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Rush - Vital Signs

Rush - Vital Signs Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Moving Pictures
Released: 1981

Vital Signs Lyrics

Unstable condition
A symptom of life
In mental
And environmental
Change

Atmospheric disturbance
The feverish flux
Of human interface
And interchange

The impulse is pure
Sometimes our circuits get shorted
By external interference

Signals get crossed
And the balance distorted
By internal incoherence

A tired mind become a shape-shifter
Everybody need a mood lifter
Everybody need reverse polarity

Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form
Everybody got to deviate
From the norm

An ounce of perception
A pound of obscure
Process information
At half-speed

Pause
Rewind, replay
Warm memory chip
Random sample
Hold the one you need

Leave out the fiction
The fact is
This friction
Will only be worn by persistence

Leave out conditions
Courageous convictions
Will drag the dream into existence

A tired mind become a shape-shifter
Everybody need a soft filter
Everybody need reverse polarity

Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form
Everybody got to elevate
From the norm

Writer/s: NEIL PEART, GEDDY LEE WEINRIB, ALEX LIFESON
Publisher: OLE MEDIA MANAGEMENT
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Vital Signs

Neil Peart (Guitar for the Practicing Musician, 1986): "At the end of an album it's impossible for us to judge which songs will truly be popular and which won't. We're inevitably surprised. And then there are songs like "Vital Signs" from our Moving Pictures album. At the time it was a very transitional song. Everybody had mixed feelings about it, but at the same time it expressed something essential that I wanted to say. That's a song that has a marriage of vocals and lyrics I'm very happy with. But it took our audience a long time to get it, because it was rhythmically very different for us and it demanded the audience to respond in a different rhythmic way. There was no heavy downbeat; it was al counterpoint between upbeat and downbeat, and there was some reflection of reggae influence and a reflection of the more refined areas of new wave music that we had sort of takes under our umbrella and made happen. That song took about three tours to catch on. It was kind of a baby for us. We kept playing it and wouldn't give up. We put it in our encore last tour-putting it in the most exciting part of the set possible-and just demanded that people accept it because we believed in it. I still think that song represents a culmination-the best combination of music, lyrics, rhythm. It opens up so many musical approaches, from being very simplistic and minimal to becoming very overplayed. Everything we wanted in the song is there. So that song was very special to us. But we had to wait. We had to be patient and wait for the audience to understand us." (thanks, Mike - Mountlake Terrace, Washington)

In the Moving Pictures tour book, Peart added: "'Vital Signs' was the ultimate result, eclectic in the extreme, it embraces a wide variety of stylistic influences, ranging from the sixties to the present. Lyrically, it derives from my response to the terminology of 'Technospeak,' the language of electronics and computers, which often seems to parallel the human machine, in the functions and interrelationships they employ. It is interesting, if irrelevant, to speculate as to whether we impose our nature on the machines that we build, or whether they are merely governed by the inscrutable laws of Nature as we. (Perhaps Murphy's Laws?) Never mind!" (thanks, Nathan - Wichititty, KS)

Vocalist Geddy Lee recalled to The Plain Dealer newspaper in a 2011 interview: "That was a hoot to write. We wrote it in about 5 minutes in the studio. We just put it together quickly and had a lot of fun doing it. It's still fun to play. It's the quirkier side of Rush's sound, and I think there's always a need for that, to give your sound diversity."

Rush - The Camera Eye

Rush - The Camera Eye Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Moving Pictures
Released: 1981

The Camera Eye Lyrics

Grim-faced and forbidding
Their faces closed tight
An angular mass of New Yorkers
Pacing in rhythm
Race the oncoming night
They chase through the streets of Manhattan
Head-first humanity
Pause at a light
Then flow through the streets of the city

They seem oblivious
To a soft spring rain
Like an English rain
So light, yet endless
From a leaden sky

The buildings are lost
In their limitless rise
My feet catch the pulse
And the purposeful stride

I feel the sense of possibilities
I feel the wrench of hard realities
The focus is sharp in the city

Wide-angle watcher
On life's ancient tales
Steeped in the history of London
Green and Grey washes
In a wispy white veil
Mist in the streets of Westminster
Wistful and weathered
The pride still prevails
Alive in the streets of the city

Are they oblivious
To this quality?
A quality of light
Unique to every city's streets

Pavements may teem
With intense energy
But the city is calm
In this violent sea

Writer/s: NEIL PEART, GEDDY LEE WEINRIB, ALEX LIFESON
Publisher: OLE MEDIA MANAGEMENT
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

The Camera Eye

This song highlights the cultural differences between the cities of New York and London.

At 10:56, this was the last song Rush recorded that was over 10 minutes long.

This is the #1 fan requested song for Rush to perform live. Rush has not performed it completely live since Tour of the Nadars in 1982. They performed it in an abbreviated version the following tour, and it was last played live May 1983. (thanks, Mike - Mountlake Terrace, Washington, for all above)

8:56 into the song, in the background you can hear what appears to be Geddy, burp and say "Oh gawd." Most Rush fans believe this is an "English greeting," something like, "Ello, Mornin' Gov'ner." Another possibility is that he's saying, "More Dub," requesting a monitor adjustment in his headphones. (thanks, Eddy - Ilion, NY)

Rush - YYZ

Rush - YYZ Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Moving Pictures
Released: 1981

YYZ Lyrics

YYZ

YYZ is the transmitter code for Toronto's Lester B. Pearson International Airport. Every airport is assigned a unique 3 letter code, and that code is always being transmitted so that pilots can tell, roughly, where they are and verify that their navigational radios are tuned properly. These codes are also written on your luggage tags when you fly. The intro to the song is Morse code for "YYZ."

