Rush-“Vital Signs” (Part III—Commentary Plus Alternate Versions)

Now, keeping in mind that this is long before the widespread takeover of autotune and the disgrace that it brought to the recording industry, I think that there is still going to be some resistance to thinking about our inner lives in terms of recording. The problem is that it makes it seem as if we were merely machines, that what we think of as most ourselves is merely mediated and cobbled together from a variety of external sources (those “interfaces and interchanges” and “interference” and “mixed feelings”—in particularly the sense in which we have “mixed feelings about the function and the form” being unable to come to terms with them).

But, and I think that this is what the recording studio setting in particular suggests, it doesn’t have to seem so bad if you consider that that is also how songs get made. The song that, as I’ve already discussed is the spiritual predecessor (literally) to this song, “The Spirit of Radio,” even explicitly argues the case for the role of technology in something like self-reflection in these lines: “All this machinery making modern music can still be open-hearted / Not so fully charted its really just a question of your honesty.”

Complicated artifacts that they are—in some cases, perhaps infinitely so—works of art have often been taken to be at least analogical to human beings because they appear to form dynamically self-contained and self-regulating wholes. Indeed, all of the processes that “Vital Signs” concerns itself with are essentially concerned with the regulation of external inputs (that is what recording is after all), so the anti-conformity metaphor is essentially an issue of how one comports oneself in relation to the outside. The persistent emphasis on mediation in the music video, the parade of images of the band putting together the many pieces of the song that is playing in the video only serves to underscore what an achievement the song is, what work went into it.

In terms of the central message of the song, that you have to “deviate from the norm,” we can think of the norm as simply taking things as they are, accepting what is as what must be and conforming to that, rather than forging one’s own reaction and one’s own path. One of the most fun lines in the song (ones which I’m sure must make Neil Peart very satisfied with his cleverness), encapsulates this very well: “An ounce of perception, a pound of obscure.” The line that it is riffing off of is “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” and the idea is that one’s own clear sight is worth far more than anything less genuine. Indeed, the general falseness of the norm means that it is more likely to obscure than illuminate. We give in to the norm perhaps because the alternative is too difficult, or one has been worn down—the lines in the chorus that go, “A tired mind become a shape shifter”—so we choose to adopt the shape of another rather one’s own because it is easier.

But again, it is important to remember that genuineness is not the same as purity or self-enclosure: mediation and mixing here represent the achievement of an identity rather than its compromise. With recording—and by extension, with life—it is not just a question of what the inputs are, but what you do with them. It is so difficult to balance the function and the form without simply giving in to the norm precisely because that means there is no set answer or formula to follow: mediate too much and form takes over and kills the life that the form is meant to serve. But let the function dominate and without the regulation of form the function cannot be properly fulfilled.

(Surely autotune would be an example of conforming to the worst kind of norm possible in the worst kind of way—certainly it could be said to demonstrates the least amount of “The Spirit of Radio”’s “honesty” were it not for the fact that so much of it is so obvious. In this regard the subtler forms of autotune are perhaps more insidious and dishonest, if perhaps less overtly obnoxious.)

This aside about autotune leads me to the last thing about this song I would like to discuss. Near the end of the song things take a dramatic change musically. At around 3:04 in the album version we get to the “Everybody got mixed feelings,” “Everybody got to deviate / elevate / escalate/ emancipate from the norm” section. The various words that Geddy sings about how we ought to relate to the norm express the variety of issues at stake here. First of all, everyone has to deviate from the norm because the norm is an artificial determination, calculated from a whole field of values, so in this regard the whole idea of "Unstable condition, a symptom of life" that this song begins with holds true (for an interested recap of where our current obsession with the idea of the norm and the average see this article). But the other phrasings Geddy uses mark a particular kind of normative determination to deviate from the norm by rising above and getting free of it. This side of it connects to Rush's general nonconformity insofar as the idea is to be guided by what really matters rather than what is reflected in some external or artificial notion like that of the norm.

And to return to the music, these ideas receive a really amazing musical exposition. The opening to this is marked by a great bass solo and a scattering of really cool bass fills in the album version while the guitar plays some great atmospheric chords against a heavenly (I don’t know the term here) synth. Coupled with the lyrics it gives the song a really triumphant and transcendent ending. But as great it is on the album the live versions are immensely superior. Gems like the versions of the song from the 1984 “Grace Under Pressure” tour and the 2002 “Vapor Trails” tour (the song was actually recorded in Quebec but its bundled with “Rush in Rio”), are one of the reasons why I think Rush sells so many live records. Their album versions are fantastic and enormously difficult on their own, but the band pulls them off beautifully live (the many versions of “Bravado” are worth checking out).

Anyway, these live versions of “Vital Signs” really shine in this final section. Here is the “Grace Under Pressure” version:

The final section begins around 3:10, and certainly Geddy shows off his bass chops there. But what’s really special to me are the great guitar fills that Alex inserts everywhere. You can hear him start layering the notes at 3:22, and he continues to do some really beautiful playing through 3:46 in particular. Meanwhile, Geddy’s voice is, as some of the commenters on the video note, really in fine form—not quite as high as it is in the 70s but still very strong.

But as much as I like that version, the “Vapor Trails”/ “Rush in Rio” version is the definitive one to me. Now, I’ve had to link to a recording of the entire “Rush in Rio” album because the cut of just the song isn’t on Youtube, but it’s just a matter of finding the song at the very end, starting at 2:55:08

The sound of this “Vital Signs” is really robust—when Geddy sings “Leave out the fiction. / The fact is this friction / Will only be worn by persistence. / Leave out conditions. / Courageous convictions / Will drag this dream into existence,” you can hear the will behind it. But what really shines is the final section of the song, beginning at 2:58:18. First of all, I love Geddy’s exclamation of “Hoo ha” there, I always mentally insert it into every other version of the song that I hear. But again, what really shines is the guitar work starting at 2:58:35. I just love it. Listen and maybe you can make an ounce of perception out of the pound of obscure I’m serving up here.