Say what you will about Rush, the Canadian progressive hard rock trio loved and loathed with equal fervor. One thing is clear: despite the intricate time signatures they manipulated throughout their lengthy career, they can’t count. Evidence is how the re-release of the band’s most successful album Moving Pictures, which hit the shelves yesterday (April 15th), is labeled as the album’s 40th anniversary release. Problem is, the album originally hit record store shelves in February … of 1981. Granted, we all have a year in-between then and now we’d like to pretend never happened, but the calendar doesn’t lie.

Anyway, as an enticement for purchase by those who already have the album from one of its four, previous refreshed offerings, the re-release features a previously unreleased concert recorded in the band’s Toronto home base at the old Maple Leaf Gardens a month after the album’s release. We’ll get back to the concert in a bit. But first, an album and, to a degree, a career overview.

Rush started as a more-or-less straightforward ‘70s hard rock trio. Once drummer/lyricist Neal Peart joined guitarist Alex Lifeson and bassist/keyboardist/vocalist Geddy Lee, the band began transforming itself by pursuing more adventuresome riffs and rhythms, while maintaining its foundation in the crunchier side of things. On the verge of calling it a day, Rush decided that if nothing else, it would go out on its own terms with 1976’s 2112, featuring a multi-piece, science fiction-based title track taking up the entirety of Side One.

It worked; the band broke through on what remained of underground FM radio and word-of-mouth among nerds everywhere, who finally had a band they could call their own that rocked hard without the embarrassing excesses of chainsaw crotch rock. Rush proceeded layering strength upon strength, ignoring the critics and packing arenas across the land with its wholehearted pursuit of prog with punch.

In 1980 the band mainstreamed things a bit with its Permanent Waves album, Lee setting aside the shrieking portion of his vocals as Rush concentrated on shorter tunes that could gain more airplay. Again, it worked; “The Spirit of Radio” became an FM mainstream rock radio staple. The following year’s Moving Pictures refined this new direction, as it cemented the band’s place in rock royalty no matter how much the critics howled in protest.

The majority of the 1980s were spent placing Lee’s synthesizer work front and center; this trend reversed with 1989’s Presto. Rush rode the wave for the next two-and-a-half decades, gradually settling into elder statesmen status while still thrilling the faithful with sporadic new releases and tours. The band effectively ended with Peart’s 2015 retirement, any hopes of a return dashed with his death in 2020.

Back to Moving Pictures. It remains Rush’s best-selling album. “Limelight” and “Tom Sawyer” still feature prominently on every classic rock station’s playlist. Whether it was the band’s best album is a matter of opinion, but it is the album most likely to be found in the casual fan’s collection — and the one fans will first pull out of the stacks to try and win over the dubious and uninitiated.

Lyrically, Peart had not yet succumbed to the overriding, bitter atheism that permeated his latter work, although it seeped through on “Witch Hunt.” He emphasized the observational on songs such as “The Camera Eye” and joined the lengthy list of rock stars grumbling about what comes with being one on “Limelight.” Musically, Rush was firing on all cylinders of their red Barchetta, managing the neat trick of fusing crunch with adventures in timekeeping that would have done Dave Brubeck proud. Your average modern pop fan will probably run away in horror, convinced the aliens just landed, but for those who appreciate both Led Zeppelin and Gentle Giant, Moving Pictures is a musical oasis.

The newly released concert in this re-release is well worth the entry price, no matter how many copies of Moving Pictures a Rush fan has in his or her collection. The opening excerpt from “2112” was a bit ragged, but the band quickly settled into a massive, energetic groove laced with precision and power. Rush could be hit or miss live, but on this evening, they were hitting it hard and hot.

And there you have it. A nostalgia exercise for aging boomers? Perhaps. But, a bit of nostalgia never hurt anyone. As for the kids, which in this case is pretty much anyone under 45, give Moving Pictures a listen. You just might learn something.