think we've just all grown up a lot more and not to mention personally as well you know when we made those first two albums uh john's kids were just born my kids were just born uh whereas now all of our kids are like in their 20s and out you know so there's just been so much since since then but i think the biggest difference is the the the uh the beard and the gray hair that's the biggest difference i think that'll go for john as well in terms of the beard yeah exactly it's uh it's a tremendous record um and the first singles out now passage of time and it's just right right the liquid tension kind of kind of vibe it's amazing um one thing i'm curious about now because you've recorded it and in many months ago by now is it different with um you know when you're working on a on a studio record with lyrics and you know things like that that's a bit more thought out um maybe that maybe you're more pleased at the time and and accepting of what that part is versus this kind of improv thing where many months later is it are you still wondering could i have done that better could i have changed it you know you know what i mean is it because you're working through that real fast right i don't i don't think so not not personally at least you know it one of the beauties and what makes liquid tension or liquid tension uh experiments so such a cool thing to to do to experience together is that it is fast moving and decisions are made really quick and you don't look back and that's what keeps the nature of this uh intact so you know i mean it's it's a bit of a combination of things there is improvisation and and we use those elements obviously and we kept we we actually you know have improvs uh that are that are included in the album as a bonus uh but a lot of it is composed as well so you know it's not like we're just like one take okay that's it right here um i guess there are certain parts of that you know that the duet between jordan and i is the first and only taking right after we wrote the song but there's a magic that you capture and even when we were writing and you know everything was mic'd up so mike was playing and if what he played while we were writing was good i believe you kept a lot of that right mike yeah yeah so i think that spontaneity and keeping it in that spirit you know is really super important with this project you know the last thing you want to do is overthink right and start to polish it too much and it loses the whole vibe you know it's instrumental music and there's a fun and loose and exciting thing to it so yeah no regrets on on my end no and it's like i said it's a it's a oh look at that it is right there no regrets tremendous record uh jeff any more questions uh on the album or yeah well i'm so i'm intrigued um obviously people will have heard the single and probably the other thing from the album that they might have heard is is rhapsody in blue because the live version of it came out um what made you decide to pluck that one out for this album well i thought that was one of the the real highlights of the uh the 2008 reunion shows that we did you know back then we we we kind of came up with this prague metal arrangement of rhapsody in blue which was a a song i always wanted to cover and then once we got together for those shows it was like well lte would be the perfect vehicle you know to tackle this song uh so we put that together we played it on those at those shows and for me it was one of the highlights of those shows because it was really uh just a really really unique version and when we got together to do this album uh i suggested why you know why don't we do a studio version of it just because you know uh not many people got to see those shows back then and and the cds and the live dvds that we put out were a very limited run uh so you know sure enough people could see it on youtube and stuff like that but it just felt like it would be nice to give it its proper day in the sun and really you know put it on the main album just to give it its proper justice and and uh because it really gets the lte treatment i mean it almost sounds like it could have been something that we wrote ourselves it fits perfectly at home with the rest of the album yeah i think and hats off to mike for uh suggesting that back in the day as a cover you know everybody knows that song but i never would have like thought oh let's do a cover of rhapsody in blue but you had the idea and our arrangement is our kind of like lte prague version and like mike said when you hear it in the context of the other songs just fits right in uh let's go ahead and move on to uh our fun little topic here so we have done a top five rush albums podcast many many years ago um which we did with uh jeff wagner who used to be my label uh buddy and um uh john wesley who was a good friend of niels uh and that's a great podcast so that you guys can check that out if you haven't yet but what we're gonna do today is try and pick the ultimate rush album by putting together our favorite tunes and see if we could come up with something interesting so uh we're each going to pick three tracks we'll go and run you know round robin kind of order and we'll end up with 12. so sort of uh a tough choice there to come with only 12 out of this so we'll see what we end up with um and if anything from the 80s or 90s makes it onto this thing um all right so uh why don't we start we'll give mike the opening track on the album um and you know i i think we should also point out we're we're not under any sort of rules here so weak anything goes and it doesn't need to be a greatest hits record tom sawyer may not make it who knows um no no limits to songs from certain albums all that kind of stuff so with that said mike why don't you have at it well this is a this is a tough task and and like you said like do you want it to be a greatest hits album or do you want to be a deep cuts album you know fan favorites um you know obviously if you're doing something like this you have to have like the obvious ones tom sawyer yyz blah blah spirit radio so i guess i'm gonna i'll i'll start it off but i'm gonna kind of see where this goes and what what you guys throw in there and then that'll kind of like there's certain ones i know i definitely want on there but i think maybe one