Author: bradbirzer
By day, I'm a father of seven and husband of one. By night, I'm an author, a biographer, and a prog rocker. Interests: Rush, progressive rock, cultural criticisms, the Rocky Mountains, individual liberty, history, hiking, and science fiction.
Holy Vernal Equinox! Arrivals today at Progarchy HQ.
What a load of treasures to show up at Progarchy today.
- Big Elf, INTO THE MAELSTROM (Insideout Music)
- John Wesley (with Alex Lifeson), DISCONNECT (Insideout Music)
- The Crimson Projekct, LIVE IN TOKYO (Insideout Music)
- and, Gazpacho, DEMON (Kscope)
A huge thanks to Edgel Groves, Jr.!
P.S. And, the sun is actually out and happy on this first official day of spring in Michigan. Will wonders never cease!?!?
Scandinavia: A Giant Of Heavy Music – An Introduction
I have often jokingly said that, when it comes to heavy metal and rock music, there is an area of the world that seems to punch above it’s weight and provide the metal community with an extraordinary amount of high quality music. Indeed, every time I mention it, my family roll their eyes, a non-verbal ‘yes, I know, you mention this all the time’. But actually, it is not a joke, far from it in fact.
I’m not talking about the USA or even the UK, even though both have undeniable importance within the scene as a whole. I’m not even referring to South America or continental Europe, encompassing the likes of Germany, Italy and France. Again, there is much to be said about these countries and their contribution to the metal cause but that’s not the focus of this post.
I am, of course, referring to Scandinavia.
Depending…
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On a Silver Salver: The Miracle of 1984, Part I
As I mentioned yesterday (https://progarchy.com/2014/03/19/1994-a-pretty-good-year/), I thought 1994 was a “pretty good year” for music. Thinking about 1994 made me think about 1984, and, methinks (don’t you hate it when writers use such pretentious words! Ha), 1984 puts 1994 to shame. In fact, it puts many, many years to shame.
As a product of midwestern America, Ronald Reagan will always dominate my main image and memory of 1984. I write this nonpolitically. Whatever you thought of Reagan as a leader, the man wielded supernatural charisma. He was, simply put, a presence.
But, other images emerge as well from 1984: movies such as 16 Candles, Red Dawn, and The Killing Fields. Chernyanko becoming head of the Soviets. Paul McCartney arrested for possession of pot. The fall of AT&T. The arrival of the first Macintosh. What a year.
Beyond the above, I most remember the music. What a year of greatness for those of us who love innovation and beauty in music. So without further bloviation, I offer my favorites of that august year.
***
Rush, Grace Under Pressure. This is not only my favorite Rush album, it was and remains my favorite album of 1984. I’ve written about this elsewhere, but it’s worth noting again that I think Rush perfectly captured the tensions of that year: the horrors of the gulags; the destruction of the environment; the loss of a friend; and so on.
I hear the echoes, I learned your love for life
I feel the way that you would
***
Thomas Dolby, The Flat Earth. I’ve written about this album as well. So brilliant. As deep and as meaningful as Dolby’s first album was interesting and novel.
Suicide in the hills above old Hollywood
Is never gonna change the world
***
Ultravox, Lament. My favorite Ultravox album? Maybe. As much as Rush captured the spirit of the year, so did Ultravox. From the worry expressed in “White China” to the longing of “When the Time Comes,” Lament is a masterpiece.
Will you stand or fall, with your future in another’s hands
Will you stand or fall, when your life is not your own
***
Talk Talk, It’s My Life. While this is certainly not Talk Talk’s best album, it is quite good. In particular, Hollis reveals much of his genius in songwriting, whatever the “new wave” trappings of the song. Underneath whatever flesh the band gave the music, the lyrics cry out with a poetic lamentation of both confusion and hope.
