Rush is a Band

A blog devoted to RUSH:
Neil Peart, Geddy Lee & Alex Lifeson

Thu, Mar 28, 2024

Happy 35th anniversary to Rush's debut album!

Sun, Mar 29, 2009@2:47PM | comments removed/disabled

Sometime in March of 1974, Rush and their management formed their own record company, Moon Records, and released Rush's self-title debut album in Canada. From wikipedia:

... Only 3,500 copies of the original Moon Records LP (catalog number MN-100) were pressed. The first version of the LP has a cream-coloured label with a blue Moon Records logo and black type. The album was soon picked up by WMMS, a radio station in Cleveland, Ohio. Donna Halper, a DJ working at the station, selected "Working Man" for her regular play list. Copies of the Moon Records album were imported to the Cleveland area and quickly sold out. The song's blue collar theme resonated with hard rock fans.

The record's popularity in Cleveland led to the re-release of the album by Mercury Records. The first Canadian Mercury release on the standard red Mercury label is nearly as rare as the Moon version. It also had the Moon number 'MN-100' between the run-out groves, indicating that it was pressed from the same metal parts as the Moon disc. A special thank you to Donna Halper was added to the album credits. At that point manager Ray Danniels scraped together an additional $9000 for producer Terry Brown to professionally re-mix all of the recordings for better sound quality. This remix version was used for later releases most of which used the Mercury "skyline" record label instead of the red label.

A later Moon Records version of undetermined origin has a pink label with gray moon craters. ...

The album peaked on the Billboard charts at 105 and was certified Gold by the RIAA on February 1, 1995. A remastered version of the album was released in 1997. And just this past summer, an alternate version of the song Working Man (with a different solo) was released for the Rock Band video game and later made available to the public for digital download on iTunes.

Here's the complete video of Rush's appearance on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert from October 9, 1974 where they perfom In The Mood and Finding My Way from this album along with Best I Can:

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