one of you guys might pick them so i'm gonna have to tread carefully and we're not doing a sequence or is this in sequence am i like picking the opening track of the album or is it not as i thought it'd be fun for yeah i thought so the only real sequence that we can be sure about would be opening track and closing tracks so i thought it would be kind of cool to to try and pin that on somebody oh okay well the real way to do this with mike involved is do all 12 songs and let mike sleep on it and we need the whiteboard he could pull out the whiteboard and write them all out we'll come up with the perfect sequence and get back to us okay bye well we might do that let's see where it goes i like that i like that idea better i'm telling you this way there's no pressure on the order okay well yeah we'll put that we'll put the order together after let's do that that's fine all right well i i know the ones i definitely need to be in there but i'm going to hold off on those i'm going to i'm going to come out of the gates with a maybe a deeper cut just so i make sure it gets in the list right and uh oh god there's so many to choose from but i'm gonna go with uh a strange choice but man there's like three i'm touring with in my head but i'm to uh i'm going to go with biter and the snow dog oh man wow okay i for some reason i knew you were going to go there yeah i don't know why there's a few i'm toying with but that would be the earliest uh yeah i personally wouldn't i would my my favorite albums begin with fly by night because of neil obviously i love the first album as well but obviously as a drummer especially uh neil is was such an important ingredient so for me you know this would be the earliest track that i could throw out there that's my favorite track on the fly by night album uh it was kind of their first mini epic it was their first time touring with like sci-fi uh you know fictional lyrics i love uh the drum solos in the middle between all the breaks with the drum solos and everything it really kind of was a great introduction to neil and his style so there's so many reasons i love that song but uh i'm gonna throw that out there and i'm looking at my lit my master list here and there's so many i could have went with but just for the chronological sake of kicking it off i'll go with that one all right that's cool yeah i did that's i sort of thought you might come out of the gate with like 21 12 or something but that's you know yeah that's cool a big part of this game is kind of sitting back and waiting to see what you guys do too you know yeah well i'm curious all right jeff uh you did you did a great cover you were involved in the cover of that weren't you on the working man album mike as well by tour actually there's a funny story about that i'll quickly tell it but yeah actually whatever whatever list we end up coming up with here i think uh myself and john have probably covered almost all of these yeah probably between the working man album i did and my cygnus and the sea monsters tribute band i did and then all the dream theater covers we did i mean we did so many through the years i mean we're gonna end up covering most of the list but the quick story with the buy tour uh version we did on the working man album it was actually um billy sheen on bass and james labrie i think sang it as well uh but my old vinyl my old fly by night vinyl had a skip uh right after that there was um oh no no it was the very end of the song uh there's like they're doing those rhythms and my record my vinyl had a skip in it so i always was used to hearing a different rhythm because of the skip like it was at the end like dude like so i was used to that rhythm so when when we did our version on working man i actually put that rhythm into our version so uh rather than doing russia's originally intended ending of the song we did my my vinyl skipping version instead that's awesome did the prog fans write letters i mean i think i think they would you know it was probably the reason for social media so yeah but now they can talk about it yeah yeah that's cool all right jeff i'll let you go uh with your with number two great okay um yeah what can i say tricky um but but i have a list um i i'm gonna pick from my first choice red barchetta okay perfect obviously from moving pictures and i mean i think what it captures that's something i really like about rush probably kind of from that era forward is this combination of um the really brilliant match between the music and the lyrics and you know the the cinematic stuff you know you know music about being in an open car and you listen to it and that's what it feels like it doesn't need to tell you that that's completely what you know that that section feels like that you're driving you know you're on the road um and i also also read actually when i was just doing a bit of prep that that was i think it was the main track of that was a one take you know so oh wow that's very very cool um so yeah red barchetta is and actually we well we're recording us i think we're days away from the 40th anniversary of moving pictures so amazing good timing there as well which is that's amazing 40 years every year there's a new big anniversary for rush albums now right like which is wild and we're coming up speaking of which i just did a another round robin kind of podcast a few days ago with a bunch of other drummers specifically talking about moving pictures and uh charlie benante was part of it as well and he spent a little time talking about red barchetta and just like like you were saying jeff the lyrics about you know really puts you in a certain place in time uh you know being a young kid and being in the open air in the car but that first side of moving pictures those four tracks is just really the perfect album side tom sawyer red bar chatter yyz limelight i mean that you don't get a better album side than that yeah it's unbelievable yeah amazing uh okay god i'm i'm up wow all right so i'll go man i wasn't ready to be up so soon um okay so let's see my list is yeah it's pretty diverse it's all eras and i'm trying to decide if i want to go kind of later more modern rush or older um i'm gonna go with um all right just because i like this song and i like this part and i don't know where it's gonna come later but