Music DVD Review: Rush - Grace Under Pressure Tour 1984

The Grace Under Pressure tour was my first time seeing Rush in concert. The year was 1984, I had just graduated from high school, and I was nervously counting down the days until I had to report for Navy boot camp the following year. What better way to take my mind off things, than to catch my new favorite band in concert. I had not been too familiar with Rush until some of the Permanent Waves stuff, like "Spirit Of Radio" and "Freewill", started getting a lot of radio airplay. Like many people though, it was the great Moving Pictures album that really blew my mind and made me a fan for life. I have since seen them about six more times.

Last summer Rush released the three DVD/CD box set Replay X 3, which includes remastered versions the three previously released VHS concert videos Exit Stage Left, Grace Under Pressure Tour, and A Show Of Hands, as well as a previously unreleased live CD of the Grace Under Pressure show. In May of this year, they also released each of these DVDs as separate packages. Each DVD comes with a cool miniature reproduction of the official program from each of the featured tours.

Grace Under Pressure Tour was recorded live at Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, Canada on September 21, 1984. Rush are renowned for their generously long concerts performances, especially the last few tours where most of the shows have approached three hours in duration. However, the Grace Under Pressure video only gives you a frustratingly short 63 minutes worth of material from the show. What you do get is absolutely amazing though, beginning with the best show opener they have ever produced, "The Spirit Of Radio." That is following their usual Three Stooges intro music, of course.

The 1984 version of Rush finds professor Neil Peart with closely cropped hair and a long rat tail hanging down his back; Alex Lifeson still in his semi-Flock-Of-Seagull's hairdo phase and favoring his "Hentor Sportscaster" guitar (actually a Fender Stratocaster - it's a long story) almost exclusively on this tour; and Geddy Lee laying down the grooves on his little, headless, Steinberger L-2 bass guitar that he favored throughout the early 80's. Also, in very non-rock musician fashion, Alex and Geddy then always performed in suit jackets -- with the sleeves rolled up of course.

One of the coolest things about this video is that you get the entire "Fear" trilogy in order beginning with Part 1 "The Enemy Within", from Grace Under Pressure, followed by Part 2 "The Weapon", from Signals, and ending with Part 3 "Witch Hunt", from Moving Pictures. Interesting how the songs were released in reverse order. An absolutely killer version of "New World Man" is followed by the back to back Grace Under Pressure classics "Distant Early Warning" and "Red Sector A," which should convince anyone as to just how underrated the Grace Under Pressure album really is. Geddy preceded "Red Sector A" with "here's another red song for yah", which means either "Red Lenses," "Red Barchetta", or both songs were left off the video, along with many others.

Article Author: Paul Roy

Paul Roy is a network administrator by day and amateur music DVD critic by night. When not attending as many live concerts as he possibly can, Paul likes nothing more than to kick back with a good concert DVD and rattle some walls. …

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