academia meets music: Rush and the suburban middle class

After writing a master's thesis on Voïvod, Fear Factory, and dystopian sf, the combination of academia and music has become almost inevitable to me. So while Greg Pratt reports (in exclaim!) on a scholarly book about Rush with a tone of surprise, I'm kind of surprised it hasn't happened sooner.

The book in question is Rush, Rock Music, and the Middle Class: Dreaming in Middletown by Chris McDonald, an ethnomusicologist at Cape Breton University. The premise sounds plausible: that Rush's career and music embodies middle class anxieties and aspirations. Call me intrigued.

If you're a Rush fan with an appreciation for academic analysis, there are a few other pieces of scholarly writing on the band that I can recommend:

• Durrell S. Bowman: “‘Let Them All Make Their Own Music’: Individualism, Rush, and the Progressive / Hard Rock Alloy, 1976-77.” In Progressive Rock Reconsidered. Ed. Kevin Holm-Hudson. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. 183-218.

Bowman is also working on putting together a book on Rush and Philosophy.

• Deena Weinstein. Serious Rock: Bruce Springsteen / Rush / Pink Floyd. Montreal: CultureTexts, 1985.

Weinstein also discusses Rush briefly in her book-length sociological study of heavy metal culture: Heavy Metal: The Music And Its Culture, New York: Dacapo 2000.