Rush

Toronto, ON, Canada

Exhibition Stadium

August 23, 1977





As promised, I present to you a new vintage Rush show !



Previously uncirculated, this is the earliest known recording from the A Farewell To Kings tour.  It is the fourth show of the tour, in hometown Toronto (after Bastille Day, Ged says it's "nice to be back home once again").  It is, by nearly 5 weeks, the earliest known recording from the tour, surpassing Ron's Vault Release 5 from Fresno in late September 1977.  Four songs from the new album are played a week before its release.  Xanadu had been played earlier in the year, but these are now the earliest known live recordings of A Farewell To Kings, Cygnus X-1, and Closer to the Heart (presumably only the fourth performance of each).



It is the typical setlist for the tour with one notable - and interesting - exception.  Many of the FTK tour recordings do not have the encore, and while the usual second encore on this tour was Cinderella Man, tonight it is Best I Can.



The quality is great for a tape of its age.  Anthem through Fly By Night is irreversibly damaged in the left channel, likely because a magnet got close to it at some point over the years.  I duplicated the right channel onto the left, with virtually no quality loss (as it's essentially a dual stereo).



The 90 minute tape cuts out during Fly By Night (In The Mood is presumably missing as well).  The taper wanted to capture the rest of the encore, and he actually taped over the end of Max Webster's opening set to do so (which he had taped on another 60 minute tape), grabbing part of Neil Peart's drum solo and Best I Can (Hangover and High Class And Borrowed Shoes can sometimes faintly be heard underneath Rush).



It's amusing to hear the front of house guy needing to turn up Geddy's synth around the 6 minute mark of Xanadu.  Afterward it takes Geddy a little while to settle into his keyboard setup before A Farewell To Kings, which was a new thing for him at the time.





Master Cassette > WAV (GoldWave speed correction and fixes) > FLAC

(transfer: Yamaha KX-260 tape deck > Scarlett Focusrite interface > Pro Tools)





1) house music (Nights, Winters, Years)

2) Bastille Day

3) Lakeside Park

4) By-Tor and the Snow Dog

5) Xanadu

6) A Farewell To Kings

7) Something for Nothing

8) Cygnus X-1 [cut]

9) Anthem

10) Closer to the Heart

11) 2112

12) Working Man

13) Fly By Night [cut]

14) drum solo [cut]

15) Best I Can





Enjoy, and please keep it lossless (and don't bootleg this - particularly rockinconcerts.com; if you are the person who runs that website, you are pure scum).