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

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.