If you grew up in the Midwest in the 80s, part of the soundtrack was the complicated melodies and dense (if not pretentious) lyrics of Rush. This comes to mind because while finishing up on the stories that I’ve been slaving away at for the last four months for the NAA, I clicked through on a link and found myself listening to an Ultimate Headphone collection that included songs from Rush.
It had been so long since I had sat down and listened to their music … immediately, I closed my eyes and I could *smell* the interior of my old 1974 Pontiac Ventura. I had that car during my whole "muscle car" days, when I yanked the engine and plonked in a monster 454 big-block Chevy that a mechanic named "Kowabunga" (we all called him "Bunga" for short) had rebuilt.
I was working 3 jobs back then, on top of going to college, and to clear my head I used to climb into that unholy beast of a car, fire up that huge V-8 and cruise the back roads of rural Wisconsin, tuning into the late-night FM rock stations, at an hour when the station managers no longer yanked the leash on the DJs, and they could indulge by playing the music that they really liked. These were the hours of the King Biscuit Flour Hour … and of Rush. The Ventura needed very little coaxing to tear up the roads – about halfway to the floor would have the needle buried at 120. I don’t think I ever really took it to flat-out. Which is probably a good thing, since the shitty all-weather Sears radials probably would have blown out – as it was, I was pushing them to the point where they were losing adhesion and it felt like I was piloting a runaway jet fighter down a hockey rink.
But getting back to the Rush fans, it seemed like every goddam backyard kegger and student slum basement party had a scrawny, intense, wired-up guy in granny glasses who was the biggest Rush fan in the world. This guy would latch onto you and spend the rest of the party trailing you around, trying to convince you that Geddy Lee was the 2nd coming … of Mozart or Jesus or Moloch or something…
If you’re nodding your head right now, you know what I mean. If you’re not, well then, I guess you just hadda be there and be then. Something about that music, in that time and place, reached out to these people who were on society’s fringes, who were going to the parties and finding themselves alone in the crowds, trying to fit in but not knowing how. Reached out to them and grabbed something inside them and compelled them to try to share it with otheres. I hope that I was polite to them, although I rather suspect that I was not, as I was then focused more on getting the feathered-haired, shiny-cheeked Upper Midwest college girls to do enough Electric Lemonade shots so that neither of us would mind making dingbats of ourselves out on the dance floor.
So what happened to this somatotype? The intense, intellectual, alienated geek? What kind of music are they listening to these days? Or do they even bother; are they all diving headfirst into their computers, surfing the web in search of the type of conversation that they are unable to conduct in the meatworld? To all them lonely souls, a link to a Rush song above about the people who don’t, can’t or won’t fit in. Lyrics below:
Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
In between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown
Growing up it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone
Nowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so alone
Subdivisions –
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
Subdivisions –
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out
Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth
Drawn like moths we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night
Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight
Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights
Hi Dave.
Okay, as one of those “people who were on society’s fringes, who were going to the parties and finding themselves alone in the crowds, trying to fit in but not knowing how,” I’ve got to say, “Bite me!” for slamming Rush. Even if you don’t like the lyrics, you’ve got to know good music when you hear it. And Rush is good music. Unless you just really don’t like them at all, I suggest that you go to one Rush’s live performances some time. I did a couple of years ago and even in their ripe old age, they’re still on top of their game.
About their song lyrics, their growth and then decline as song writers is documented in them. The lyrics you chose were after my time, so to speak, and oh so melodramatic in their angst, in my opinion. There was some okay stuff then and after. But the best can be found before Signals. One of my favorites is Red Barchetta, a song that even my 15 year old nephew, who is learning the play drums and was inspiration for my handle, incidentally, enjoys. It’s got it all: bad-ass drumming, sci-fi story, classic car, driving fast, outsmarting authority, breaking laws and getting away with it…That’s rock and roll, man!
My uncle has a country place
That no one knows about
He says it used to be a farm
Before the Motor Law
And on Sundays I elude the eyes
And hop the Turbine Freight
To far outside the Wire
Where my white-haired uncle waits
Jump to the ground
As the Turbo slows to cross the borderline
Run like the wind
As excitement shivers up and down my spine
Down in his barn
My uncle preserved for me an old machine
For fifty odd years
To keep it as new has been his dearest dream
I strip away the old debris
That hides a shining car
A brilliant red Barchetta
From a better vanished time
I fire up the willing engine
Responding with a roar
Tires spitting gravel
I commit my weekly crime
Wind
In my hair
Shifting and drifting
Mechanical music
Adrenaline surge…
Well-weathered leather
Hot metal and oil
The scented country air
Sunlight on chrome
The blur of the landscape
Every nerve aware
Suddenly ahead of me
Across the mountainside
A gleaming alloy air car
Shoots towards me, two lanes wide
I spin around with shrieking tires
To run the deadly race
Go screaming through the valley
As another joins the chase
Drive like the wind
Straining the limits of machine and man
Laughing out loud with fear and hope
I’ve got a desperate plan
At the one-lane bridge
I leave the giants stranded at the riverside
Race back to the farm
To dream with my uncle at the fireside
“So what happened to this somatotype? The intense, intellectual, alienated geek? What kind of music are they listening to these days? Or do they even bother; are they all diving headfirst into their computers, surfing the web in search of the type of conversation that they are unable to conduct in the meatworld?”
I can’t speak for all of us but I quit giving a damn about fitting in a long time ago. I couldn’t pick Christina Aguellera (spelling?) out of a line up and that doesn’t bother me at all. I haven’t a clue what’s supposed to be cool and trendy nowadays, wouldn’t waste my time trying to find out and I’m never embarassed when others discover that about me. I listen to whatever I like at the moment, which can be anything from my Best of The Carpenters compilation CD to my favorite old Rush songs to Pretenders to Maroon 5 to No Doubt. (Yeah, I know, I’m not supposed to like the Carpenters. No one does. That’s why everyone knows the lyrics to their songs: because they don’t listen to them. wink)
Yes, I have spent a lot of time online trying to find others who are also less interested in the flavor of the day as served by the major media outlets and more interested in what makes us tick, individually and collectively. I’m fortunate to have met some online and IRL, too, and those kinships have usually developed into friendship.
However, and most importantly, I spend the greater part of my online time hunting down bloggers who slam Rush so that I can leave messages in their comments sections, telling them to bite me. :b