i'm gonna go uh subdivisions good one and uh that's just a song that i still never get sick of i think it's just so cool and lyrically just uh still amazing still pertinent to you know everyday life that you know i like the lyrics that started from moving pictures on a little bit better he was writing a bit more direct a bit more what was going on in the world that kind of stuff versus things like xander doing stuff which it's a whole different thing but um yeah i like love that track one of my all-time favorites subdivisions is uh that's mine and john's that's how we grew up like yeah you see that video for when they put out the video for subdivisions it could have been filmed at either of our high schools you know on long island and growing up in long island you know in 1981 82 83 i mean rush were our band even though they were canadian but as long islanders and suburban long island and being really into the way they played and being a young forming musician i mean that was our childhood and subdivisions was a rare example kind of like tom sawyer or spirit radio where even though it was a hit song and it was all over the radio it still had so much musicality to it it wasn't like a sellout track it was right even when they were able to scale down these songs to these radio hits there was still so much substance there and subdivisions is a great example of that yeah i love that synth solo it's just so memorable it's so perfect very cool all right john you want to go with your first pick yeah i mean i don't know if this is a faux pas but when mike does the order he can mix it around but i feel like sticking with that record the first i went to or the first live show i went to was rush on the signals tour so i was like yeah i think it was the same show i think yeah at the coliseum yep yeah so i was like 15 years old so all those records that came out you know signals um power windows grace under pressure hold your fire like that period of the 80s like i just have such vivid memories of going to rush concerts and being just like blown away by the whole experience um and you know we mentioned neil before and neil is my lyric writing you know hero and i just love always loved his approach and i love that he had this sort of positive approach when he picked topics and uh one of the songs that just blew me away whenever they played it live was countdown from signals and you know the fact that he wrote about this great moment in history of the space shuttle launch and everything and the way they did it with the uh the samples of all the you know nasa uh chatter and the countdown and mike remember seeing that live and it was just you felt like the whole place was going to lift off yeah um just just a brilliant brilliant song so i'm going very cool all right that is uh out of the box there a little bit so that's a great that was that was i think the other video they did for signals as well i mean for us as if you know as rush fans in 1982 or 83 you know you only had mtv so the only way you could see rush was if they were showing the subdivisions video the countdown video uh limelight tom sawyer and then that mtv concert so yeah countdown was one of the big ones that like i remember just watching that video over and over i i just love that i i just it you know because with the other records i was i didn't see them live you know i wasn't there to see uh hemispheres or any of that stuff so we started seeing them you know from signals on so those those memories are so vivid those first so it didn't bother you at that point that they shifted into like keyboard era and all that it was at all right in the middle of it yeah totally yeah that's cool all right mike back to you uh well well well so far i i i'm gonna go with another strange one i mean it's not strange if you're a rush fan you're gonna love this one but uh this is one of the more obscure ones that i always loved uh oh god i'm looking i'm looking at the ones i'm not picking knowing that's making me crazy all right i'm gonna go with uh jacob's ladder uh just to pick uh a deep cut that's always been a personal favorite um that i mean i love everything on the permanent waves album i think that probably is my favorite rush album and uh you know i mentioned earlier how moving pictures had the perfect side one but you could there's something to be said for the same with uh permanent waves side one being spirit of radio free will and jacob's ladder i mean it's just incredible jacob's ladder is a a deep cut like they didn't play it much they it was on the exit stage left album uh and then they kind of put it you know put it on the back burner for decades and then they brought it back at the very end i think the last tour i saw yeah i think it was busted out again and uh we we played it uh dream theater played we had this tradition uh back when when i was in the band anytime we played toronto we always put a one-off um rush cover in into the set and we did all these one-offs we did passage bangkok one year we did camera eye one year but one of the years we did jacob's ladder as well and uh the middle section the uh one two three four five one two three four five six i i remember it's five and six or six and seven i don't remember offhand but that little passage is one of the most difficult challenging drum parts of meals that i've ever had to learn it was really hard to get comfortable with that and uh so there's so many reasons why i love that song but uh i'll put it on this list because it's kind of like one of those forgotten classics and want to make sure it gets its uh it's yeah i think it's it's one of those sort of under underrated uh rush fan kind of deep cuts that everybody likes it seems like it comes up a lot when we do these things amazing i remember that cover and i remember playing it what what a great vibe that was and that was mulson amphitheater i guess yeah yeah really cool cool hey jeff you got a pic yeah no you see i i'm i'm torn between my my favorites and my choices on on the making of the album here because because there's there's lots from this era that i could pick that i think are really good but but i feel i should go early so um yeah i'm gonna go early um i'm gonna go 21 12. um be because i think it it probably for me it's it's the encapsulation of of kind of