I tend to blame Neil Peart for the Iraq War.

ughh, Rush.. My fav thing about Rush is when Malkmus questions how high Geddy Lee's voice is in that one Pavement song....

YES, on the other hand, gets plenty of action on my record player..

Yes is infinitely superior to Rush.

"Rush, little known contender's to punk rock's raunchy throne" - Mclain's magazine 1979.

Hear it for yourself. This Nardwuar interview is hilarious. Geddy takes himself way too serious.

http://nardwuar.com/vs/geddy_lee/

Yes, there are real Rush fans. My younger brother listened to Rush before he became a musician, and still cranks them--new albums and all. The day the last Rush single was released to the Internet, he listened to it 20 times. No joke. Then again, he's 36. Are there any real Rush fans under 30? Doubt it.

Some of their instrumental stuff is pretty cool. Geddy Lee's voice always kinda freaked me out. That and the Ayn Rand lyrical influence. But yeah, I definitely owe my exposure to Rush to fellow musicians. Well, that and growing up in Ohio. Remember that at one point Rush enjoyed the kind of widespread hesher devotion later associated with bands like Metallica.

Yes and Rush are apples and oranges, although both do employ math in the creation of their music. But I definitely know women who listen to both bands, so it's not necessarily the chick repellant that many here are implying. My housemate swears by "By-tor and the Snow Dog," and she's got two x chromosomes, so there you go. She's also a musican, though.

I choose to listen to Rush, at home, at work.. not all the time, but, plenty enough. I would say that I enjoy them - not just appreciate or admire them. I suppose the 'admiration' might have been the gateway to the 'enjoyment', just as is 'sexy persona' might be a gateway for other listeners for other artists

I can fussily pick apart all the little Rush notes and riffs of the songs, and count along in all the time changes and such. Sometimes I do that, and, sometimes, if not more often, I just kick back, turn up the volume, and shake around what little is left of my late-30's hair.

I used to listen to both Rush a lot in college. I'm not a musician and it had nothing to do with 'admiration'; I just enjoyed their music! I still consider 2112 to be something of a masterpiece. I was also heavily into Yes, Pink Floyd and ELP at the time. Haven't listened to any of them in at least 20 years, though.

I am a musician and I LOVE RUSH. Like the previous poster, I'm able to dissect the music as well as enjoy it. I had a Geddy Lee bass for a while. I have CDs and LPs of the same recordings. I have posters, magazine articles and advertisements cut out from newspapers. I visit www.rushisaband.com daily. I downloaded the Power Windows demo tracks. I pronounce Neil's last name as "Peert", not "Pert".

So, to answer the 3 questions:

1. I enjoy Rush's music and love their chops too. How can you not enjoy the riff to Limelight?

2. I think non-musicians can understand it but may hear it on a different level than musicians.

3. Girls and Rush? Not so much. But they do exist.

I own Moving Pictures on both vinyl and CD. I play a Geddy Lee model Jazz Bass. These things being said, I don't know that I can say I actually like Rush.

I find Geddy's voice annoying, and the lyrics are corny. (Woe be to any band that lets the drummer write the lyrics...) Alex Lifeson's guitar tone often has that nauseating 80s digital distortion thing happening.

I can appreciate the technical aspects of what they do, but I don't see that appealing to too many casual music listeners.

Hmm...these are very interesting questions indeed.

1) As a musician, my general feeling toward Rush is one of respect for their chops. However, there are a handful of tracks (Working Man, Passage to Bangkok, couple of other) that I actually enjoy listening to because I think they are catchy songs.

2) I would highly doubt it. Until you've wasted a few afternoons stoned in the basement, trying to figure out how to play "YYZ", you won't understand Rush as musicians understand them.

3) There must be a few somewhere, but I've never met them. Generally, Likes Rush = Has a Penis.

I used to like Rush a lot, much like I used to like Billy Joel. (Though I enjoy hearing Rush on the radio these days more than Joel.)

First Rush LP is amazing. Actually, the first THREE are, but they were best before that fancy drummer joined and traded all their Mott the Hoople records for a set of 20-sided die and a Monster Manual.

I think it's safe to say, given their record sales in the QUADRILLIONS and their 20 year status as a staple of AM rock radio, that some regular people truly like Rush.

Now, does anyone really enjoy listening to DYLAN as much as they say they do?

I am a girl, and yes I like Rush. I have been known to listen to certain songs of theirs obsessively, over and over again.
And I appreciate their chops.
I really do think they are great musicians, even if they are not appealing to a mainstream audience. But I'm also about to be 36, I doubt they have any fans under 30.

A couple unrelated commonts on Rush:

Tom Sawyer is actually considered kind of a b-boy classic, in that you can cut up the spacey/drum-heavy intro. So a lot of DJs have two copies of that record. The Scratch Piklz were (I think?) the first DJs known to do that. Turntablism: the math rock of hip-hop.

Also, at my high school graduation in 1989, the student body president read the lyrics of "Time Stand Still" as if it was a poem. Which it totally is, dude.... TOtally is.

