Downloaden "Rush ~ The Spirit of Radio ~ Time Machine - Live in Cleveland [HD 1080p] [CC] 2011"

Click on "CC" icon for Closed Captioning (Lyrics on Screen) "The Spirit of Radio" is the first track from the band's seventh studio album "Permanent Waves" which was recorded September and October 1979 at Le Studio in Morin-Heights, Quebec, with Terry Brown producing. The album was released on January 14, 1980. Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart explained this song in an interview with Billboard magazine: "'The Spirit Of Radio' was actually written as a tribute to all that was good about radio, celebrating my appreciation of magical moments I'd had since childhood, of hearing 'the right song at the right time.' However, [the song's] celebration of the ideals of radio necessarily seemed like an attack on the reality - on the formulaic, mercenary programming of most radio stations, with music the last of anyone's concerns. And yes, it was really ironic that such a song became popular on radio, though it was a kind of litmus test. Some radio guys who 'got it' could hear the song and think, 'That's the way it ought to be,' while others - the shallow, swaggering salesmen-of-the-air - could be oblivious to the song's meaning and proudly applaud themselves, 'That's about me!'" The rapid repeating guitar riff that opens the song (supposedly designed to mimic the sound of radio static) provides an immediacy to this opener that hasn't been evident since Caress of Steel. The song's lyrics - which laments the demise of free and creative radio in favor of the overly commercial homogeneous medium it had become - was arranged musically in an attempt to give the impression of switching through various stations. In this relatively short song, the listener can hear rock, Mersey beat, prog (in the form of a subtle shift in time signature halfway through the song), reggae, and, from the first time from Rush, new-wave electronic music. The song's title was the slogan of a popular Toronto radio station, CFNY-FM, (now known as Edge). It was the first station to play a Rush song over the air. The station's difficult history was part of Peart's inspiration for the lyric. Rush was unable to obtain airplay on many radio stations other than CFNY early in their career, and in 1979 wrote the song "The Spirit of Radio" about the station. Unable to mention CFNY directly for fear of alienating airplay on other stations, the band instead ensured the catalog number for their album Permanent Waves was 1021, a nod to the station's 102.1 FM frequency. Alex has stated in a 1996 Guitar Player interview that the station that inspired the song won't even play Rush anymore, as they have changed formats. While the lyric is largely positive, praising the virtues of radio, the final section of the song parodies Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence." A cursory glance at the lyric sheet reveals that the words of the "prophets" now read "profits." Neil Peart wrote it as "profits" rather than "prophets" to expose the money-grubbing side of the music industry. The concert hall that "echoes with the sound of salesmen" is perhaps a reference to some of the many commercially focused bands that Rush continued to tour with at this time...bands that perhaps focused so much on their own commercial success that it damaged their artistic integrity. Neil Peart came up with the line after hearing stage patter from bands Rush would tour with; these bands would give the same spiel night after night, often telling the audience that their particular city was the greatest in the world or had the best fans. Peart found this disingenuous and manipulative. “By the time we cut this, I was using mainly a Strat that I had modified by putting humbuckers in the bridge position. I also used the 355, which I used in the studio for the next couple of records. My amps were Hiwatts, the Marshall and the Twin. I also had a Sixties Bassman head and cabinet. The flanger on that song was an Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress, which I still have. I used the Boss Chorus Ensemble, and I had graduated to the Roland Space Echo, which replaced my Echoplex.”–Alex in a 1996 Guitar Player interview “It’s about musical integrity. We wanted to get across the idea of a radio station playing a wide variety of music. (Modern Drummer)—Neil in Merely Players "The Spirit of Radio" was named one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll and was among five Rush songs inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame on March 28, 2010. Classic Rock readers voted "The Spirit of Radio" the fourth best Rush song. Odyssey ranked "The Spirit of Radio" number 11 on their ranking of every Rush song, and rated it 10/10. They also considered it to be the second best song from Permanent Waves, only behind "Freewill". #MysticRhythmsLive