probably everything up to that point um in an epic track and you know if we're if we're prog report um type people to me it's you know to me it's up there with close to the edge um you know on those kind of epics except it's uh it's also got a story that goes through it and which kind of obviously things like yes lyrics didn't really have much of that um you know and the first time i heard that song was actually on the the bit of a vhs video of a show of hands and they played it and at that stage i was really i wasn't familiar with the early stuff and it was like what's this one and uh yeah i went and explored it and found it i think maybe in that video they only played like the first kind of two two parts or something like that um but went and heard this whole thing that's a story and it's the narrative and um obviously you know the the tuning of the guitar and like all the flamenco stuff even even the overture of that you know you know the quote of 1812 the 1812 overture in it the kind of nearly flamenco sort of style of the of the kind of rhythm just so much inventiveness and creativity throughout there that actually you know sounds you know it doesn't it doesn't really sound like anything else in kind of this thing that we call prague you know um and i think it's just simply a classic i had to be on the list so i'm glad you put it i was i was listening to it today again just to revisit it again and it always trips me out when he just starts tuning the guitar to put that in the middle of the song i wonder if the record company was like you want to take that part out and you're like no he's tuning the guitar we're leaving it in so many memories once again just you know drop the needle and just like totally just get into that album you know yeah what what memories and what an experience just and and like nothing else out there you know and you know we did that recording wise and everything it sounds really good still yeah that's what i think is the way they record it the instruments the the guitar sound everything sounds really solid still i think that was their first really great sounding album um and and you know they worked with terry brown through all those albums and then even later uh paul northfield john and i you know kind of always we're always tapped into the the rush you know sonic teams you know we work with paul northfield and terry brown and uh you know we uh hugh sime you know all the people that are in the rush camp we always uh you know strive to for that level of excellence they always had such a level of excellence but sonically i think 2112 uh farewell to kings hemispheres permanent waves moving pictures they all sonically just sound yeah so clean and great but the only missed opportunity with 2112 there was a missed opportunity the length should have been 21 minutes and 12 seconds oh man i mean that is that's that's a mic detail that if you were there you would have made it happen absolutely it was such a missed opportunity and you know you could have had alex tuning his guitar just a little longer a little shorter just to get to it that's really fun that would have been great yeah you're right man that is awesome um good i'm glad you picked that because that was that was gonna be one of my next choices so since she went all the way back i'm gonna go a lot forward and if there was one kind of 90s era song that i was going to put on it was going to be this one because i love this song so i'm going to go animate from counterparts just straight up rocker killer guitar riff love that just how the drums come in the beginning and i love his drumming on that song too it's just so solid and like in the pocket and everything is amazing um and i like that return to the guitar that they did on that album i i think that's a really under-rated album by them i really like the counterbalance yeah once again another example of uh somebody that worked on it that we wanted we ended up working with kevin shirley engineered that album i loved the one the one-two punch of animate and stick it out opening that album yeah so great yeah yeah amazing yeah stick it out that's that's a real dark heavy riff for them at that time which was you know surprising then right um and i think about it that was what 95 96 um to come out in the right in the middle of the grunge era with an album that sort of totally fit and they found a way to be on radio still and this that's an amazing thing back then yeah cool i thought good i'm glad you guys like that choice i wasn't sure about that one but i i wanted to make sure that was in there uh all right uh john all right i'm i'm going to uh i thought you're going to say you have to go uh i got a deli order arriving no i i was going to say i'm going to put on my guitar player hat uh because alex is such a tremendous tremendous influence on me in so many ways um just his style his sound his lead playing i mean even just from the first rush album like just those songs that went off on these ridiculous jams so going back to uh when i mentioned the first concert i ever went to being rush at nassau coliseum they played this one song that just like it as paul gilbert would say just melted my face and it never heard like a guitar player play in in in that way and it was when they did la vie estrangiato uh and it's like for a few reasons just again the amazing guitar playing in that song that whole middle section breakdown that they build up slowly and he kind of goes from these volume swells into bluesy notes and then by the end he's like ripping insane i'm getting the chills just remembering it um not only because of that because hemispheres is one of my favorite albums of all time um but also because you know rush had that instrumental side which was a huge influence on me on on mike on dream theater obviously we're talking about liquid tension experiment which is all instrumental so hearing rush you know play in all instrumental piece like that and and you know kind of knowing the funny story behind it i think it was based on alex's dreams or something and there's all these parts i mean it's just classic classic rush and prague with the parts and the themes and has a little bit of comedy in there and just killer killer stick playing where you really get to hear those three musicians and why we hold