You know who loves the fuck out of some Rush? Frat boys that smoke pot.

'Nuff said.

oh man. I STILL own the Rush "drum book." When I was in high school my guitar player buddy bought it for me, so when we jammed, I could play the drums note for fucking note. and I did. I listened 2112 just last month and I still have all the records...tho' originally I had them on tape, of course. I think I spent $10 ten years ago to rebuy the first ten Rush LPs...I haven't put 'em on since then. Oh, the first Rush LP IS the best...by miles.

@15:
'tom sawyer' is indeed a b-boy classic. q-bert (who was, at the time, in isp) famously mangled the intro drum / synth part on the 'demolition pumpkin squeeze' mixtape. a friend of mine figured out how to replicate that part - while playing one record forwards, q runs the second backwards and crossfades between the two creating and ascending and descending synth wash. pretty inventive!

As a drummer I was predestined to love Rush when I was in my teens, and see them in concert, and proclaim that Neil was a genius for writing all those trippy lyrics. Don't listen to them so much anymore, but I can still get off on hearing it again. Mostly it's the nostalgia factor, like when I hear Boston. I rarely stop spinning the iPod wheel on eitehr, but if they pop up on shuffle mode, I'm more likely to crank it up than to fast forward.

In college on a cross country drive we picked up a hippie in CA, who had just finished school at University of the Redwoods, or some such, where they don't give out grades and you make up your degree. He'd written a thesis analyzing all of Rush's lyrics from their very beginning all the way through Hold Your Fire. He sent the thesis to Peart, and got a long letter in response saying, essentially, "Not Bad." I remember him saying that he had to look up like seven words from Peart's letter that he didn't know....

i love Rush. i also happen to be a musician, so that doesn't prove much in the argument that non-band nerds can appreciate their music. however, i do actively listen to their records (listened to Farewell to Kings only a few weeks ago). i can also attest that an old band of mine used to tour with a cassette with Moving Pictures on one side and Blink 182's Enema of the State on the other. it was played constantly, with frequent debates regarding which album was more embarassing to admit enjoying. so yes, sadly, people really do listen to their albums, though i would imagine that most fans still stick to the early records.

as for @13.... Dylan? really? you can't hate on Blood On the Tracks...

@20 - I don't hate Dylan, like him just fine, really. I just don't believe as many people LISTEN to him as he has FANS, if that makes sense?

He's at his best when some a little more arrangee (arrangerly?) has their way with his material... he has his moments, I just can't get all apeshit-PBS subscriber-American-icon over him the way I think I'm supposed.

Dougsf @13 YES! Bob Dylan is the most overrated musician of the twentieth century. BURY HIM ALREADY.

But I love Rush and have for years, and I'm female. Full disclosure, though: I'm Canadian, so maybe that explains it. When Alex Lifeson was kidnapped by Ricky on Trailer Park Boys, I almost cried with joy.

RUSH SUCKS.

i am a girl and can't stand listening to rush. all of my ex's loved rush, including the one that went to college to study music. meh

I'll probably kill any cred I had, but I have to admit that Rush is kind of a guilty pleasure for me. I played trombone in college, but I wouldn't consider myself a "musician" in any remote sense of the word. Here's the secret: in my mind Geddy Lee is a chick. I can't even fathom a dude singing that high and it kind of freaks me out.

Anyhoo, I don't own any Rush albums or anything, but I listen when it's on Classic Rock radio. What I like about it is the production and all the shit they do with synths.

Also, I will say that my brother essentially dragged me to a Rush concert earlier THIS YEAR and I enjoyed the hell out of it. They played for 3 hours--no opening band--and didn't just do their classic shit like most touring bands that should have been in retirement long ago (cough-Rolling Stones). 9 songs from their new album and a lot of weird unexpected non-radio songs from their older albums. I don't like Rush, haven't listened to one of their albums since my freshman year in college, and damn if they weren't really really good, and having fun.

So, more respect now than before. And there were 10,000 fans there who knew (and sometimes sang--gag) every word. So yeah, they have fans. All dudes.

I will also put it out there that Neil Pert doesn't impress me as a drummer.

Jeez. I don't SWEAR by By-tor and the Snow Dog. Working Man, however, is a different story.

@ 26

Same story for my brother and I. I'm the fan, he drove and got me tickets with another huge Rush fan. My brother is definitely not a rock fan, but he came away with a huge appreciation for them and what they do.

Now, who's in for the Gorge?

@22 - "When Alex Lifeson was kidnapped by Ricky on Trailer Park Boys, I almost cried with joy."

I'm just stopping back by to say that I agree, that was totally awesome.

There are many Rand-ian Republicans who like Rush whether or not they even like music at all. They dig the validation of their skewed world view in Neil Peart's lyrics.

my favorite quote concerning Rush overheard at a party:

"I saw Rush this summer. They played for three hours."

"Three hours? That's like watching Lord of the Rings standing up."

I am a girl and I LOVE Rush and I am not a musician and I am under 30 and I listen to Rush often, and many people have bared witness.