The dice decide my fate, that’s a shame
In these trembling hands my faith
Tells me to react, I don’t care
Maybe it’s unkind if I should change
A feeling that we share, it’s a shame
***
Simple Minds, Sparkle in the Rain. Again, while this isn’t the best Simple Minds had to offer, it was the last great gasp of the band before entering into an overwhelming celebrity. Kerr’s Catholicism especially reveals itself in songs such “Book of Brilliant Things” and “East at Easter.”
I thank you for the shadows
It takes two or three to make company
I thank you for the lightning that shoots up and sparkles in the rain
BillyNews: Wishbone Ash Tour North America
New London, CT – Wishbone Ash, one of the most influential guitar bands in the history of rock, returns to North America this Spring with brand new tunes from their upcoming release, Blue Horizon.The group returns to these shores following last year’s annual tour through the the East, Midwest, Northwest and Western Canada, where they delighted fans with high-energy performances featuring a vast catalog spanning 45 continuous years of music-making.
The 2014 Spring tour has been nicknamed “The Blue Horizon Tour” to coincide with the March US release of Blue Horizon and celebrate the return of the band to areas not visited in many years.
“I thought, why not ring the bell to see if our fans in the South and Southwest would come out and join the party,” says bandleader and founding member Andy Powell.
The first leg of the tour begins April 15 in Florida and winds south and west before heading northward through the Pacific West Coast and Canada.
“We hope our long-lost fans will come check out what we’ve been doing, which has been continuously touring, recording and rehearsing,” said Powell. “The band has a fire in its belly, and we want to share that.”
Formed in 1969, Wishbone Ash has to its credit 24 original studio recordings, 10 live albums and four live DVDs along with a DVD rockumentary (“This is Wishbone Ash”). The band is led by founding member Andy Powell on guitar and vocals, trading licks with Finland’s guitar wizard Muddy Manninen. Bassist Bob Skeat, a 17-year veteran of the band and in-demand studio musician, sets the pace with Joe Crabtree, one of the best of Britain’s new breed of drummers whose performance credits include Pendragon and David Cross of King Crimson.
“The band basically lives together year-round, so we have a very strong level of communication that translates in our performances and recordings,” says Powell.
Wishbone Ash’s new album, Blue Horizon (Solid Rockhouse Records), includes guest artist Pat McManus playing fiddle on two tracks. Fans will recall McManus made an appearance on 2011’s Elegant Stealth and also co-wrote one of the songs, “Can’t Go It Alone,” with Andy Powell. Blue Horizon features two songs written by Aynsley Powell (Powell’s son) and one by former Wishbone Ash guitarist Roger Filgate.
Elegant Stealth (ZYX Records) was enthusiastically received by fans and critics alike. Classic Rock Revisited’s Jeb Wright called it “One of the best albums in Wishbone Ash’s career.”
“This band is like a fine wine that just keeps getting better with age and this is one of their strongest studio releases in years,” said Keith “MuzikMan” Hannaleck of MuzikReviews.com.
“The songs are catchy, very technical, but there is a soul in what Wishbone Ash is doing!” said Mark Kadzielawa of 69 Faces of Rock.
Lynyrd Skynyrd cites Wishbone Ash as a primary influence on their style along with Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden and, more recently, heavyweights like Opeth and some of the guitar-based Indie/Alternative bands. All have been transformed by the original, legendary twin-guitar approach of Wishbone Ash. There is no other rock band on the planet that has done more with the twin guitar concept than The Ash.
Longtime fans and new converts will find that Wishbone Ash offers an undeniable concert experience.
Tour dates and more information can be found at www.wishboneash.com
To download electronic press kit: www.wishboneash.com/epk
Like the band on Facebook: www.facebook.com/wishbone.ash.official
Wishbone Ash Publicity and Marketing: Kate Goldsmith – kate_goldsmith@wishboneash.com
Wishbone Ash Worldwide Publicity: Glass Onyon PR – PH: +1 828-350-8158 ,glassonyonpr@gmail.com
North American Booking: Steve Ozark, Ozark Talent (785)760-3143, OzarkTalent@gmail.com
1994: A Pretty Good Year
Yesterday was one of those days where I felt like I did next to nothing but grade. Freshmen midterms, upper-class midterms. Midterms galore, and avalanches of blue books. I also proofed a senior thesis.
