I would like to begin by saying that Chris McDonald’s extensive analysis of the 42-year career and significance of the suburban Ontario rock trio Rush would be a better book if only it did not contain quite so much, well, Rush.
I would like to, except that then I risk appearing in a future revised edition as another on McDonald’s lengthy roster of critics who have doled out to Rush a kneejerk, Dangerfieldian lack of respect. Which is hardly fair to the group that gave us the “mean, mean stride” of “Tom Sawyer,” the epic Canada-as-Hades allegory of “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” and invaluable help remembering the Toronto airport code (“YYZ”).
Rush is hard to talk about without sounding like you are making a joke—as amply demonstrated in recent years by the use (however affectionate) of Rush references or cameos as special-comedy-effects in Trailer Park Boys (TV and film), the movie I Love You, Man, the Aqua Teen Hunger Force cartoon...
Carl Wilson is the author of Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (33 1/3 Series, Continuum Books), a book about class, aesthetics, democracy, and Céline Dion. He lives in Toronto, where he works at The Globe and Mail and as doorman of the Trampoline Hall Lecture Series.
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