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.
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"A well-researched, provocative glimpse into one of the most popular, yet oft-overlooked bands in the history of rock." —Theo Cateforis, editor of The Rock History Reader
(Theo Cateforis, editor of The Rock History Reader 2010)"McDonald makes an important contribution to our understanding of the middle class as a force in North American rock culture, and at the same time offers a pioneering look at one of the most idiosyncratic and influential bands of the past four decades. This book should be welcomed not only by those with an interest in hard and progressive rock, but also by anyone who wishes to understand the role of social class in recent popular culture." —William Echard, Carleton University, author of Neil Young and the Poetics of Energy
(William Echard, Carleton University author of Neil Young and the Poetics of Energy 2010)"As Chris McDonald correctly points out in Dreaming in Middletown, writing on rock music traditionally has tended to privilege the working class as the ultimate site of authentic expression. It is refreshing to encounter a scholarly book that finally takes up the challenge of interpreting popular music's meanings in relation to its substantial, yet often neglected, middle class fan base. Deftly interweaving in-depth musical analyses with the insights of sociology, cultural studies, philosophy, and the voices of Rush fans themselves, McDonald has produced a smart, probing, and illuminating scholarly work that deserves a place alongside Susan Fast's In the Houses of the Holy as one of the best musicological studies of a single rock band." —Theo Cateforis, Syracuse University, editor of The Rock History Reader
(Theo Cateforis, Syracuse University editor of The Rock History Reader )"If you are the sort who is a Rush freak, a musician, and a fan of academic writing, you'll enjoy this book." —PopMatters
(PopMatters )"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." —Goldmine, February 12, 2010
(Goldmine )About the Author
Chris McDonald is an ethnomusicologist who specializes in popular music studies. He teaches at Cape Breton University.
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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A rich and revealing treatment.,
By 334 "334" (New York, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rush, Rock Music, and the Middle Class: Dreaming in Middletown (Profiles in Popular Music) (Paperback)
This book is a high-level academic monograph, and thus some lay readers may find it difficult. But it is rich in ideas and well worth the read. The author's appreciation of Rush comes through clearly (he remains objective while not attempting to hide that he is a fan), and many of his insights into the band's work are fascinating. Moreover, through the excellent summaries of other scholars' theories about North American and middle-class culture, it has a lot of sociology to teach. Even readers who don't particularly like Rush can learn a lot about the place that "progressive rock" (a label the band itself never cared for, but the least objectionable one there is) occupies in music history, the role that the middle class has had in defining cultural tastes in twentieth-century North America, and the brand of individuality that many middle-class North Americans were reared upon. McDonald's examination of the Ayn Rand fiasco is particularly revealing about discursive differences between North America and Great Britain. (It explains why British critics took umbrage at Rush's particular expression of individualism, while most Americans saw it as nothing out of the ordinary.)
It was all the more gratifying for me, as a fan of Rush since 1981, to have Rush's devotees examined seriously as a "taste community." I hazard to say that many Rush fans will see themselves described in these pages. The elements that made Rush appeal to many - the fantasy-escapism, the fierce individualism, the interest in technology, the love of complex musicianship - is all put in a larger cultural context. This book not only taught me a lot of sociology, but helped me put my own tastes, and those of my class and generation, in a meaningful perspective.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A published dissertation,
By Gedhead (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rush, Rock Music, and the Middle Class: Dreaming in Middletown (Profiles in Popular Music) (Paperback)
This book reads like a thesis because it IS a thesis - Chris McDonald conducted the research for this book as part of his PhD. Thus said, it is an academic tome. Being that I am both an academic AND a hardcore Rush fan, this thoughtful and serious work on Rush and the middle class delights me no end. It may be difficult for the lay reader. Even if you are not a Rush fan, but interested in the study of class, McDonald makes an important scholarly contribution to the literature on the middle class, a oft neglected subject of study in sociology.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Book for the High-Brow Crowd,
By Historian Engineer (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rush, Rock Music, and the Middle Class: Dreaming in Middletown (Profiles in Popular Music) (Paperback)
This is a wonderful scholarly work on the band and its music and lyrics. Not being familiar with philosophy and cultural theory, this was a hard book for me. But I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about how Rush was related to middle class attitudes. I agree with everything that Chris MacDonald postulated. I could see myself in many of the situations he brings up. Each topic is well researched and backed up with a good deal of other works. I believe the essence of Rush has been captured.
I was looking more for a book on what the meaning of Rush's lyrics, but this book went even deeper. If you are looking for a higher meaning then this is the book for you.
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