Enough, Birzer! Don’t bore the readers into madness. . . .
As I was calling it a day, a song from Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy came into my mind. I have no idea why. Sometimes, these things just happen. And, the thought of the song led me to ask, when did that album come out. As I looked it up, I realized how quickly 20 years had gone by. I’m a historian, and I study memory, time, eternity. But, this hit me. “Last Exit” was 20 years old. So, I did a quick search. What else came out that year. And, I came up quickly with this list of music that meant something to me (and still does) that came out that year.
Tori Amos, Under the Pink. One of my favorite albums of all time. So deadly in its perceptiveness of life. So gloomy, so bouncy, so Tori. “A pretty good year. . . .
Phish, Hoist. I had the great privilege of meeting all of the guys of Phish in the spring of 1990. They were the featured band at a campus event. Amazingly, only about 20 of us came to watch them. I was mesmerized. These guys are a lot like Dave Matthews in terms of genre, but Phish is Monty Python to Matthew’s John Hughes. Even after two decades, the lyrics of Hoist crack me up. The music hasn’t stood up all that well. But, still good. The best song is the concluding “Demand.”
Dead Can Dance, Toward the Within. Seriously weird and gorgeous all at once. In particular, “I Can See Now” and “American Dreaming” are two fantastic songs.
Dave Matthews Band, Under the Table and Dreaming. When this album first appeared, I was rather blown away. This struck me as a proper pop album. Matthews has a good voice, and his lyrics can be quite infectious. It doesn’t mean that much to me anymore, and I’m not sure I would do much to seek the album out. But, still, “typical situation” remains a fine song. Indeed, it’s one of the best of that decade.
Marillion, Brave. Another mind boggler. I’ve written quite a bit about Brave elsewhere, and I plan to do so again. But, sheesh, nothing captured the zeitgeist of the post-Cold War world more than this album did. It could also be counted as one of the two of three albums that ushered in the third wave of prog. Those bastards will find us another one!
Love Spit Love, self titled. I always liked the P-Furs, and this band was a worthy successor. Sadly, I think almost everyone in the music business forgot this album even existed. But, I’ve never stopped listening to it–even after two decades. Butler has a voice that one either loves or hates. I, for one, love it. Though I risk a tongue lashing from Eric Perry, I regard this as one of the great rock-pop albums of the last fifty years. Hooks, pauses, pounding drums, pauses, plaintive lyrics, wacky psychedelic keyboards, pauses, carnival-esque sound scapes, and still more pauses. Phew. . . this is a masterful pop album. Every single song is a wonder, but none more so than “Green” and “St. Mary’s Gate.” If these songs doesn’t bring a tear to your eye. . . nothing will. If I had to compare this album to Amos’s Under the Pink and choose one over the other, I’m not sure I could. When I feel imaginative and want to walk over grassy hills, I listen to Love Spit Love. When I’m angry and feeling a bit like forcing some social justice down someone’s throat, I listen to Tori Amos. In the end, though, I’d pick this one over Under the Pink.
So, in sum: 1994 was, as Tori Amos proclaimed, a pretty good year.
But, then, I thought of 1984. Holy Schnikees. More than pretty good, it was given to us on a silver salver. But, that’s for another post.
Neil: First the Planning, Then the Magic
“Magic happens, but it often requires planning.”
Neil shares his thoughts on touring and motorcycling this month with The BMW Owners News Magazine, called BMW ON, and he sees in motorcycling the perfect foil to drumming.
“For me, the riding time is stimulation,” he tells Don Argento for the piece “Backbeats & Backroads.” “It’s a different kind of concentration and certainly a different kind of responsibility [than drumming]. On stage I feel responsible to a similar degree, but a mistake isn’t going to kill me. There’s a big difference there. I find they complement each other. I notice that when I take a day off the bike, I feel the pain much worse. . . I feel like maybe the vibration is therapy in itself—just being on the bike.”
