Classic Albums - Rush (2112 & Moving Pictures) {100.XY}

1- Classic Albums (2112 & Moving Pictures)
2- Bonus Material



Review
This DVD is essentially the documentary that aired on the Classic Albums TV series. There have been a number of releases for Rush lately from concert footage to documentaries. For a band who is as prolific and influential as they are I say it's high time more stuff has been put out there. While the recently released documentary, Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, gives a lot of details spanning their entire career this disk delves into great detail Rush's two most important albums. While the band has released more than 20 albums these two bookend the five albums that defined them as the ultimate power trio and masters of the progressive/art rock genre.
2112 was Rush's fourth (third with drummer Neil Peart) album and it was created out of a mixture of defiance, anger, and pure sense of uncompromising. Their album Fly by Night made critics take notice and Caress of Steel made them disregard the band out of hand. 2112 not only make them take notice again, but it caused a frenzy from just word of mouth. This documentary goes into the thought process behind this. Not only the "we are gonna do this album our way" and "if we are going out we are going on our terms" kind of thinking, but also the music theory behind the songs written and the long play format of the titular 2112 suite (consisting of an entire side of a vinyl album.
So you have that breakaway album, and then Rush makes a couple more critically acclaimed concept albums, then two albums that take the band to a more radio-friendly arena. This is where Moving Pictures comes in. As the last of the albums of this genre it marks the band's complete departure from the art-rock/long form suites (The album Permanent Waves still had the multi-themed Natural Science) to single concept, self contained songs ready for airplay. This album also marks Rush's greatest hit single to date with Tom Sawyer.
Again this doc goes into not only the thinking of where they were going with Moving Pictures as a band, but also the musicality of the various songs (and studio theories and techniques). It's a good message Rush says when the changes they went through on each of these albums were something they did all for themselves and for the love of music. This documentary really shows how a band can change their (for lack of a better word) shtick and still be true to who they are.
You get some great early footage from studio to concerts and more as well as current interviews with each band member. You get to see the breakdown of many of the songs of each album and how they were put together both instrumentally and post production. You also get interviews with Terry Brown, Rush's studio producer and engineer from both albums and each one in between. All in all this is a great resource for anybody who loves these two albums.
What's cool is the extras, which is about an hour of additional interviews and concert footage not shown in the original airing on Classic Albums. That's like getting twice the show in one disk. If you are a fan of the classic Rush this disk is worth going for. If you are a serious music fan and enjoyed the song Tom Sawyer I think this will be a very informative and enjoyable disk to have in your collection as well. If you have been collecting all of the other Rush videos believe me; there is still stuff in here you don't have.

Technical
General
Format : Matroska
File size : 2.13 GiB
Duration : 58mn 10s
Overall bit rate : 5 235 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2014-05-17 00:50:36
Writing application : MakeMKV v1.8.10 darwin(x86-release)
Writing library : libmakemkv v1.8.10 (1.3.0/1.4.1) darwin(x86-release)

Video
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Format : MPEG Video
Format version : Version 2
Format profile : Main@Main
Format settings, BVOP : No
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Codec ID : V_MPEG2
Codec ID/Info : MPEG 1 or 2 Video
Duration : 58mn 10s
Bit rate mode : Variable
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Nominal bit rate : 9 800 Kbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
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Original display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
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Color space : YUV
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Scan order : Top Field First
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Stream size : 2.01 GiB (94%)
Language : English

Audio
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Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 58mn 10s
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Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 79.9 MiB (4%)
Title : Stereo
Language : English

Sutitles
Language : English
Language : German
Language : Spanish
Language : French
Language : Italian
Language : Dutch
Language : Portuguese