them in such high regard you know that's a great one yeah that had to be on here too that was one of the other ones that that we had to make sure we put on here good choice isn't it isn't it subtitled uh was it an exercise in self-indulgence wasn't that recorded in uh i don't know it was wales i was thinking where uh belfast where you are but it was actually whales i think whales yeah yeah that's right in in in wales rock rock field where uh bohemian rhapsody and stuff like that was recorded the other the thing funny i had it on my long list as well and the thing when i was thinking about it is you know there is that whole metal fusion and then there's these little bursts of kind of almost like you know cartoon music is supposed to be how i would describe it and that's very much a trait that you would also hear in in in liquid tension um jordan you know often the keyboard you have this those little bits as well you know so it's a it's a great angry parallel to what you guys do that that's you know their music was always seen as very very serious but that whole side of them that they would bring to uh the live shows and the videos they produce and everything is that they were hysterical i mean like the comic nature between them so you hear it come out in the music and you hear that playfulness it's really cool side that's one of my favorite neal quotes is he says uh people think we don't you know that we we take ourselves so too seriously but he says no it was the quote was something like we even take our comedy seriously right well the only the only time that i ever saw them live because they actually there was a long period of time with it well they certainly didn't come to ireland but even the uk um and obviously there was a period they didn't tour but it was that time machine uh tour that they did and like the comedy stuff in it is absolutely that you know they have all the different kind of eras that they go through and alex is this massive big fat kind of guy and even neil is i think he's like a sort of an irish kind of policeman or a new york policeman it is really really hilarious watching it yeah um where were we all right so you are uh we're on your last pick mike right yeah well i'm glad john picked lavia cause it i was being this is my last pick i was gonna throw la vie in there because it had to be on there but john did it so thank god for that and i guess i could pick something else now but yeah just final thought on the via string shadow for me this has to be on this list it's actually my personal favorite rush song of all it's my number one favorite rush song and to me it was always the ultimate uh you know bar you know they they rose the bar the bar of instrumental and technical playing and individual playing to such a level with that that was you know when i was in high school that was always the benchmark that was like you you strive to achieve and you had to know how to play love your estrangiato and sure enough you know they came out with yyz years later which became you know their more well-known instrumental but for me lavier was always the benchmark but okay so with that now in the officially in the mix i could pick something else um i guess there's so many i mean do i go with you know something like tom sawyer spirit of radio yyz it has to be in there or uh i picked one from from permanent waves i picked one from fly by night so i got i want to get a different album represented all right uh this has to be on the list if i didn't pick it i'm maybe one of you would have but now i'm freeing you guys up in case okay uh this has to be on the list xanadu i mean it's i think that's right yeah one of the greatest in their catalog it's just a perfect perfect song um this was uh you know their first album after 2112 when they came out with farewell the kings and uh you know uh xanadu and cygnus x1 were kind of like the mini epics on that album but to me xanadu was just pure perfection and uh even like uh you know they always kept that in the in the set list and and uh the last tour that i saw him uh both getty and alex came out with the double necks you know which they hadn't played side by side in all those years yes so classic and the intro with all neil's percussion and the wood blocks and everything and uh it's just one of those perfect perfect songs that absolutely has to be on this list yeah i agree that's one of the big prague epics yep um and neil's i i believe uh i'm not a a neil scholar like john probably is but i believe those lyrics are all about uh citizen kane i right and uh uh drink the milk of honeydew and graham con i think it's a lot of it is based on the movie citizen kane i i think yeah i don't want to get that info wrong so something like that well we'll have the people commenting on youtube right away letting us know you know what part of that we got right around he was referencing uh spongebob it's the spongebob does he dine on honeydew or maybe it's from the uh olivia newton-john movie you're right all right all right jeff you did it you did a cover of that quite on one of the reissues john didn't you yeah yeah we did we did uh dream theater did zanna do we recorded it um at on the road um you know it's sound checks and stuff and got that together for their 40th um for for that record and i i agree with mike just classic classic it's it's funny because like there are certain things that when you hear alex's guitar parts i don't know the way that the kind of chords you pick sometimes you're not exactly sure what it is you you think you know what it is and like you'll go along playing something wrong for years and years and years and i remember for that i just wanted to get this certain part right and i uh watched the live video probably one of the ones maybe did you reference it before mike with the what's the famous one where like the most famous live version of that well there's like two right like there's these videos i'm talking about one was like a little bit later where the filming was a little better and you can see his hands i remember trying to pick i finally picked out the way the chords were actually was he on the double neck for that because that was always visually that was the song where they both came out with the double necks yeah he was on the double neck there's one