Your favourite Rush albums?

OK - Not at all being argumentative here.  I like a good musical debate.

Keep in mind that I am not limiting myself to the arena rock bands.  If I were to throw out bands & musicians from the Rush era that I would go see live any day of the week, over Rush, I would list the following incomplete list (in no particular order).

(1) Rory Gallagher - Lordy, what a great guitarist, and wrote some darn good songs.  A three man band the kicked butt.  He was the Stevie Ray Vaughan of his time - but a hell of a lot more sober.
(2) Roy Buchanan - Not much of a songwriter, but boy could he work that telecaster.
(3) Springsteen - In that era he was hard to be paralleled for songwriting and that B&W video of him at the Hammersmith Odeon in London says it all.  His wall of sound is not my cup of tea, but serious stage presence.
(4) The Grateful Dead - Don't judge me, but that band was a true band.  They listened to each other during the 1970's and delved into and incorporated musical styles that have never matched. Driving rock to improvisational jazz.  Their songs still endure today.
(5) The Clash - In that short window, they changed the course of Rock n' Roll.
(6) The Allman Brothers Band - OMG, what can you say other than their name.  Did they invent the two guitar and two drummer rock phenom?
(7) Jethro Tull - What about Tull?  Yikes, those 70's LPs are wonderful.  First time I saw them live they opened up with Thick as a Brick.  Could have walked out then.  Their shows had little improvisation, but the songs were works of art.
(8) Frank Zappa - Roxy & Elsewhere!  Apostrophe,  Nuff Said!
(9) Rollings Stones - during the Mick Taylor years.  He is still a great blues guitarist.
(10) Santana - Now that was a fun band to see.  There was a reason he named one of his LPs Festival.  And a great guitar player too.
(11) Patti Smith Group - I'll take one My Generation or Space Monkey over any Rush concert.
(12) Eric Clapton - Even during his drunken 70's, he was gold.
(13) Johnny Winter - Lordy!  Catch him on a sober night and his playing was seeped in classic blues and rock.  An amazing guitar player. Sometimes he was too fast, but when he played the blues, he was channeling the real crossroads deal.
(14) Thin Lizzy - Saw them on their first US Tour and first stop of their first US Tour.  Serious power and stage presence.
(15) Honorable Mentions - All those great blues artists who were playing small clubs but made their mark on the music of yesterday, today and tomorrow.  Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Luther Allison.  Son Seals.  Play all night, party all night, catch a good burrito on the way home from a classic Chicago Blues Club.  Life doesn't get any better.  

Thanks for permitting my indulgences and my trip down memory lane.  

Great list my friend and you are very welcome to post your preferences as there were some truly great bands there in their time.
But..... Rory Gallagher... Sober?
Did I miss that day?
Seriously I caught Rory back in the early 80,s in a little venue in Nottingham, England called Rock City.... and yes he seriously did kick bottom! Great night!
Thank you!

@pgaulke60, great list. I agree that those are some great bands and I’m big fans of a lot of them. But a couple of thoughts. First, the thread was about favorite Rush albums....not live performances. I mention that because some bands do great studio stuff and some bands do great live stuff. Not all do both. Not all do either one all the time. Can’t comment on Rush because I never saw them. Did you? I have friends and family who have seen them many times and say they put on a great show. I'm not into large venue live music.

Second, as someone who likes most of what’s on your list (never interested in the Dead, Zappa or The Clash though) I don’t see where there is a necessity to exclude Rush based on song writing or musicianship in comparison. I get that someone might not like them.....even I don’t like over half of their discography....but it certainly isn’t on the basis of their skills. They are truly consummate musicians in every sense of the word.

I love Rush, particularly "Moving Pictures" and "Greatest Hits". I really enjoyed the documentary about Rush’s final concert tour. Today, I bought "2112" and "Hemispheres" on the recommendations of the audiophile Rush fans here on the forum. I’m looking forward to hearing them. They seem to have very loyal fans here.

As a once-Rush fanatic growing up, that's a tough question.

But I think I have to go with Hemispheres.  That's when I'd got in to Rush most deeply and it's their most complexly layered, ambitious stuff.  I had so many nights with the old headphones on just being immersed in the world of Hemispheres.   It's still the case that if I put that first side on, I can't help but sit through the whole thing.

If I had to choose a favorite individual Rush song it would probably be Xanadu - the music, the lyrics, the playing, the modulation....that song is just a trip I always love to go on.

I'm in what seems to be the majority who didn't care for anything beyond, say, exit stage left.  I did enjoy some of Signals, but they had started off on their other trajectory by then and it just didn't grab me.I found virtually all the albums afterward that I heard (even in parts) seemed to lack the amazing hooks of all their albums up through Moving Pictures.  They always managed to make their music "hooky" not in the sense of "pop music-like" (though they did have some hooky songs), but rather in the sense of memorable vocal lines, music changes, and memorable riffs by all 3 guys.  For me they had the "dried up band" sound after that, ESPECIALLY when it came to the late 80's/90's onward.  Yeah...they still produced some albums with some great energy, but to my ears, nothing that sounded remotely memorable.  Geddy's singing was just modulation over the music, nothing memorable, and the music also was just sort of moving here and there with nothing sticking out.   I can remember virtually every Peart/Lee/Lifeson part on every song up to Signals...beyond that...nothing stuck.

My friends and I "progressed" beyond Rush and prog rock to "Fusion" (jazz/rock) that had become bigger, and also "real jazz" and then on to a wide array of musical influences.  That was the "I'm sort of embarrassed to ever have been so in to Rush" phase, and "jeeze prog rock...remember that? "  Kind of squeamish looking back on it, because music was still one's identity, and if you wanted a new identiy you had to shed/reject the old one.

Thank goodness for maturity later in life.  Now that I'm a middle-aged fart, I"m not rebelling against the last thing I liked, I have no particular demands of musical progress, and so it's been an absolute BLAST revisiting Rush.   It feels like I can fully appreciate them again, with something near the enthusiasm I had when I was a young Rush fan.And damn, those vinyl remasters are killer!  I'd had various albums on digital but rarely played them.  When I got the vinyl remasters it was a revelation: Rush sounded like Rush again, but perhaps even better.

So, I'm a Rush fan again.  With no apologies!