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Grace Under Pressure Tour was recorded live at Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, Canada on September 21, 1984. Rush are renowned for their generously long concerts performances, especially the last few tours where most of the shows have approached three hours in duration, but the Grace Under Pressure video only gives you a frustratingly short 63 minutes worth of material from the show. What you do get is absolutely amazing though, beginning with the best show opener they have ever produced, "The Spirit Of Radio". That is following their usual Three Stooges intro music of course.

The 1984 version of Rush finds professor Neil Peart with closely cropped hair and a long rat tail hanging down his back; AlexLifeson still in his semi-Flock-Of-Seagull's hairdo phase and favoring his "Hentor Sportscaster" guitar (actually a Fender Stratocaster - it's a long story) almost exclusively on this tour; and Geddy Lee laying down the grooves on his little, headless, Steinberger L-2 bass guitar that he favored throughout the early 80's. Also, in very non rock musician fashion, Alex and Geddy always performed in suit jackets back then - with the sleeves rolled up of course.

One of the coolest things about this video is that you get the entire "Fear" trilogy in order beginning with Part 1 "The Enemy Within", from Grace Under Pressure, followed by Part 2 "The Weapon", from Signals, and ending with Part 3 "Witch Hunt", from Moving Pictures. Interesting how the songs were released in reverse order. An absolutely killer version of "New World Man" is followed by the back to back Grace Under Pressure classics "Distant Early Warning" and "Red Sector A", which should convince anyone as to just how underrated the Grace Under Pressure album really is. Geddy preceded "Red Sector A" with "here's another red song for yah", which means either "Red Lenses", "Red Barchetta", or both songs were left off the video, along with many others.

Rush used to regularly play "Closer To The Heart" way back when and it sounded powerful this night. I'd love to see them dust it off when I see them in concert next week (June 23rd). I didn't mean to rub it in. Well, maybe a little. Rush usually slips in a medley or two during each tour, and this one was no different. "YYZ", "The Temples Of Syrinx", and "Tom Sawyer" were fused together here, but thankfully they were each almost played in their entirety. "YYZ" gets shortened by about a minute. They closed out the show with a medley of "Vital Signs", "Finding My Way", and "In TheMood". Other than "The Camera Eye", "Vital Signs" has probably been the least played track from the Moving Pictures album, but this Police-influenced gem paved the way for the stylistic changes you would hear on follow up albums like Signals and Grace Under Pressure.

The Grace Under Pressure Tour audio was remixed by Alex Lifeson and Mike Fraser and is presented in DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround, and PCM stereo. All of the tracks sound exceptional and are clear improvements over the original recordings. The DTS track sounds especially good and is on par with most new concert DVDs I have reviewed. The show is presented in its original full frame format and does not show much improvement over the original VHS version. The picture was cleaned up some, but it is still quite soft and often gets overpowered by the massive light show. The camera works leaves a lot to be desired as the angle changes come much too rapidly for my taste.

No special features were included, and for some reason the "Big Money" video, which was included with the original VHS version, was left off the DVD. It was certainly not due to time constraints either, since the total running time is only a measly 63 minutes. About the only thing that could have made this DVD better is if they would have added some extra songs that originally ended up on the cutting room floor. Although it is much too short, Grace Under Pressure Tour is another outstanding Rush concert DVD for any fan's collection.

Reviewed by Paul M. Roy - June 2007