Rush is a Band

A blog devoted to RUSH:
Neil Peart, Geddy Lee & Alex Lifeson

Fri, Mar 29, 2024

New Rush book now available for pre-order: Rush, Rock Music, and the Middle Class: Dreaming in Middletown

Thu, Aug 27, 2009@9:01PM | comments removed/disabled

Back in May of 2008 I posted a survey for Rush fans that was put together by musician, musicologist and Rush fan Chris McDonald. Chris was working on a book that was to be an academic (musicological) study of Rush and wanted to get a representative range of opinions on the band from fans. He also requested that fans send him any photographs of the band that they were willing to let him use. Later in July of 2008 we got a sneak peak at the subject matter of the book when Chris wrote an article for the July 2008 issue of the academic journal Popular Music & Society titled Open Secrets: Individualism and Middle-Class Identity in the Songs of Rush. I'm happy to say that Chris has finished the book and it will be available for purchase this Fall. The title is Rush, Rock Music, and the Middle Class: Dreaming in Middletown and you can pre-order it at this link. From the book's description:

Canadian progressive rock band Rush was the voice of the suburban middle class. In this book, Chris McDonald assesses the band's impact on popular music and its legacy for legions of fans. McDonald explores the ways in which Rush's critique of suburban life -- and its strategies for escape -- reflected middle-class aspirations and anxieties, while its performances manifested the dialectic in prog rock between discipline and austerity, and the desire for spectacle and excess. The band's reception reflected the internal struggles of the middle class over cultural status. Critics cavalierly dismissed, or apologetically praised, Rush's music for its middlebrow leanings. McDonald's wide-ranging musical and cultural analysis sheds light on one of the most successful and enduring rock bands of the 1970s and 1980s.

The book's publisher is the Indiana University Press and it will tentatively be released on October 28th. Chris wanted me to personally thank everyone who sent him their survey responses and photographs; they were a big help in completing the book.

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