| Earlier
this month, I got myself a new hard-drive based MP3 player.
And I realize that many of you are probably dreading another
“oh-man-how-great-are iPods” essay, especially
considering the late date as well as last month’s cell-phone
misadventure. Relax, I’m not gonna do that. What I am
going to praise it for is the forced sense of nostalgia it
creates. As most of you know, the first week of ‘pod
ownership consists solely of loading all your CDs onto it.
For me, this was pretty much a full time job. The nice thing
about the program I used is that it plays back the disc you
just loaded automatically. This took me on a nice little stroll
down memory lane, being that I loaded quite a few albums that
I haven’t listened to in years -- ones I thought I might
get the urge to listen to at some point, so I figured I better
put them on there, just in case. In the many hours spent sitting
at the computer screen, I visited some old friends -- friends
like Metallica (pre-Black Album), Queensryche, and Suicidal
Tendancies. Hell, I even listened to Glenn Danzig’s
highly underrated (and largely unsophisticated) new age album.
But of all my old favorites, none was favored more than Rush.
And listening to the hours, yes hours (ain’t technology
great?) of gigabytes devoted to my favorite band when I was
14, I realized that these three guys from Canada tell me more
about music and culture than any other band I can think of.
I really can’t think of any band more polarizing than
Rush. There are no casual Rush fans. Everyone Rush fan I know
absolutely worships them. They have seen them live countless
time (the band remains a very large concert draw, despite
almost no press), own all of their records -- even many redundant
greatest hits packages, and will defend them more vehemently
than anyone other than Grateful Dead fans. Yet at the same
time Rush is the least hip band you can think of. People don’t
even like them ironically (which is to say the really do like
them, they just are ashamed to admit it). To many, especially
in the indie-rock crowd, the band is the prime example of
all that is bloated and pretentious in rock music. That leads
us to the only two questions you could ask about such a band:
why do people love them so much; and why do people hate them
so much?
Before you ask why people love Rush, you have to
ask who loves Rush. At the risk of stereotyping, your average
Rush fan is a white male, ages 12 and up. And it is notable
that an older band can still attract young fans. Part of this
is the culture of rock musicians in America. If you’re
the kind of kid who plays guitar, bass, or drums (especially
drums), and you’re overly concerned with your technical
ability, you’re probably going to be a Rush fan. Guitar
and Drum teachers across the country spread the Gospel According
to Geddy, Alex, and Neil to a new crop of converts every year.
If you play in a rock band and are in your high school
Marching Band, it’s almost a forgone conclusion that
you will buy at least Moving Pictures. But the musical
ability is only one half of the equation. The technical bombast
is matched, and maybe outstripped by the lyrical content.
The thing about the lyrics to Rush songs is that they really
matter. There are no songs about the old rock and roll
stand-bys: chicks, drugs, rebellion, and cars. Rush songs
are about true love and relationships, addiction, righteous
rebellion, and cars-as-a-metaphor-for-freedom. There’s
also Communism, the environment, Ayn Rand, Jung, and self-actualization.
All of these things add up to music that is tailor-made to
kids (mostly boys) who feel two things: they don’t really
fit in (especially with the opposite sex) and that they’re
smarter than most everyone else.
 Rush
songs are dramatic. There are epic struggles told with epic
words. They make broad proclamations and great assurances.
And that is what those kids are looking for (trust me). And
this is not music for every outcast, you see -- it’s
for outcasts that aren’t really rebellious. You see,
teenage Rush fans often get good grades, don’t really
get into trouble, and are pretty involved in stuff in their
schools. But nevertheless, there is a subtle feeling that
certain things are not for them: girls, popularity, athletic
ability, etc. But they are smart (at least they think so),
and the complex lyrical and musical statements help them cope.
And, say whatever else you want to about them, Rush is always
optimistic. They champion perseverance and the righteous struggle,
assuring the listener that the noble man will ultimately come
through in the end. For example, the only songs I have ever
heard that really adequately illustrated what a Herculean
task it was for me as a freshman/sophomore in high school
to talk to girls are Rush songs -- two, in fact: “War
Paint” off of Presto and “The Big Wheel”
off of Roll the Bones. These songs include lines
that pretty much summed my estimation of romantic success,
lines such as “he can take the princess / if he can
take the fight,” “prisoner or fate / victim of
circumstance,” and “sometimes the odd number wins.”
I used to listen to those songs to get “psyched up”
if I was going to hang out with chicks. Normal kids don’t
do that, and you can’t do that to normal bands. But
Rush is not a normal band -- they’re a niche band, and
the only band which fills that particular niche. And that
means they will always be as hated as they are loved.
Rush is passionate, and their fans are equally so. And passionate
things are often unhip. Why is that? I don’t really
know -- maybe it’s because it’s always odd to
see people who care so much about something that you feel
is pretty blasé or even stupid. (Sci-fi fans get this
a lot. Personally, I don’t see the attraction to Buffy
the Vampire Slayer, but I know people that are bonkers
for it. And on some level that does amuse me. But maybe I’m
just a bad person.) But I think it is also that this level
of raw, emotional commitment rubs some people a little too
closely. Maybe a couple of bad breaks or missed opportunities
and they’d be right there singing along with “Subdivisions.”
You add these to elements to the general anti-musicianship
(or at least amusicianship) that is a staple of some much
punk rock, and you really do get the antithesis of cool, at
least to the hipster set. That is why the Velvet Underground
will always be the “coolest” band ever. Nobody
in the band really knew what they were doing, and it seemed
like they really didn’t need to be doing it.
That made it arty and pure, whereas it seems like the members
of Rush have been preparing their whole lives to do what they
do. This is not what a lot of people want rock to be; they
feel it should be felt instead of thought, spontaneous instead
of prepared, and honest instead of grand. They distrust things
that are big, because they couldn’t possibly be honest
if that much thought went into them. Ultimately, it comes
down to what you personally think rock music should be: should
its energy be directed at other people or at the self? Should
it be physical, intellectual, or spiritual? Is it “Let’s
Spend the Night Together” or “All You Need is
Love” or -- or better yet is it “I’m Waiting
for the Man” or “Tom Sawyer”?
Fortunately, it can be all of these things at once (and only
isn’t when jackoffs like me write about it). I can easily
have the Velvet Underground and Rush on my ‘pod without
conflict. And will I really listen to Rush that much now?
Probably not -- not because I’m too hip now, not because
I don’t like it any more, but because I loved it way
too much as a kid not to like it now. I don’t think
I’ll really listen to it because I don’t really
need it any more -- it got me through 14, and now I’m
listening to the stuff for 27. But I’ll tell you two
things: a lot of the bands I am listening to remind me a lot
of Rush (although not too obviously); and the best song I
ever wrote, which I wrote at 21 -- many years post-Rush --
sounds an awful lot like Neil Peart, or so I’ve been
told. So as it stays in me, it stays in the ‘pod. |
