Are RUSH actually Prog?

Un Amico wrote: because to me they sound like HR musicians with a bigger bag of tricks, for the most part.

Un Amico wrote: because to me they sound like HR musicians with a bigger bag of tricks, for the most part.

Edited by A Crimson Mellotron - May 02 2021 at 00:53

They had a period where they were prog, so that's enough to put them in the stew. And I say this as not really a fan of Rush, but its hard not to include things like 2112, Cygnus X-1 (both books), La Villa Strangiato as prog essentials. 

Ah but do they use a mellotron?

Un Amico wrote: Back in the 1980s I noticed that the people who had Rush patches sewn onto their sleeveless denim jackets were Metal fans. They all had Priest, Motorhead, Maiden and Rush on their backs.That was the image that stuck with me.

Well, yes, they do sometimes overlap. Iron Maiden's Seventh Son of a Seventh Son has a lot of Prog in it, for example.

Un Amico wrote: because to me they sound like HR musicians with a bigger bag of tricks, for the most part.

I consider Rush to be a kind of Prog for some of its albums and tracks, and not for others. Hemispheres was the first Rush album that I fell for and I absolutely considered it to be Prog. As is to be expected in Prog, the band, specific albums and tracks can have many labels. Rateyourmusic labels it as Progressive Rock, Hard Rock, Pop Rock, AOR, Progressive Pop, Blues Rock overall and tags different albums in different ways. Sometimes I say that I don't consider bands to be Prog so much as particular music by bands as Prog, although some bands do have a more progressive approach overall than others.

It can also depend on how you define Prog, and for this Prog umbrella that we use at PA, I can work with various definitions. There can be such a breadth of music under the Prog label umbrella. It doesn't have clear boundaries, is amorphous, nebulous. In fact I could say that progressive rock is rock, rock-based/ derived or rock-related music without boundaries. In one sense I see progressive rock as music that can break free, or seeks to break free, of established rock conventions, a sort of non-generic and non-canonic rock, and it can blend styles/ genres, play with form. It can be seen as music that progresses away from rock music. Some are more prog in this sense than others. It can be seen as experimental rock, and some are more experimental than others. To some it refers more to am established style than an approach (some Prog is more generically Prog than others).

There is progressive rock where the progressive is more adjectival and Progressive Rock where the Prog label is more generic. Rush is a kind of generic Prog to me for most of its 70s and 80s albums, while not being very progressive in the sense that it did not move that far outside of its hard rock roots. Had it incorporated more styles of music (Prog often incorporates classical and jazz but also can be much more), been more diverse from album to album, had a wider array of instrumentation and been more experimental/ avant-garde, then it would be more progressive to me. I think that Prog in one way was an extension of the psychedelic movement, and that Rush was never really into that possibly could lessen its Prog creds somewhat from that perspective. They weren't the dropping acid and lets see what journey that takes us on kind to my knowledge. There is something conservative to me with Rush that lessens what I would consider to be a progressive mindset and approach to making music (it most always seem to have a foot quite firmly in the rock and hard rock mainstream).

Un Amico wrote: Yes...I don't know why it bothers me that they are considered Prog, but it does.

It can be much harder to objectively assess something due to one's emotional biases and negative associations. It might help if you define what Prog means to you, then we can maybe see if that fits music by Rush and explore the question from that angle.

In the immortal words of Funkadelic, free your mind and your ass will follow.

gone wrote: Rush have been considered as a Hard Rock band

Edited by Logan - May 02 2021 at 09:37