Snakes & Arrows Live

• Limelight
• Digital Man
• Entre Nous
• Mission
• Freewill
• The Main Monkey Business
• The Larger Bowl
• Secret Touch
• Circumstances
• Between The Wheels
• Dreamline
• Far Cry
• Workin' Them Angels
• Armor And Sword
• Spindrift
• The Way The Wind Blows
• Subdivisions
• Natural Science
• Witch Hunt
• Malignant Narcissism
• De Slagwerker
• Hope
• Distant Early Warning
• The Spirit Of Radio
• Tom Sawyer
• One Little Victory
• A Passage To Bangkok
• YYZ
• Oh, Atlanta! The Authorized Bootlegs
• Ghost of a Chance
• Red Barchetta
• The Trees
• 2112 Overture/Temples Of Syrinx

Bonus Features

• What's that Smell featuring Jerry Stiller
• 2007 Tour Outtakes
• What's that Smell Outtakes
• Far Cry - Alternate Cut featuring Rear Screen Footage
• The Way the Wind Blows - Alternate Cut featuring Rear Screen Footage
• Red Sector "A" from the R30 tour
• Easter Egg
  • "What's that Smell?" montage of outtakes and interviews: on the DVD, let the main menu sit idle for two minutes then Jerry Stiller's head replaces Alex's and he tells you what to do; on the Blu-Ray, go to the bonus features menu then scroll down until nothing is highlighted and hit enter.

CD One
• Limelight
• Digital Man
• Entre Nous
• Mission
• Freewill
• The Main Monkey Business
• The Larger Bowl
• Secret Touch
• Circumstances
• Between The Wheels
• Dreamline
• Far Cry
• Workin' Them Angels
• Armor And Sword

CD Two
• Spindrift
• The Way The Wind Blows
• Subdivisions
• Natural Science
• Witch Hunt
• Malignant Narcissism
• De Slagwerker
• Hope
• Distant Early Warning
• The Spirit Of Radio
• Tom Sawyer
• One Little Victory
• A Passage To Bangkok
• YYZ

Notes

• The Snakes & Arrows Live CD edition was released April 15, 2008, to coincide with the second leg of the Snakes & Arrows tour. The first week it charted at #18 in the US, and #8 in Canada.
• The Snakes & Arrows Live video was released November 24th, 2008, and debuted at #1 on Billboard's Top Music Video chart, selling 25,000 units the first week. Snakes & Arrows Live is RUSH's first concert film to be released on Blu-ray, as well as a 3 DVD set.
• Video Certified Gold, Platinum and 2x Platinum by RIAA: April 20, 2010
• Video total run time 221 minutes.
• The complete 2007 concert set is featured on all editions; in addition, footage of songs added for the 2008 setlist filmed in Atlanta during the 2008 leg is included as bonus tracks on the video edition. It is worthy of note that this is the first live release to include either "Circumstances", "Entre Nous" or "Digital Man". To learn how to find the Easter Egg click here.

The Easter Egg is a 5:30 montage of outakes and interviews from "What's that Smell?" On the DVD, let the main menu sit idle for two minutes, then Jerry Stiller's head will replace Alex's and he tells you what to do. On the Blu-Ray, on the bonus features menu, scroll down until nothing is highlighted, then hit enter.

In Their Own Words...

"The Snakes & Arrows Live DVD was filmed with 21 High Definition cameras in 16x9 widescreen format, over two nights in October 2007 at the Netherlands' Ahoy Rotterdam arena during the renowned rock trio's lengthy world tour. Additional SD footage was filmed in Atlanta this past July. The five month trek supporting Rush's critically acclaimed 2007 studio release, Snakes & Arrows, which includes the Grammy® Award-nominated track, 'Malignant Narcissism,' topped Pollstar's Top 100 2007 Tours list at #12......While previous DVD releases showcase different sides of the band, this DVD offers fans a rare and close up look at the prodigious musicianship for which the band is renown. Cameras follow bassist and vocalist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson and drummer Neil Peart, closely, capturing not only their playing, note for note, but also the intimacy they share on stage. The diverse track list includes many new songs from Snakes & Arrows as well as old favorites like 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Freewill' plus an explosive rendition of 'Between the Wheels.' Among the hidden gems and numerous special tour moments included as extras is the fan coveted "What's That Smell" vignette and outtakes, a skit used to intro the second set, which capitalizes on the still emerging comedic talents of both Alex and Geddy who excel (and revel) in their roles as wild characters. Featuring collector's quality packaging and a choice of Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound or PCM Stereo for a superior audio experience, the DVD was mixed by frequent collaborator Richard Chycki (Aerosmith, Mick Jagger). Total running time is 221 minutes." - Snakes & Arrows Live Press Release, Rush.com, September 22, 2008

"The CD came out just prior to us going back out on the road - it gave us a little boost I think, in terms of making everybody aware that we were going back out for the second half of the tour. But these things take a while. To do the 5.1 mix is always time-consuming. So, we were able to get a stereo mix out quite easily." - Alex Lifeson, UGO.com, December 11, 2008

Winner of the 2009 International Digital Media Alliance Excellence in Disc Audio (Blu Ray Disc) Award: "Snakes & Arrows Live was directed by Pierre and François Lamoureux of FogoLabs. A full service production company based out of both Montreal and New York City, FogoLabs is not new to the IMDA/DVDA awards having won 8 Excellence Awards over the years, this their 9th, including 'Facility of The Year' two years running. "I always have a great time recording Rush. They play so well that it makes life easier even though you have 80 odd tracks for 3 musicians! Kudos go out to Rich Chycki and Alex Lifeson who mixed the music, to Andy VanDette who mastered the mixes and to Denis Normandeau, my audio partner of 9 years, who encoded the music to DTS-HDMA for the Blu-Ray here at FogoLabs." said François Lamoureux, president of FogoLabs after receiving the good news." - Marketwire.com, June 25, 2009