Neil attributes his success to almost two decades of motorcycling between shows to the care he takes to do…
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Haken – English Music’s Finest Hour?
A while back now, I posted a blog whereby I listed my favourite 5 albums of all time. If you are interested, it can be found here. In that post, I found it impossible to keep my list to 5 and therefore rather autonomously added a sixth. The sixth album was the newest of the list having only been released in 2011. However, such is the impact that it has made on me and the wider progressive music community, it had to make my list.
Enough of being cryptic, I am of course referring to ‘Visions’, the sophomore album by UK-based progressive rock/metal band Haken.
In the last few days, Haken have announced full details of their impending third album, entitled ‘The Mountain’, due out on one of my favourite record labels, Inside Out. In light of this and the fact that my excitement and anticipation has reached fever…
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Neil Peart: The Most Endangered Species
Some songs just scream “let me reach perfection.”
Every note, every pause, every ebb, every swell, every silence, and every word just gravitates towards its right place. It’s as though the cardinal and Platonic virtue of Justice becomes manifest, real, and tangible in this world.
There probably are very few perfect tracks—tracks that never grow old and never cease to cause wonder. From the 70s and 80s the following immediately spring to mind as candidates: The Battle of Evermore, In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, Close to the Edge, In Your Eyes, Thick as a Brick, Cinema Show, Take a Chance with Me, Echoes, and The Killing Moon.
Of all of these great possibilities from those two wild and wholly decades, the one song that comes closest to attaining perfection, such as perfection is understood in this rather bent world, is Natural Science, the final track on Rush’s Permanent Waves.
Well, at least in my humble opinion. Ok, not so humble of an opinion.
Unobjectively Rushed
In a number of previous posts here at progarchy and elsewhere, I’ve talked about my love for all things Rush, perhaps even putting myself in a position in which I simply can’t be objective about them. Frankly, at age 46, I’m tired of trying to be objective about the things I love. In fact, I want to be subjective. Really, really subjective. I want to spend the rest of my life promoting things of excellence and beauty, and not wasting my time analyzing what I don’t like. I want to explore how various forms of art have shaped my own life, how they’ve guided me, how they’ve given me strength and comfort, and how best to pass on such nuggets of insight to my children and my students.
So, purely subjectively: I’ve always thought of Neil Peart as the older brother I never had—the cool kid with all the great ideas and, equally important, the guy with all of the good friends. Most importantly, however, Peart has always had the courage of his convictions. What an appealing combination of qualities. Creativity, intelligence, integrity and perserverance.
As much as any person in my life I’ve never met (from Plato to St. Augustine to Friedrich Hayek to T.S. Eliot to J.R.R. Tolkien), Peart has profoundly shaped my view of the world. I’ve known this since the spring of 1981, when, as a seventh grader, I first encountered Moving Pictures.
And, coming from a very (happily) nerdy and intellectual family which encouraged a love of music as much as it encouraged a love of reading and writing, I started writing my own first little essays on Rush while still in high school.
Perhaps my professors in college shouldn’t have allowed me to do this or encouraged me, but I did get to help lead a discussion on the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, using the song “Tom Sawyer” to explain the significance of the end of Twain’s novel. The end of that complex novel tries to examine the motivations of Huck and Tom as they decided whether or not to free Jim from his enslavement. Their humanity tells them one thing, but their cultural upbringing tells them another.
I also, as I’ve mentioned before, wrote my major paper for my sophomore liberal-arts core course examining the philosophy of Neil Peart, using nothing but the lyrics of Grace Under Pressure. Sadly, I don’t have a copy of that paper any longer, though I might attempt to reconstruct it at some point.
