This week my magic random Rush picking script picked Caress of Steel. I picked this album up twice: once in high school and once in college at the used CD store. One thing that didn't realize about the cassette release was that they changed the track order slightly. "Didacts and Narpets" was always something that was on side one for me, not part of the larger "Fountain of Lamneth" song. It wasn't until I got the CD much later that I realized that was a whole song in and of itself. This is yet another reason I find cassette releases so insufferable compared with CDs, but I digress. I also didn't have the lyrics with the cassette version of the album so I never quite understood the underlying themes of the album (which seem to boil down to change, aging, and self-reflection.

I won't go into the history of this album and how this album could have been the end of Rush. That's well documented online. No, what I will say is that a fantasy-hungry drummer found this a compelling album, although it is one of their more scattered works. Still, any Rush album is always a great album.