like i think there's like an earlier uh film of it where they're all um like in the kind of silky robe vibe it's on exit stage left i think there's a video without a later one yeah actually the exit stage left video i remember the first time i saw that was uh when mtv first started around 8182 they used to have this thing called mtv concerts every weekend and uh that one of the weekends they showed the exit stage left video and uh i videotaped it of course um and i ended up wearing out my vhs like home recorded just watching it over and over and over but actually talking about exit stage left if you're putting together the ultimate rush album i think that right there pretty good yeah yeah that is pretty much taken all of the classics from those four albums farewell to king's hemispheres permanent waves moving pictures and they're all there on that album so to me that's almost like the desert island rush album yeah yeah it was uh we've i've talked about this a few times in podcasts about how it wasn't you know it seems to me in that era it wasn't really cool that nobody really did greatest hits and so if you wanted to explore a band and find a selection of stuff you went for the live album and i remember you know it was the first genesis album i got was three sides live you know and kind of that was you know queen life killers was the first queen album i got because it happened yeah yeah so although rush had one of the best compilation albums that when they came up with the chronicles that was the one that we all got into that didn't know the earlier stuff and you know that kind of stuff chrono everybody had chronicles and that was just like if you weren't a rush fan that was sort of a gateway to getting into them so did a good one there uh jeff your last pick okay um so i think my first choice is red barchetta which i think is fairly safe pick 2112 and then you get some some early ins so i i'm gonna do my indulgence pick which might be my favorite rush song um and it's a marathon from par windows you know it's fun i i was gonna say that one that was on my list that's a great one i know it's on roy's list roy texted me roy texted me last night saying is marathon a great thought so long and i replied don't you dare don't you i think you know what can i say about it you know i again we often have this debate amongst the prog report guys where i i'm very into words and lyrics and i know that kind of some of the guys are more into the musical side of things like oh it's not you know isn't verse three of that great and they go there's words is there you know i think the thing about about about rush is just the sheer the mastery of of neil pierce lyrics and and that you know i mean it's a carp idea message really marathon is it's about you know you you know do all you can and just try not to burn out um doing it and you know this brilliant it's you know it's the metaphor it's the layers within it that i just really like plus musically it's amazing you know the ending where that kind of i mean i know it's a it's a kind of a synth sound but that kind of like angelic it's nearly like a melotron you know comes in you know it's just such a soundscape with the words um just on it's an unbeatable track for me yeah i agree no his bass playing on that song is insane that's the thing that's i mean he's just ripping in that in that song and then that chorus is just one of their best i mean it's just so catchy and anthemic and just really really good catchy incredible song i love i love the whole power windows album and i i have so many memories with john actually from that album because that was the album that came out uh it was the first rush album that came out after you and i met right we met at berkeley and we were both me you and john young as well were all such big big rush fans and rush fanatics but power windows was the album that came out when we were together at berkeley in fact i think the night we came up with the name majesty we were sleeping out for tickets for the power windows tour outside the berkeley performance center and we saw that tour together i think we saw i remember seeing it twice i think we saw it at worcester and uh also at the nassau coliseum i think yeah one one of the nights was marillion opening on their misplaced childhood album and the other time was the steve morse band opening so i have a lot of memories of that album with you john i mean to me that was like absolutely brings back so many memories of berkeley and then coming back to long island and i remember we listened to that album so much and loved uh peter collins production was so great on it and that's that's right in that sweet spot you know because what was that like that'd be 85 like in that zone yeah 85 86 i think yeah you know it's like and we were like 18 years old you know just at college like mike said that whole mid right in that sweet spot of the mid 80s was yeah you know that was like it was all about rush and maiden yeah sleeping out for concert tickets that's that's a great thing that doesn't happen anymore yeah that's great all right so i like that choice coming right after a few heavy hitters uh we had livia and then we had xanadu and now and then we had marathon so that's pretty good um all right so i'm gonna go back to um to to the moving pictures album since it is coming up on the fourth anniversary and we only picked one song from it um and we mentioned it before i guess i'll go ahead and mention yyz then um which i think also belongs on this list and another favorite of mine um and when you put it next to la vie estandiado like those are two instrumentals that are so completely different and they are both amazingly brilliant and you know yyz is a song where an entire audience of people will be singing along to it like it has lyrics i mean it's just so amazing how it's written um so yeah and i think that's that's that's a hit song for them for you know so we had to have one more off of moving pictures and i just i think like the rest of you probably didn't want to put tom sawyer so i'm going to go yyz nice yeah you guys do that one before right uh oh actually i think we did yyd well speaking of which i think we uh did that at berkeley i think it was one of the first majesty one of the first things we demoed on my uh on my four