Album: Presto (1989)

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Songfacts®:

• Within each line of the song is a word that contains letters from another word. For example:
  
  "There is no safe SEAT at the FEAST
  
  Take your best STAB at the BEAST
  
  The NIGHT is wearing THIN
  
  The SAINT is turning to SIN" >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Matthew Daubert - Mequon, WI
• Geddy Lee (from "Rush Profiled!"): "It doesn't really say one thing; it says a bunch of little things, and I think that's OK as long as it sounds good. You know, as long as it rolls off the tongue kind of thing? So I think different songs are different exercises, to a degree, and I think that if they feel like exercises, then there's something wrong with the song. But if they can slip by in a kind of cohesive and fluid way, or if the effect is to be disjoint, and sometimes that's what you're after. Sometimes you want it to be jarring and disjointed and nonsensical. I think it depends on what you're trying to do, and whether you've achieved it in your mind, and whether it actually worked, and 'Anagram,' I think, did work, even though it's a game - the whole song is a game. The choruses are quite smooth and quite interesting, and they have a nice sound to them and they kind of mock the whole song itself, so I think it was effective there."
• (for Mongo) Is added to the name of this song title on the album. It's a joke from the movie Blazing Saddles, referring to the "Candygram for Mongo" scene, according to Geddy on Rockline, December 4, 1989. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Mike - Mountlake Terrace, Washington, for above 2

Comments: 12

• AnonymousOnly someone with the brain of Neil Peart could come up with lyrics like these
• Joe from Grants Pass, OrJust listen to the Music !!! It's at least as clever as the lyrics !!!
  
• Mike from Indianapolis, InThis is song is so much more clever than I thought. I listened to it for years and loved it before really getting the anagrams.
  
  My favorite:
  Reasoning is partly insane.
  Image just an eyeless game.
  
  If you take part of the letters from reasoning you get insane.
  game is image without an 'eye' or I...
  
  Also like "The cosmic is largely comic."
  Meaning if you looses the s in cosmic you can make comic.
  
  It is cool how they not only make the Anagrams, but also the lyrics tell you how to decipher them.
• Gabriel from Minneapolis, MnImage just an eyeless game. I didn't get it all until just now. I'll be listening to this song for weeks now.
• Dave from Plympton, MaI think "MIRACLES will have their CLAIMERS" is one of the coolest anagrams ever!
• Brian from Seattle, WaThis is a clever song even by Peart standards. My favorite: "He and she are in the house but there's only me at home"... ('house' has the letters for 'he' and 'she', and home has 'me').
• Clay from Gonzales, TxPresto took awhile for me to get into.
  But I finaly got into it.
  This song is one of my faves from this album.
• Joshua from La Crosse, WiActually several lines in the song contain more than one anagram - for example, in the chorus again, "There is no safe seat at the feast" (both "safe" and "seat" are anagrams for "feast"). My personal favorite: "Take heart from the harvest/Shave the harvest from the earth".) A very clever concept for a song, even if some of the resulting lyrics are duds ("I hear in the rate of her heart/A tear in the heat of the art" - WTF does that mean?!?).
• Francisco from London, United KingdomDo you reckon that the chorus of this song is a reference to the Eagles' 'Hotel California'? The end of the next-to-last verse of such song goes like this:
  
  "
  And in the master's chambers,
  They gathered for the feast
  They stab it with their steely knives,
  But they just can't kill the beast
  "
  
  Anagram is an AWESOME song by the way. Yes, Presto is great indeed. You have to let it grow. ;)
• John from Asheville, NcI really enjoy the album Presto. Yeah, it's mellower than most Rush albums, but it's got a good groove and melody to many (most) of the songs. Anagram is fine enough, but it's not outstanding...and certainly not in the top tier like The Pass, the record's title track, or the oft-overlooked Available Light. However, it's still hand over fist better than....Hand Over Fist.
• Mike from Indianapolis, InThis whole album really grows on you. One of my favorites.
• Jesse from L.a., CaThis is a pretty cool song! I've learned to appreciate it a bit more over time... Give it a few listens... It'll grow on ya.

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