It's ironic how awful ESL sounds, because my long-time Rush fan friends say that the Moving Pictures tour was the one where they sounded best in person.

As far as comparing live performances with studio performances, It's painful for me to do that when listening to Rush. They are such amazing technicians that I think they're forced to work too hard when playing live. Most of their live performances, despite being technically perfect, don't have the "fun" energy of other live performances I can think of. And this is coming from a die-hard fan who's never missed a concert since the Power Windows tour.

Most live recordings are genuinely fun to listen to if you're familiar with the artist. There's a certain exuberance that just doesn't happen in the studio. Peter Gabriel's "Secret World", Tori Amos' "To Venus and Back", even Pink Floyd's "Delicate Sound of Thunder" all have this quality. The technical details of a live recording may be sub-par, but there's always something about the performance itself that I like. Rush, on the other hand, always gives me the feeling that I'm listening to them work rather than listening to them have fun.