Rush, Rock Music, and the Middle Class
Dreaming in Middletown
- 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