If you’ve been getting sick of me writing all about Duran Duran so far, that makes two of us.
Let’s shift gears in recognition of Record Store Day 2020. (Due to COVID-19, it’s actually been pushed to June 20, but let’s celebrate anyway.)
In this post, I thought I’d pause my chronology, reflect on happier bygone days and consider a special item I got on Record Store Day 2017. If Duran Duran’s Is There Something I Should Know was my starting point in the world of 12” singles, in a way this blog post documents the ultimate gonzo conclusion.
Rush’s Cygnus X-1
The record I’m talking about is Rush’s Cygnus X-1. It’s officially classified as a 12” single, despite having a running time of a short-ish LP. Released as a Record Store Day exclusive on April 22, 2017, it was limited to 5,000 pressings on 180g vinyl on Mercury Records (catalog No. B0026270-01).
The track listing
This is beautiful:
- Side 1: Book I – The Voyage (time 10:27)
- Side 2: Book II – Hemispheres (time 18:07)
Technically speaking, Hemispheres is comprised of six sections, but it flows together as one continuous piece of music. For the purposes of this blog, it suits me fine to call it one big song. Besides, it makes for better poetry that prog legends Rush had the audacity (sense of humour, even?) to make a two-song 12” single.
Why was this 12″ single released?
The songs it contains are actually descended from two Rush classics that were originally released in the 1970s:
- Cygnus X-1 (later renamed Book 1: The Voyage for this release), which is the last song from Rush’s 1977 album, A Farewell to Kings
- Hemispheres, which is the side 1 title track of their 1978 follow-up album
The lyrics (and some musical themes) in the two songs tell part one and part two of the same story, but were separated onto two separate albums.
The Cygnus X-1 12” single rectifies this by bringing the songs together onto the same disc for the first time. With it, listeners wanting to hear the full Cygnus X-1 song suite don’t have to start it at the end of A Farewell to Kings and resume it on the Hemispheres LP.
The lyrics – what’s the story?
In the first of the two songs, an explorer is on a journey toward Cygnus X-1, a legit black hole. As he gets closer, his ship loses control, is drawn in and is ripped apart. It ends with an ominous 4-chord progression and fades out (remember that last bit, ‘cause it’s important later).
With the start of Hemispheres, we enter an epic battle between the gods Dionysus and Apollo, whose respective camps are caught in a struggle between heart and mind. A conflict breaks out as the two different ways of life clash.
Then that 4-chord sequence I talked about before plays to signal that the explorer from Cygnus X-1 is re-entering the story. He seems dazed from his journey, but sees the tragedy of the struggle around him. The explorer/alien then convinces the two sides to settle their differences, and the gods christen him Cygnus, the God of Balance.
Ahem.
Full disclosure: I’ve never been a big fan of Neil Peart’s lyrics. Granted, the guy knew his way around a dictionary and was definitely very literate, but I’ve always been into Rush for the music, first and foremost.
My experience with the record
The first of the two songs I’d ever heard was the Hemispheres suite, and this was probably back in 1987. I distinctly remember borrowing a friend’s well-worn copy of the Hemispheres LP, taping the crackly record, and listening to it over and over. In retrospect it was the first Rush album I’d explored on a deep level.
Cuts like The Trees and La Villa Strangiato were obvious highlights, but the long song suite on side 1 was the main draw to me. I loved the way the prelude hinted at all the thematic musical elements that would be unfurled and elaborated on over the subsequent 18-odd minutes.
I recall hearing or reading somewhere that the Hemispheres LP was “Rush doing jazz,” or something like that. While whoever said that was probably referring to the instrumental Strangiato, my first thought went to the lengthy title track. For those familiar with it, the syncopated chord changes in the first section go back and forth between Gmaj7 and F#min7 – you can practically sing The Girl From Ipanema over it if you take the distortion off.
It wasn’t until several years later that I eventually heard A Farewell to Kings – ironically, it was probably the very last early-era Rush record I listened to in full. Songs like Xanadu and Closer to the Heart were already well-known to me, but other new cuts were exciting to me, especially Cygnus X-1.
I don’t think I even noticed the musical similarities between Cygnus X-1 and Hemispheres the first time I heard it. It wasn’t until the second or third time that I realized the ending of Cygnus seemed to lead me to… Hemispheres? And the stories were connected? Cool!
I lied
Remember when I said at the start of this post that I bought the Cygnus X-1 12” single on Record Store Day in 2017? Yeah, that’s actually not true.
I remember going to the nearest record shop to my home, Ric’s Recollections in Port Credit, on the day not expecting there to be too much foot traffic. I was wrong – I’d arrived only an hour or so after Ric had opened, but his shop had been picked clean of all the Record Store Day exclusives he had stocked – including his copies of Cygnus X-1.
I must’ve told my thoughtful wife who, as usual, was quick to pick up on potential gift ideas and she ordered it online for me for my birfday (which was a few weeks later). How great is she – she doesn’t even like Rush, yet bought the record knowing full well she’d be enduring it over and over again in the condo we lived in at the time, where it was almost impossible to escape sounds from the stereo. So this post is dedicated to her.
Epilogue
Sorry for doing such a long review and even breaking into some music theory halfway through, but this is a Rush review, after all – what did you expect?
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