295. PERMANENT WAVES by Rush

I've been listening to a lot of Rush over the past few weeks. When I say a lot I basically mean I've been going back and forth between Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures (two of my three favorite Rush records, the third being Signals). You see I'm one of those "mainstream" Rush fans. I love the songs that get played on the radio but almost never listen to the other tracks on their records. So, I'm being somewhat of a hypocrite in covering this 1980 record as I probably listened all the way through maybe 5 times in the last 45 years. I've got musician friends who are the hardcore Rush fans - they know all the obscure (to me) songs and spend hours learning to play them in their band.

When trying to decide which of these two albums to cover I had to choose between the record that has my favorite Rush song vs the record that catapulted them into the stratosphere. The former won out.

'The Spirit of Radio' has some kind of hold on me. I don't know if it's Alex Lifeson's riff that opens the song and percolates throughout, the funky reggae closeout or the lyrics that were inspired by a certain Canadian radio station - whatever it is, I listen to this song over and over again at times. In fact, I often go down a YouTube rabbit hole trying to consume every cover of this song that I can find, especially ones by young students, either in their high school bands / talent shows or School of Rock bands. The only other track I listen to is the radio friendly 'Freewill.' So, I've added that one to my Daily Records playlist as well.