Music | 01 January 1989

Alex Lifeson, Geddy Lee, Neil Peart

For a band with high standards, a perfect show is impossible, and an excellent show is rare. You hope that the norm is "good". To deliver a really exceptional, comfortable performance before a recording truck or film crew has been our unfulfilled dream of many years. Always it seemed that as soon as the machines started rolling, we forgot how to play and our equipment forgot how to work. But for these two nights, the gods smile. And the film becomes not just a concert, but a symbol - for the band a scrapbook, an autobiography, an era frozen in glacial clarity. For the audience, it can be an enduring souvenir, and if it can't quite capture what it was like to be there, it is a way of seeing through many pairs of eyes, of shifting one's vantage-point around and above the players in a way no mortal could. Hands perform, and hands respond. Hands gesture, and hands respond. A show of ears and eyes, a show of hearts and minds. A Show of Hands. - Neil Peart