This was nominated and was the runner up for the Best Rock Instrumental award in the 1982 Grammys. It lost to The Police's "Behind my Camel."

In the March 2004 issue of Guitar World magazine, Alex Lifeson explained the bizarre-sounding harmonics heard before the solo: "I create them by playing off the pick and my thumb. I hold the pick so there's a slight edge of it showing between my thumb and finger. This allows my thumb to mute the string, and that's what causes the harmonic to ring." (thanks, Mike - Mountlake Terrace, Washington, for above 3)

The crashing noise you hear between the breaks of the guitar solo is the sound of windchimes tied to a 2x4 slapped against a wood table. The band confirmed this in an interview on WNEW New York in the winter of 2002. (thanks, Jason - Commack, NY)

Geddy Lee's bass performance on this song has been praised by many websites and magazines as one of the best in rock history. Some fans believe his bass playing is better when he's not singing. (thanks, Evan - flower mound, TX)

This was one of the few songs used on the PS2 game Guitar Hero 2 that was not a remake by Wavegroup. (thanks, Billy - A Place, AL)

The song has also featured as a downloadable song in the Rock Band series, and as the only instrumental on the Guitar Hero: Smash Hits game. Geddy Lee told the The Plain Dealer newspaper in a 2011 interview how the tune's use in video games has opened up a whole new fan base for Rush: "It's interesting how that song's been reborn through video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. We're getting all these 11-, 12-, 13-year-old kids coming to our shows because they discovered our music through those games. And I think one of the big reasons is 'YYZ.'"

Rush - Red Barchetta

Rush - Red Barchetta Youtube Music Videos and Lyrics

Album: Moving Pictures
Released: 1981

Red Barchetta Lyrics

My uncle has a country place
That no one knows about
He says it used to be a farm
Before the Motor Law
And now on Sundays I elude the eyes
And hop the turbine freight
To far outside the wire where my
White-haired uncle waits

Jump to the ground as the turbo slows
To cross the borderline
Run like the wind as excitement shivers
Up and down my spine
But down in his barn
My uncle preserved for me
An old machine
For fifty-odd years
To keep it as new
Has been his dearest dream

I strip away the old debris
That hides a shining car
A brilliant Red Barchetta
From a better vanished time
We'll fire up the willing engine
Responding with a roar
Tires spitting gravel
I commit my weekly crime

Wind
In my hair
Shifting and drifting
Mechanical music
Adrenaline surge

Well-oiled leather
Hot metal and oil
The scented country air

Sunlight on chrome
The blur of the landscape
Every nerve aware

Suddenly ahead of me
Across the mountainside
A gleaming alloy air-car
Shoots towards me two lanes wide
Oh, I spin around with shrieking tires
To run the deadly race
Go screaming through the valley
As another joins the chase

Ride like the wind
Straining the limits
Of machine and man
Laughing out loud with fear and hope
I've got a desperate plan

At the one-lane bridge
I leave the giants stranded
At the riverside
Race back to the farm
To dream with my uncle
At the fireside

Writer/s: NEIL PEART, GEDDY LEE WEINRIB, ALEX LIFESON
Publisher: OLE MEDIA MANAGEMENT
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Red Barchetta

This is a futuristic song about a farmer who keeps a Red Barchetta in his barn even after motors are outlawed (Before the Motor Law). The kid comes, takes the car for ride and ends up being chased by Gleaming Alloy Air car (Police is assumed). He outruns and ditches the law and returns to the barn, hides the car and goes to dream with his uncle by the fireside. During the Moving Pictures Tour, Rush used a video to bring the story to life. (thanks, Mike - Sturges, PA)

The Barchetta is a classic example of a car built for speed, a hot rod, made by Ferrari. For more information on the car, including some photos of a red one, check out the Song Image .

This was the second song from Rush's best selling album to date, Moving Pictures.

This was inspired by the story A Nice Morning Drive, written by Richard S. Foster. (thanks, Jeff - Haltom City, TX, for above 3)

The harmonics in the intro were played by guitarist Alex Lifeson. (thanks, Chris - Brookfield, CT)

According to the book The Complete Ferrari by Godfrey Eaton, the name of the car is pronounced "Barketta." Geddy Lee admitted that he had incorrectly pronounced the word after an Italian friend pointed out the correct pronunciation. (thanks, Stuart - Suffolk, England)

Alex Lifeson ("In The Studio" for Moving Pictures): "That was the intention with Red Barchetta - to create a song that was very vivid, so that you had a sense, if you listen to it and listen to the lyrics, of the action. It does become a movie. I think that song really worked with that in mind; it was successful with that intention. It's something that I think we've tried to carry on-- become a little more visual with our music, since then. But that one in particular was very satisfying. It was always one of my favorites. I think it's probably my favorite from that album. I like the way the parts knit together. I like the changes. I like the melody of the song. I love the dynamics of it, the way it opens with the harmonics and creates a mood, then gets right into the driving, right up to the middle section where it's really screaming along, where you really feel like you're in the open car, and the music's very vibrant and moving. And then it ends as it began with that quiet dynamic, and lets you down lightly. So it picks you up for the whole thing and drops you off at your next spot." (thanks, Mike - Mountlake Terrace, Washington)

There is a 1981 movie starring Lee Majors and Burgess Meredeth called The Last Chase, which was inspired by the same story. The movie left a lot to be desired, but the final showdown scene is straight out of "Red Barchetta." (thanks, Mike - San Francisco, CA)

On the Exit Stage Left DVD, guitarist Alex Lifeson says, "Well it seems to me that a car has been one of the standard metaphors and volumes have been written about the sociological and cultural impact of the car and what it represents, but, it also has a very fundamental, sensual appeal, and it's a metaphor for sexuality and for freedom." (thanks, Jamin King - Puyallup, WA)