track recorders like one of the first recordings we ever did was uh a cover yyz right i mean that was that was you know the that was the gold standard exactly it's one of those those other like right of passage songs like you had you had to be able to play yyz you know as soon as if the drummer started going into that that happened you know if you didn't know it you're out yeah i thought that was like such a clever thing too to actually take uh morse code for the letters yyz which of course was the their their uh airport uh code or whatever but then to actually take the morse code and then write music to the morse code it was such a clever clever thing to do i know it it really was and it's like it's such a great example of their songwriting skills to take you know to create an instrumental piece of music that's kind of like structured as you know is its own salt like com comprehensive song where it has like almost verses and choruses and and themes and it's just so interesting the whole way and there's nothing about it that meanders or gets boring you know and and you wonder how how they thought of that you know it's just you listen to it now it's like man those are classic riffs and melodies and things unbelievable yep amazing cool uh okay john you get the last pick oh boy there's a lot of lots to choose from now there is a lot of juice from i you know i i kind of i started this whole thing talking about that the era that i'm i'm fondly familiar with even though there's all again the past stuff that's just so epic and you know we talked about neil and it's we all miss him and you know such a tragic loss and and when certain lyrics hit me that came from his perspective again of looking at life and just having this positive spin on it um one of the songs that comes to mind again i just remember myself watching this like live was a mission from hold your fire and just it just has such a positive vibe to it you know positive message it's just really heartfelt and you know i think the vocals are great on it i think it's a great song and it exemplifies like it kind of caps off you know that period for me because i guess that was it would be like towards the end of the 80s right at 87.88 something like that yeah yeah so and when was permanent waves like 80 or 80. first week of 1980 actually one of the very first albums of the 80s yeah so you know kind of starting there and then just capping off at that point um again brings back just unbelievable memories of being in a co in a venue you know just packed sold out and they always had just tremendous production you know with their uh lasers and and video and it was like like mike said it was something to uh to you know strive towards as professional as as people trying to make it and it was kind of like what would rush do you know and i remember watching mission it was just always such a moving song you know it just it really hit me and reached me and again uh just brilliant lyrical image imagery by uh the late great neil pierre nice yeah yeah i mean that's sort of a surprise pick too but great um we really covered uh a lot and we left out all the 2000s now i'm looking at my master list what is shocking here is what isn't on our final challenge that's right yeah i mean i'm looking here like natural science the trees uh hemispheres free will spirit of radio i mean passage to bangkok i mean uh it's just it's amazing it just just goes to show you how incredible their catalog is uh but yeah double album mike yeah totally all the ones that you mentioned were like those are the first things that came to mind you know yeah free will science the tree it's like man how could you yeah no you know what these things sort of when we do these these podcasts they just take a life of their own and they just go in one direction you look back and you go oh wow we didn't pick you know spirit of the radio so but that's fine my honorable mentions were uh red tide i love it uh distant early warning yeah yeah i think great how they incorporated the keyboards and stuff and that um and earlier anthem which again i think was like their first ever sort of jam um well that was their first that was your first time hearing neil was anthem because it opened up fly by night and uh yeah the the kind of the this sort of the dif the the shift even the in the lyrics you know where it kind of neil is doing this thing right from that very first you know i am the drummer i'm going to write lyrics about you know totalitarianism okay you know as compared to in the mood hey baby it's according to it right right it really shifted but yeah yeah other choices i had uh considering were analog kid uh bravado um and actually caravan from the the last record which i think is great um and natural science was another one so yeah but this is great so mike how do we put this in an order what do you think well i'm looking at this i mean to me the opening track it's it's either animate or subdivisions both of which opened up their respective albums uh although there would be something to be said for opening with 21 12 but no i would say open with uh animate i think was a great opener and then you follow that up with subdivisions as the second track then red barchetta and why redbarchette into yyz so you get those back to back as we know them back to back right uh then i always look when sequencing an album or a setlist i always look at the beginning and the end so that would be the beginning and i think towards the end i want to close with la via strangiato uh oh wait well you have yyz in 20 i'm gonna i may have to get back to you on this one yeah i mean i think the closers the obvious closers would be either la via or uh maybe closing with 21-12 which could be pretty climactic with the grand finale um i don't know it's tough and then everything in the middle is kind of like interchangeable although countdown should be towards the end as well it's a tough call it's a tough call it's the only podcast you get homework on yeah right exactly it's so funny when thinking about this like in my mind you know there's the period where i i started really getting into guitar you know i started when i was 12 by time i was 15 like i said signals came out so there's that whole period mike and i have been talking about from early 80s on but then like