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."