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Music Pop Vocal

Rush, Rock Music, and the Middle Class

Dreaming in Middletown

by (author) Christopher J. McDonald

Publisher
Indiana University Press
Initial publish date
Nov 2009
Category
Pop Vocal, General, Individual Composer & Musician
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780253221490
    Publish Date
    Nov 2009
    List Price
    $30.00

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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.

About the author

Contributor Notes

Chris McDonald is an ethnomusicologist who specializes in popular music studies. He teaches at Cape Breton University.

Editorial Reviews

McDonald has a lot of interesting points to make about the music, the band, and what was going on in the world surrounding them at the time. Rush fans who are interested in something more in-depth than the normal run of band biographies should at least take a look at this volume.February 12, 2010

Goldmine

If you are the sort who is a Rush freak, a musician, and a fan of academic writing, you'll enjoy this book.March 31, 2010

PopMatters