it's kind of splits for me if you go backwards it's like all that like amazing stuff from the first album up to permanent waves that's probably the more you know progressive and wild hemispheres natural science stuff you know that's more experimental but it's all to me it's all great it's all incredible yeah you know it's it's one of the amazing catalogs in for any any group really yeah because they change i mean they went through four decades and they changed all their different styles and everybody seems more or less okay with all of it yeah which is yeah they always stayed relevant always kept it interesting and you could always count when you went to a rush concert it was going to be an incredible experience was sold out you know i mean how many bands can do that you know and that was like with all these different stylistic changes happening in music it didn't really matter rush was on their own trajectory trajectory that's a hard word to say trajectory and uh and you know we all you think uh alex and getty will end up doing anything not not getting a drummer and doing rush but just like the two of them doing doing anything because alex sort of referred to maybe that happening recently yeah i saw heard that he said you know said that but who knows let's call him you got his uh you got the hotline right here one other thing we should say also is uh it's amazing that over this incredible career it was the just with the exception of the first album but starting in 1974 it was just the three of them and that was it no lineup changes it was literally the three of them for 40 years i mean how many bands go 40 years with the same lineup i i don't i don't know if any exist i think zz top might be the only one but if you say you two or the police or any any bands like that they also didn't have a 40-year span you know it was that is a long long run without a lineup change and you could look at any of our favorite bands or any of our bands you know like it just doesn't it doesn't happen look at um metallica maiden i mean sabbath none of them you know i think uh rush is one of the few exceptions where they've never had a lineup change for all those years i have one for it for a long career span that never changed liquid tension experiments but you could get away with that when you take 22 years off exactly that's how the police can claim that as well you know exactly that's true and without like john said without you know there's a lot of bands who you can go that was the really rubbish album you know the the you know the experiment that didn't work and there was there was there's nothing in russia at all that's true well great it's all great and we loved and i just their shows just kind of exemplified that because they would go from playing something super uh name like a super old i don't know maybe they play working man or something and then it would go into something from like the 90s and it just all worked i loved uh the last tour that they did the the 40th anniversary tour before they retired uh the set list was a rush fans what dream i mean really look up that set list and that to me was like the ultimate rush set list and they did it in backwards chronological order so it started with the newest stuff and uh and you know for those who saw the tour you know but their gear even changed so as they were going back in time the gear was shrinking or expanding depending on the era and it was just brilliant the way they did that you know had had the intermission and then the second half neil brought out his old kit and the way they did that and the whole show ended with them playing uh i guess it was either working man or in the mood you know from the first album in in and the background was like a high school auditorium and they were playing it's a really cool alex and getty combo lamps it was perfectly done it was a perfect perfect farewell from those guys amazing there's only one thing that rush did that i didn't like and that they would do ah i know what it is and mike knows what it is what is it mike uh i i'm trying to remember how the song goes it was uh i [ __ ] john always hated the rush medleys i always loved the rush medleys right but what was that what was the song we had [ __ ] hate when rush does medleys why won't they play the whole damn song yeah right and actually uh that was a big thing like we did a medley i think on the systematic cast or and we called it schmedley wilcox that was the name of the medley but i think that was um it was part of the lyrics and i [ __ ] hate when rush does medleys yeah right and the lines and they just said uh i wish they did shmedley medley instead or something like that exactly yeah but i always loved that see i always thought that was a great really cool creative outlet and a way for them to do snippets of like by tour or 2012 and you know get them in there and they they were very creative with it they were they were really creative and and i'm like half joking but i remember being like watching the show like play the whole song i wanted to hear it it would get interrupted by another one but they were ahead of time with the shrinking uh attention span right but then you guys ended up doing medleys also later uh you know well we did but i'm saying that was always a thing like john was always like man i hate to admit i hate one i [ __ ] hate when rush does medleys that was the running joke well get a t-shirt meat was the running joke uh well guys this was awesome and we could talk about this kind of stuff forever thank you so much for doing it it's a blast and absolutely thanks for having us this was fun and again liquid tension experiment lte3 march 26th keep your eyes peeled for more videos and things to come out and um i mean everybody's freaking out there's over half a million views on the first video and it's just people are really excited about it so congrats on that it's great yeah yeah and uh we'll talk to you guys uh again soon thanks guys bye-bye [Music] you

Channel: The Prog Report

Views: 74,391

Keywords: mike portnoy, progressive rock, prog rock, progressive rock albums, yes, dream theater, genesis, neal morse, steven wilson, prog from home, progressive rock podcast

Id: S7VDF457u7w

Length: 64min 36sec (3876 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021