Released: 1974
Tracks: Finding My Way; Need Some Love; Take a Friend; Here Again; What You’re Doing; In the Mood; Before and After; Working Man
Best track: Finding My Way
Tracks to skip: Need Some Love, Take a Friend, In the Mood, Before and After
Ugh, this is a bad album. It’s amazing that the band started out with something like this and then in a few years managed to make something as great as Farewell to Kings. Rush was VERY raw back in the early days. And in this case ‘raw’ isn’t a good thing. I mean, they could play just fine, but the songwriting was absolutely terrible. First off, Geddy Lee’s writing the lyrics; lots of “baby’s” and “ooooh-yeah’s” abound. So besides the bad lyrics, the band is trying REALLY HARD to be Led Zeppelin. It’s sad. I guess people liked to listen to bad music in the 70’s, because I have no idea how this was ever considered good.
To be truthful, I really do like the ‘popular’ songs off this album, Finding My Way and Working Man. A couple others are OK (What You’re Doing, Here Again), but mostly it’s a bad album. I know hard-core Rush Dorks will hate me for not liking this (those people even like I Think I’m Going Bald!), but I think if a group makes a bad album, even if it’s their first try, they still need to be yelled at for it. I’m willing to admit that this is one of the worst albums in my collection (not counting some of my wife’s stuff) and the only reason I still keep it around is that I have it on cassette and you can’t even give cassettes away these days. Avoid this one at all cost, you can get the good tracks in many other places (live albums, compilations).
Rating: 52
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