Album of the Day - Rush: R30

Album of the Day - RUSH: R30

To celebrate a thirty-year recording career, Canadian rock group Rush hit the road to give their fans the best live representation of their illustrious catalogue as they could. The tour was mainly of North America, but for the first time since '91's 'Roll the Bones' tour, the band went over seas to end the suffering of their long waiting fans.

Recorded in Frankfurt Germany, 'R30' is a collection that spans Rush's entire 30-year career. Kicking off not with the Stooges theme, or a classical recording, but an instrumedley of their earliest material, covering the self-titled debut through '78's 'Hemispheres'.

From the way the band are playing it's hard to believe that these guys are in their 50's. They plow through the older numbers with the fire and passion of yester-year, and the newer numbers are played nearly flawlessly. That's not to say that a few mistakes don't slip through the cracks. Most notably, during "Roll the Bones", where the "Tom Sawyer" sampling can be heard throughout.

The biggest problem with the set, and there are so very few, are the songs that were performed but not released. For whatever reason, somebody decided that many of the cuts that had appeared on 2003's 'Rush in Rio' would be left off 'R30'. Such Rush classics as "La Villa Strangiato", "By-Tor and the Snowdog" and "The Trees" were needlessly cut.

In the end, the setlist (which Rush stayed with the entire tour), which featured four cover tunes, was ultimately a pleasing representation of a catalogue so big it would have been impossible to please all of the fans. Those who wish to obtain the audio discs of the show can only do so by purchasing the deluxe DVD package, but the extra cash is definitely worth it.