Natural Science
I can identify almost every single moment in my post-1980 life with a Rush album—noting when I first encountered that album, how it shaped my own thoughts, life, and actions, and what else was going on in my life at the same time. Certainly, Rush has served as the soundtrack of my own existence for over three decades. Strangely, the one album in Rush’s entire catalogue I can’t place perfectly—at least when I first encountered it—is Permanent Waves. I’m guessing that I first heard it shortly after Spring 1981, but I’m not positive. It just seems to have always been “there.” There, meaning my life. This is impossible, of course, as I was 11 when the album first came out, but it does seem to have an uncertain yet certain position in my memory.
I still regard the entire album as a work of artistic intensity and creative genius. There’s a confidence that exists in every note of this album that had not yet appeared in Rush’s music. Don’t get me wrong—up to Permanent Waves, Rush had always possessed audacity and integrity. But, they’d not possessed this level of confidence before. Songs such as Anthem—so openly declaring confidence—reveal youthful anxiety. But, the personal aspects of Permanent Waves, such as in “Free Will,” carry with them a rather clear maturity.
To my mind, none of the songs carry as much confidence, however, as does Natural Science. Originally, as is well known by Rush fans, Peart had hoped to write a saga, epic, or edda about the Court of King Arthur and especially about the character of Sir Gawain.
I had also been working on making a song out of a medieval epic from King Arthur’s time, called ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’. It was a real story written around the 14th century, and I was trying to transform it while retaining it’s original form and style. Eventually it came to seem too awkwardly out of place with the other material we were working on, so we decided to shelve that project for the time being…with the departure of ‘Gawain’ we had left ourselves nothing with which to replace him!…something new began to take shape. It was the product of a whole host of unconnected experiences, books, images, thoughts, feelings, observations, and confirmed principles, that somehow took the form of ‘Natural Science’…forged from some bits from ‘Gawain’, some instrumental ideas that were still unused, and some parts newly-written. – Neil Peart, “Personal Waves, The Story Of An Album” [taken from: http://www.2112.net/powerwindows/main/RushInspirations.htm]
Though I don’t know this for certain, I assume that Peart was still in a bit of a myth/fantasy/Tolkien stage as he considered the lyrics for this song. Best known by the world for his fiction, J.R.R. Tolkien was in his professional life the leading scholar of the medieval literature of Beowulf, Sir Gawain, and others. In the late 1970s, Tolkien’s publisher attempted to capitalize on success of The Silmarillion by re-publishing almost everything Tolkien had ever written, including his academic work, repackaged for a popular audience.
Many of the ideas in Natural Science, at least musically, also came from a “mass of ideas called Uncle Tounouse” [Popoff, CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE, 76; http://rushvault.com/2011/02/05/natural-science/; and http://www.2112.net/powerwindows/main/PeWlyrics.htm%5D
At 9 minutes, 17 seconds, “Natural Science” consists of three parts: Tide Pools; Hyperspace; and Permanent Waves. These might have also have been titled, less poetically, Nature; Science; and Integrity.
In Part I, “Tide Pools,” Peart offers a vision of community. Each person is born into a myriad of factors. As the great Irishman, Edmund Burke, once said before Parliament: “Dark and inscrutable are the ways in which we come into the world.” Each person is born into a family, an environment, a language, a set of morality, a religious system (even if atheist), etc. Each of these factors shapes and delimits our very beings, and we must—from our earliest infancy—learn to move from one realm into another. From, for example, our family to our school. We must transition, we must bridge, we must understand, and we must integrate our experiences. Such a world of communities brings us security, but it might also allow for an insular kind of inbreeding and sloth. Looking at all of the connections and interactions, though, overwhelms us.
Wheels within wheels in a spiral array,
A pattern so grand and complex,
Time after time we lose sight of the way,
Our causes can’t see their effects.
Part II, “Hyperspace,” reveals how insane an integrated, uniform culture might before. Peart’s vision of conformity here is not of a communist or fascist variety, but instead of a capitalist, consumerist variety. It might metastasize uncontrollably.
