From: ack@Ingres.COM (David Ackerman)
Newsgroups: alt.music.rush
Subject: Re: Rush & Ayn Rand - HELP PLEASE
Date: 27 Aug 92 03:32:59 GMT
Reply-To: ack@Ingres.COM (David Ackerman)
Organization: Ingres, 1080 Marina Village Parkway, Alameda CA 94501

In article <3430@ra.nrl.navy.mil> luther@i5160e.nrl.navy.mil (Luther) writes:
>In article <1992Aug24.194820.16786@bnr.ca> stu5s33@bnr.ca writes:
>>ram@pecan.cns.udel.edu (Stormbringer) says...
>>
>>>I've heard many of their songs pertain to her themes.  I'd very
>>>appreciate if some kind soul could mail me a list of the songs
>>>(and their respective albums) which have lyrics pertaining to
>>>Ayn Rand.
>>
>>I'm kinda interested too, why not post to this group ?
>>
>
>I think this thread has shown up before, BUT... I'd like to resurrect
>the discussion because I don't remember much of it, and since it 
>appeared, I've dived into _Atlas Shrugged_, and I'll probably read
>other Rand works in the near future. Now that I know a little bit
>of what Rand is all about, I can appreciate the Rush/Rand connection
>better. Bring it on!

The obvious ones are Anthem and 2112. Anthem the song is more general, but
2112 is a musical adaptation of Ayn Rand's book _Anthem_. It's a short book,
any avid Rush fan should read it.

_Atlas Shrugged_, on the other hand, is quite a piece of work. I spent half
a summer reading it in the evenings when I was 15. It is quite powerful in
the end (and plenty of points in between) if you can hang with it and not
give up after the first hundred pages or so. Ack-bob says check it out.

I have not read it but I have heard _The Fountainhead_ is very similar to
_Atlas Shrugged_. A friend told me that if I had already read _Atlas
Shrugged_ that I shouldn't bother with _The Fountainhead_.

The only other book that I have read by her is _We the Living_, which is
as close to an autobiography as you can find from what I've heard. It is
fiction, but the protagonist is a young woman living in Petrograd (cum
Leningrad cum St. Petersburg) right after the Revolution. This is very
similar to Ayn Rand herself... she escaped from Russia and came to the
USA to write lots of books trashing socialism & communism. As the recent
events in Eastern Europe and the former USSR demonstrate, I guess she was
right...

That's the one thing I have found a bit inconsistent about Rush in recent
years. Their earlier stuff was very "Ayn Rand"-ish. Their more recent tunes
have a lot more of a "socially conscious" message. There's nothing wrong
with that per se, but some of their lyrics imply that government should
be doing some of these "socially conscious" things. In order to do these
things, a government needs to redistribute wealth and do other things that
amount to socialism. Ayn Rand was very much against that from everything
I've read by (and of) her.

Still, they're great tunes. I can't deny that! The recent poster who said
everything past Moving Pictures sucked is very wrong in my opinion. True,
Rush has changed over the years but their recent albums have been getting
better and better. I wouldn't be surprised to see them still cranking out
great albums when they're old and gray.

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