Rush’s genre

A bit off topic, but still about Rush. One day in one of my classes this year, I was listening to Different Stages, and the guy next to me wanted to listen to my CD player. I reluctantly gave him my cd player, and the first song he listened to was Nobody's Hero. When the song was over, he turned to me and said, "Are these guys a gay band?"

It made me so angry!

Single Coil wrote: If they didn't invent prog-metal... who did?

Queen did with their debut and more so with Queen II. 

Then Metallica re-invented it 6 years before "Images and Words", which is just an extension of what Metallica did. And that's being kind.

Categories, schmategories - it's all prog!

plodder wrote: Badges!! We don't need no stinking badges. Keep your labels and genres to yourselves. Rush are just a fantastic band. Stop trying to divide everything up into little boxes. Art rock, math rock blah blah blah.

So, Paco de Lucía is just a guitarist, not a Flamenco guitarist, right? If we drop labels and badges, how are we supposed to assimilate and enjoy, with the ehart and mind, the music provided by musicians? De Lucía's music shouts out its Flamenco label, doesn't it? Perceiving him as merely an un-badged guitarist would mean missing the point absolutely. Watkins plays piano and so did Tchaikovsky - shall we call them merely pianists, without regarding the former as a prog-fusion-new age musician and the latter as an academic chamber composer? Madonna and Peter Hammill write the lyrics to their own songs - shall we put them together in one single "catalogue" as songwriters so we avoid badges we allegedly don't need?

Agitation Free and Premiata Forneria Marconi both do music - should we stay beyond the distinction between krautrock and symphonic prog? Oh, and shuold we change the name of this website, too? - its name bears a badge, too.

 

Edited by Cesar Inca

Bilek wrote: IMHO, there should have been another sub-genre, "Heavy Prog", "Hard Prog", or "Progressive Hard Rock", and include bands like Rush, Kansas, Uriah Heep, Deep Purple (please don't make it another discussion subject!!!), and to an extent, Styx (just for the sake of their first five albums). I saw this subgenre at least in one other progrock site (and it probably included twice as much genres as progarchives!), and I believe it exists. Even particular works of some hard rock bands (Sabbath's Bloody Sabbath, Led Zeppelin's 4th, Alice Cooper's Welcome to My Nightmare albums etc.) might be considered under this sub-genre, and it's a totally different story whethter or not these individual albums should be included or not. Summary: The solution is adding the "Heavy Prog" (or whatever) subgenre, and moving Rush and their likes over there...

I agree! I like the "Progressive Hard Rock" label as it sounds and for what it hinhts at - it would be quite suitable for Rush and Kansas, just to name a couple of examples, although the reviewers for these two bands' albums should cpecify in which moments they get more art-rock oriented (e.g., Rush's 'Big Money', 'Red Sector A', Kansas' 'A Glimpse of Home'), more heavy rock-oriented (e.g., Rush's 'Anthem', Kansas' 'Lighning's Hand') or more overtly symphonic prog (e.g., Kansas' 'Song for America', 'Nobody's Home', 'Closet Chronicles', Rush's 'Xanadu').

But yes, I think the aforemantioned label would state things a bit clearer. Of course, there's no such thing as he perfect label, but we can reasonably create some who can be more clarifying than confusing.

Regards.

That would make sense. On Windows Media Player Tag Editor, where you choose the genre, they have one called 'Primus' because they are unclassifiable. Just like Rush. Which is an odd coincidence as Geddy Lee is Les Claypool's Idol.

Maybe we can just call them in a new genre. We can call the genre "Rush Rock".

Well, RUsh started off as a Hard Rock band, then later involved into a Progressive Hard Rock, then in 80s, the synth, Prog, dance, pop, rock, metal, whatever you want to call it.

Like most people said, Rush is in a breed of their own.

I think Art Rock best suits them although they are, in the end (pardon the pun), beyond categorization.  I have always considered Rush mold breakers so I guess it's appropriate that they are hard to fit into a particular category.  Long live Rush.

Single Coil wrote: If they didn't invent prog-metal... who did? I mean, alot of hard rock and heavy metal fans got into prog rock by first getting into Rush, right?

I suppose if you look at Rush's 70s output, then it could be argued that for the time they were prog-metal, i.e. their overall sound was metal, but they incorporated prog ideas into that.  However, I would say that prog-metal as we know it today really began in the late 80s, with bands like Fates Warning, Queensryche and Watchtower (Metallica and Iron Maiden were also doing proggy stuff around that time), and only really became recognised as a distinct genre with the release of Images And Words.

Tony R wrote: We should start a new Prog sub-genre for Rush... ...and call it the "THE PINNACLE"