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Rush: Replay X3
Finally... Rush released some of their long out-of-print videos on DVD in the massive Replay X-3! The videos are: Exit... Stage Left, Grace Under Pressure Tour (or whatever the name is) and A Show Of Hands! The package comes with a bonus audio CD with the soundtrack of the Grace Under Pressure DVD. It's cool to finally have the stuff officially released. I own / have owned those videos in some form or another pretty much for years though. I plunked down good money to buy Exit... Stage Left and A Show Of Hands when they were available to purchase in stores back in the 80's. Those videos were not cheap either. They cost me like $30 each, and when I bought them, the prices of music videos had gone down already! I remember a friend of mine buying the Scorpions' World Wide Live video for like $50 when it came out (somehow, I ended up with that video, and I still have it, so Ernie, wherever you are, if you want it back, I have it!). The Grace Under Pressure video I never could find. My only memories of it were from a video a friend of mine taped off the TV. They had a show in one channel where they played concerts at midnight on Saturdays.
Then came the DVD era, but of course those weren't available. Demand was there, so it didn't take long for a Brazilian company to put them out on DVD. The GuP show was not available though. The Brazilian DVD's had a lot of useless extra stuff on them, and the video transfer wasn't that good. It gave my VHS tapes a rest though. I later got a supposedly official release of ESL on DVD from Singapore. It was professionally packaged, and the video transfer, while still not up to snuff, was a vast improvement over the Brazilian version. The Singapore ESL DVD was my copy of choice. it wasn't bad really.
One day a couple of years ago, I talked to this guy via e-mail. He happened to have made some transfers from the original laserdiscs on to DVD of the GuP, and ASoH videos, so I got some copies from him. The transfers are excellent, and the ASoH DVD has the song Lock And Key, which was only released in the laserdisc version! (not even the current Replay X3 has it). So, yeah, the videos have been out there on DVD for some time if one really wanted to get a copy!
If you buy the set at Best Buy, the audio CD has four unlisted, extra tracks tagged at the end; Limelight and Closer To The Heart (again!) from ESL, and The Spirit Of Radio and Tom Sawyer from ASoH. As far as a review goes, they're all great. I can't be objective with Rush. I've read a lot of comments here and there from people complaining about the anamorphic screen, about Lock And Key, about complete shows, blah blah blah boo hoo hoo. All I can say is "Shadduup!" Be grateful it's out officially on DVD.
My personal favorite is the Grace Under Pressure concert. It's my favorite album and is very sentimental for me I guess. That was the first new tape I got of Rush, and although I didn't like it that much at the beginning, it's gotten to be one of my favorites!
Oh, the pictures are on the Amazon site by the way.
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