I haven't read much by him, but Daniel Bukszpan had a big impact on my own writing. Reviewing his Encyclopedia of New Wave a long time ago here on Psychobabble, I was most impressed by how he balanced humor with doing what any rock writer is supposed to do. So when I received a press release announcing his next book was on Rush's 2112, I lit up. I like Rush, and 2112 is a pretty good album, but I was mostly on board to read how Bukszpan would handle the topic. Considering Rush's highfalutin concepts, their kimonos, Geddy Lee's wood-sprite voice, and Neil Peart's mustache it's not like there's no material to poke a bit of good-natured fun at.
Perhaps all this fruit hangs just a bit too low. Perhaps Bukszpan feels more reverence for Rush than he does for Animotion for some reason. But that Bukszpan humor I was primed for is never actually directed at Rush in Rush & 2112: Fifty Years. It still lives, mind you, but the text mostly drives home Bukszpan's Rush-o-mania, which is so terminal that he states Rush and Caress of Steel are scientifically provable "bangers" in spite of their mediocrity being pretty good scientific evidence to the contrary. This, of course, should please Rush's exceptionally faithful hoard of fans, whom I guess are really the audience for this book and not those like me who are mostly on board for the wry wise-assery. Fair play.
So how about the book we do get? Since it's mainly focused on a single album, its brevity isn't much of an issue. Bukszpan does a good of a job of crystalizing the storyline of the main concept at the heart of 2112, discussing its music and its recording. He also gets into the brief songs on Side B, which for me are the real reasons to tune in to Rush's fourth LP, and I was impressed by how much attention he lavished on these songs that tend to get swept under the conceptual rug. The explorations sometimes lead to discussions of some of my favorite things, such as the Mellotron (via "Tears) and The Twilight Zone (via "The Twilight Zone"). If you are an enthusiast of the wacky weed, there's plenty about that too (via "A Passage to Bangkok"). His argument that 2112 is the most legit punk album of 1976 is a bit rich, though I love the fact that he acknowledges that Vyv from The Young Ones sometimes wore a 2112 T-shirt.
Perhaps most significantly, Bukszpan engages with Peart's Ayn Rand fixation much more so than I've seen in any other Rush book, since fans tend to prefer to swoop around this issue like the crusty white dog turd it is. Bukszpan comes at it by arguing that Peart did not support fascism, that it was Rand's philosophy on individualism, not anti-humanitarianism, that he was really taken with. Okay, but when you're dealing with a figure as associated with a rotten philosophy as Rand is, it is a bit hard to dismiss the criticism as resoundingly as Bukszpan does. It's like saying it's understandable to appreciate Trump for his stint as a gameshow host even though he's mostly known for being a deranged fascist tyrant these days. In Bukszpan's defense, the author admits Peart's statement that "humanitarians are just the same as dictators" is pretty suspect.
Not that I disagree with Bukszpan's take on the "2112" suite. Despite Peart dedicating the LP to Rand's "genius," the title track is a pretty righteous statement against authoritarianism. And Peart did disassociate himself from Rand pretty early on. I guess if I don't hold Siouxsie Sioux's embracing of Nazi imagery early in her own career against her, I'd be a bit of a hypocrite to blacklist Neil Peart over his Rand phase, because despite the current president being a big fan of them, the Nazis were horrible and certainly worse than Ayn.
Bukszpan clearly likes Rush as much as I like Siouxsie, so I can't really fault him for going to the mat over his favorite band. Rush fans will appreciate that too, and as a whole, I liked Rush & 2112: Fifty Years very much.
