Best opening lyric

I am an American aquarium drinker
I assassin down the avenue

 

I dreamed about killing you again last night
And it felt all right to me

 

Doh

 

For two days the river keeps you down
Then you rise to the light without a sound
Past the playgrounds and the empty shipping yards
The turtles eat the skin from your eyes so they lay open to the stars

 

I pulled into Nazareth
was feelin' 'bout half passed dead
just need some place
where I can lay my head

"Hey Mister, can you tell me
where a man might find a bed?"
He just grinned and shook my hand
"No," was all he said.

 

I've been
a bad
bad
girl ...

 

Thank you.

They don't take themselves a fraction as seriously as many of its critics seem to think. And the thing I find incredibly funny is how many people gripe, moan and piss about bands sounding alike. About bands writing about the same things. About a lack of originality. About those in it strictly for the money and not giving a crap about what is actually released. Then these guys check off all the boxes ... and get criticized.

The pretentious sorts who take themselves too seriously wouldn't have the guitarist say random silly things during their best instrumental ("YYZ" is incredibly good, but "La Villa Strangiato" is on another level ... will not argue this). They wouldn't have a South Park skit on a video screen leading the audience into their best-known track. They wouldn't have a guitarist with a great sense of humor. They wouldn't have a lead vocalist and stellar bassist who doesn't take himself too seriously.

Even Neil Peart knew about the pretentious label and had fun with it on occasion. He was different, didn't like public attention (a big reason no one publicly knew about his three-year battle with brain cancer until he was gone) and wasn't fractionally as comfortable around crowds as Geddy and Alex are. Geddy and Alex adjusted to Neil's wishes, and Peart didn't abuse those wishes or hang his colleagues, his friends.

They took what they did very seriously, yet didn't take themselves at all seriously. It's what we all claim we want work colleagues and supervisors to be. Yet it makes Rush "pretentious."

But please ... just blast the band. They're used to it. I'll continue to listen and treasure their work. I won't be alone.

 

Let the record show, I have gone out of my way to not shit on Rush in this thread... but we can do this if we want to.

Just don't post this:

I've got twelve disciples and a Buddha smile
Garden of Allah, Viking Valhalla
A miracle once in a while

...and then act flabbergasted when people say their lyrics are pretentious.

 

What can this strange device be?
When I touch it, it gives forth a sound

 

... so they should try a couple hundred bland, tried-and-true approaches to The Mating Ritual just to avoid your pretentious label? To sound more mainstream? To avoid criticism?

Neil Peart was a voracious reader. If you ever listened to him in interviews, he gushed like a fountain. From what we know given ample media experience, sometimes talking like that is training never to let dead air linger. In other cases, it's because they have a lot to say. Peart is the latter. He reads things, remembers them and sometimes those sorts of things make it into the lyrics.

In "Chain Lightning" on the album "Presto," he referred to a "sundog," freely admitting that it just sounded cool.

Chain Lightning by Rush - Songfacts

So, in summary, should Neil have watered down everything to nursery rhymes and banal crap simply to keep from being labeled "pretentious"?

Imagine telling a writer that he/she has to sound like everyone else so that they don't come across as "pretentious." A fun, unique reference or thought to some might be pretentious to others.

 

Right, right, because the only option to banal crap is "Garden of Allah, Viking Valhalla."

And for what it's worth, "He's just so well-read he can't help but put all of those references in the lyrics!" isn't really a strong argument against saying his lyrics are pretentious.

You still get to listen to Rush and enjoy it. It's cool that they were guys who could laugh at themselves. Not really reflected in their fan base, but whatever.

 

Have you received nasty pushback - and by that, I mean stuff much more personal and stupid than anything discussed here - about criticism of Rush in the past?

Not at all trying to fight or troll. Fan bases get sick of some of the crap ... sometimes, they're probably justified and sometimes they go too far in their responses.

Even Neil has laughed and poked fun at the "pretentious" label. He understood that people are entitled to their opinions and points of view. But Geddy and Alex didn't mind his lyrics ... or, if they did, no one quoted them along the lines of "yeah, this is just pretentious, self-indulgent crap, write more p-and-p lyrics, please." People didn't suddenly start buying Rush albums, then suddenly run away because of something he wrote. To him, that was probably the key.