The Beginning of My Journey

An Introduction

Good afternoon dear readers. I am aware that the blog at this moment looks ugly, and there will be improvements made to it in the coming weeks once my classes are concluded. A little bit about myself; I am a fan of entertainment, not really something that is all that unique or mind blowing about a person. However, I feel I have a lot to say about certain types of entertainment, whether it'd be music or comic books or films or a whole plethora of other topics. I will describe myself as passionate, someone who knows a great deal about what he is talking but is always willing to open himself to new pieces of information or new types of genres or styles that he has not heard of or experienced.

Some of you who will read this may know me as Professional Elite Overlord on Twitter; my real name is Ian. A lot of you know that one of my biggest passions is music, especially metal, and that I have been doing retrospectives of bands on my profile (almost done with a second one). This is where I will put new retrospectives from now on, so as not to bury my writings with daily Twitter posts. Nothing further to say, but expect album reviews, band and solo artist retrospective, comic book discussions, and movie reviews whenever I feel inspired to do them. I hope that many of you will stick around with me on this project as I have a lot of great ideas that I think many readers will enjoy.

Until then, take care and I'll see you around.

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Rush Retrospective Part 9: Signals (1982)

A Sleek New Form Rush were now in the unenviable position of having to capitalize the mammoth success that was “Moving Pictures”. Whatever direction the band was going to explore, inevitably fans were going to compare it to “Moving Pictures”, whether they liked it or not. Luckily, the band did not fall into the trap of resting on their laurels and in 1982, “Signals” was released. This record marks the beginning of a new era of the band, one in which the trio heavily implemented synthesizers into their music, an era that fans have dubbed the "Synth Era". Now synthesizers were an already established ingredient of Rush's music, since the late seventies in fact, but this is the release where the synths started to become a more dominant part of the song making process. “Signals” is a very bold, daring record in many respects helping to push the band's sound further, luckily not resting on the success of their previous output. The record opens with a from ...

Rush Retrospective Part Seven: Permanent Waves (1980)

Streamlined success The dawn of a new decade, and in turn the dawn of a new direction for the Canadian power trio. By the time 1980 rolled around Rush had almost spent their creative juices on their previous record. While "Hemispheres" was another huge success for the band, Rush knew that if they were to continue down this trajectory that it would only spell doom for their careers. To rectify this potential problem, Rush went into a direction that might seem blasphemous to the hardcore progressive rock fans they had acquired: they streamlined their sound. Rush were taking notice of the new bands that were appearing around the late seventies to early eighties. Artists such as The Police, Talking Heads, Elvis Costello and many more showed the band that they could still apply their complex gifted talents, but in turn could produce music that was catchy. With this methodology, the band released their seventh album two weeks into the new decade, “Permane...

Rush Retrospective Part Eight: Moving Pictures (1981)

Entering the Lighted Stage “A modern day warrior Mean mean stride Today’s Tom Sawyer Mean mean pride” The minute you hear that opening synthesizer note by Lee and Peart’s signature drum pattern, you know what song this is. This signature single, and this record as a whole, catapulted Rush to the commercial stratosphere. “Moving Pictures” is the band’s biggest selling album of their career, peaking at number three of the Billboard Top 100 LPs, and reaching platinum barely two months after its initial release. This record shows the band’s culmination of seven years of experimentation, with its successes and failures, and demonstrates Rush at their peak of their abilities both as writers and musicians. Going forward with the successful execution of "Permanent Waves", the trio keep to the idea of shorter, more concise tracks, and just like that release the band is still able to showcase complex playing. In fact, this record probably showcases som...

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