New Rush Monograph Validates My Taste Community

Review: Rush, Rock Music and the Middle Class: Dreaming in Middletown, by Chris McDonald (Indiana University Press, 2009)

This brand-new book has been available from Amazon.com only for about a month. A long time went by without a single customer review appearing, which is perhaps understandable, since the book is a bit dense. (No one even wrote to say they found the book dense.)

I did notice, however, that the number of used copies available of the book is growing, which may be a review in itself.

So I wrote a review of my own, and I'm excited to say that it's the first one to appear. Here it is:

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 of 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 were nonplussed.)

It was all the more gratifying for me, as a fan of Rush since 1982, 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.