A mechanized world out of hand.
Computerized clinic
For superior cynics
Who dance to a synthetic band.
In their own image,
Their world is fashion.
No wonder they don’t understand.
Part III, “Permanent Waves,” brings the story and listener to a stoic resignation, a realization that one must somehow and in some way recognize the limits as well as the advantages of an insular natural community and a hyper collectivist consumerism, brought together by (I presume) colossal bureaucracies of corporations, educational systems, and governments.
The true man, whatever the odds against him, will survive.
The most endangered species,
The honest man,
Will still survive annihilation.
Forming a world
State of integrity,
Sensitive, open and strong.
These are quintessentially Peartian themes, and he will return to them again and again in his lyrics. “Subdivisions,” for example, offers almost all of the same sentiments, but it does so in lyrics that are much more direct. The lyrics for Natural Science remain far more poetic than intellectual, far more artistic than philosophical. And yet, they are poetic, intellectual, artistic, and philosophical all at once.
They are. . . well, Peartian. Very Peartian.
Words of Friendship and Wisdom
In the summer of 1987, having completed my first year of college, I returned back to my hometown of Hutchinson, Kansas. It was one of the best summers of my life, as all of my high school friends were home, and I had the best job possible—I was the overnight DJ at a local radio station. In my mind, this really was the last year of my youth. I didn’t realize that at the time, but I do now. It was also, though, a summer of immense upheaval. The following school year, I wouldn’t be returning to the University of Notre Dame. Instead, I moved to Innsbruck, Austria, for a year. At home, a number of domestic crises would lead to a divorce. As much as I loved my mom, I needed to get away from the home front quickly. All of this added up to a summer of craziness, me being a little more wild than I should have been.
Trying to get me back on track, one of my two closest college friends sent me a letter toward the end of that summer. Inside, written on rice paper, neatly folded, were the lyrics to Natural Science, with a note of encouragement.
I carried that piece of folded rice paper with me—tucked in my wallet—for about two decades. It’s very hard to put into words what Peart’s thoughts in “Natural Science” did for me. “Natural Science” did for me in my 20s and 30s, what “Subdivisions” had done for me at 14. They gave me no easy answers or platitudes, but honesty and courage. They got me through many, many tough times, never failing to remind me that right has absolutely nothing to do with winning or losing. Right, instead, has to do with being right. Nothing more, nothing less. We do the right thing not for advantage, but merely and simply because it’s right. It’s not subjective. It’s either right, or it’s not. It’s not partially right or almost right. It’s either right, or it’s not.
Sometimes, we just need a big brother or a friend to remind us of these things.
Neil Peart, moral philosopher, “sensitive, open, and strong.”
*******
For more from Progarchy on Rush
The first Rush album reviewed by Craig Breaden
https://progarchy.com/2014/02/22/rushs-first/
A review of A Farewell to Kings by Kevin McCormick
https://progarchy.com/2013/01/21/rush-a-farewell-to-hemispheres-part-i/
A review of Power Windows by Brad Birzer
https://progarchy.com/2013/12/14/power-windows-rush-and-excellence-against-conformity/
Kevin Williams on Clockwork Angels Tour
https://progarchy.com/2013/11/24/rushs-clockwork-angels-tour-straddles-the-80s-and-the-now/
Brad Birzer on Clockwork Angels Tour
https://progarchy.com/2013/11/27/rush-2-0-clockwork-angels-tour-2013-review/
Erik Heter on Clockwork Angels Tour Concert in Texas
A review of Vapor Trails Remixed by Birzer
https://progarchy.com/2013/10/05/resignated-joy-rush-and-vapor-trails-2013/
A review of Grace Under Pressure by Birzer
https://progarchy.com/2013/02/21/wind-blown-notes-rush-and-grace-under-pressure/
Lego Ayreon
Arjen: Into the Electric Castle. After an evening of Legos with my five year old, John.
Progarchy 