"There are the outtakes from where we were doing the 'What's That Smell' thing with Harry Satchel, and I was the border guard, and I'm stopping Geddy at the border and asking him where he's going. We did a whole bunch of takes of that, and there were some takes that were good takes. But, we couldn't use them because the director was by the camera, and so close by, and he couldn't stop laughing. It ruined the audio of the take! So, I thought that was a pretty good sign, when you've got the director laughing so hard that you can't use a good take." - Alex Lifeson, ModernGuitars.com, January 23, 2009

"Filmed in Rotterdam, Holland in late 2007, this has every Rush song you could want on it and the Blu-ray disc is a nice step up from the DVD. If you're a Rush fan, do not deny yourself." - 25 best concert Blu-ray discs, CNET.com, May 7, 2010

"It really came out well, I thought. It looks great, the camera angles are great, and having 2 days [to shoot two shows] really made a big difference in terms of the variety of shots that we had to work with." - Alex Lifeson, Sound & Vision, July 2009

"With this one we wanted to focus on the playing. So a lot of the camera work features the interaction between Neil (Peart), Alex (Lifeson) and myself, a lot of the details that you don't normally cover in a DVD performance. So for fans of the music who love to see what everybody's fingers are doing and how we interact back and forth with each other, that became the overriding focus on this one." - Geddy Lee, Billboard.com, November 18, 2008

"It was a very relaxed night - which is unusual, for that kind of 'pressure' night. Whenever we're recording, there's always a sense of tension on stage. But we were really relaxed that night, and I think it was because we had the two nights. We were in the European portion - halfway through it - and we really enjoy traveling through Europe, so we were all in a pretty good headspace and relaxed. And I think it shows - there are moments throughout the DVD where there is interplay between the three of us and the audience - and you sense that we're having fun." - Alex Lifeson, UGO.com, December 11, 2008

"Those two gigs were pretty consistent gigs. I thought we played well both of those nights. It was at the end of the tour, and by that point in the tour we're pretty set with all of our tempos. Neil has a metronome on his drums that gives him a tempo reference at the beginning of a song. It's just a light that pulses, and it gives him a tempo reference. He's very solid...he used to play to a click for some stuff where we needed to sync with film, but we haven't done that in years. There's just no need for it anymore. He's just so locked in and so tight. You know, the difficulty is if you're playing a song with a quick tempo, and then you've got to pull it back for the next song, and sometimes it's hard to just shift your brain from something fast to something mid-tempo. So, that gives him a chance to catch his breath. He looks at the pulse, he gets that tempo into his head, he turns it off, and then he starts the song." - Alex Lifeson, GuitarInternational.com, January 23, 2009

"Those are part of the secret to my bass sound. Those roasters give me a hotter and tastier sound." - Geddy Lee, National Post, April 15th, 2008

"We typically only do about four new songs a tour, but this time we're doing nine total. This album is such a joy to play and the response has been overwhelming to it. We did the greatest hits nostalgia thing on our 30th Anniversary Tour in 2004, playing all the old stuff that we hadn't done in awhile - we didn't need to do it again." - Alex Lifeson, The Arizona Republic, July 24, 2007

"We all really wanted to do 'Faithless', and we talked about actually doing it on the last half of the tour. We prepped it and we ran through it a couple of times, but in the end we just decided to kind of stick with what we had and just change up some of the older stuff." - Alex Lifeson, Crawdaddy, October 22, 2008

"Neil triggers a lot of sounds with electronic drum pads. Now he's happy to call himself a drummer, a bass player, and a guitarist. In 'Far Cry,' there is one great big chord Neil triggers. I told him that every time he plays that part, he has to stick his arm in the air...if you're going to sound like a guitar player, you've got to look like one!" - Geddy Lee, Bass Player, August 2007

"[Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas] were up in Toronto filming a special for the CBC called the '2-4 Anniversary' (a 2-4 is what we Canadians call a case of beer). So they did this crazy special and they called me up and asked me if I would do a little cameo on the show. ... I've known Rick since I was a kid and I hadn't seen him in awhile and it was a blast doing this little segment with them. Then after we finished taping, I was leaving the building and I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great for them to do an intro to one of our songs?'... They said that they'd love to, so I sent them some titles of our songs and that's the one they chose." - Geddy Lee on the McKenzie Brother's intro to "The Larger Bowl", Austin American-Statesman, April 17, 2008

"In deciding to bring ['Natural Science'] back into our live set a few years ago, after not playing it for a while, we made some arrangement changes that we probably would have done at the time it was recorded in 1979 if that long, complex, multi-part suite hadn't been written and recorded in about two days! In most cases, we are happy to play our songs as they were recorded because we remain contented enough with them that way, but other times we can't resist reconsidering. We have done that with a few other older songs, where we felt it simply would have been better without a certain part, or as with 'Entre Nous' last tour, where it would have been better to repeat a certain passage." - Neil Peart on dropping the the second solo from "Natural Science", "Thus Spoke Neil" Drum Magazine, June 2009

"We tried to rehearse 'A Farewell To Kings' on the last tour and I couldn't successfully sing that without hurting myself, so we gave up. So yeah, there are moments of the past I cannot sing anymore." - Geddy Lee, Blender Magazine, April 2009

Promos

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This is a collection of transcripts of magazine and newspaper articles and other media related to this release or coinciding with the time frame surrounding it. This is an ongoing work in progress; feel free to email any suggested additions.

Snakes And Arrows Live (CD) Transcripts

Snakes And Arrows Live (Video) Transcripts