For the last several years, Dr. Birzer has been involved in a fascinating musical collaboration with British progressive rock multi-instrumentalist Dave Bandana.[1] The collaboration is fascinating not only because of the intellectual and spiritual weight that Dr. Birzer’s concepts and lyrics bring to Mr. Bandana’s composition and performance, but also because the two men have never met in person, and have reportedly not even spoken to each other until quite recently. Dr. Birzer’s home is in Michigan, where he teaches at Hillsdale College, while Mr. Bandana resides “across the pond,” working from his studio in the Canary Islands. The collaboration began when Mr. Bandana, having “met” and become acquainted with Dr. Birzer via email, invited the latter to contribute concepts and lyrics for a CD, resulting in Becoming One, released under the name “Birzer Bandana” in 2017. Of Course It Must Be followed in 2018. The creative sparks that fly between idea man and music man are already apparent in these two exploratory releases. Now the sparks have burst into full flame, as they emerge with a new band name, a new label, and a new eponymous CD, The Bardic Depths, which was released on March 20th. They are the first band signed to Gravity Dream Music, a label run by critically acclaimed prog-rock musician and producer Robin Armstrong (Cosmograf).
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/04/bardic-depths-peter-blum.html
All posts by bradbirzer
Beauty’s Lease: Big Big Train
Nothing Big Big Train does is unimportant in the world of music or in the larger world of art. As such, its most recent release, Summer’s Lease, is an important cultural marker, a signal act of beauty in a terribly—at least at the moment—ugly world. It’s as though Spawton, Longdon, and Co. are stating: hold on just a bit longer. . . we’ll all make it.
The album begins with the enchanting and pastoral instrumental, “Expecting Snow,” followed by a majestic—and reworked—version of “Kingmaker,” one of the oldest songs in the BBT canon, but a song that never tires and never grows old or out of style. The song is approaching, quickly, its thirtieth anniversary. Again, though, it only gets more interesting with age.
From here, BBT jumps forward two years, to 1995, and offers us a glorious reworking of the very first track to appear on CD, “Wind Distorted Pioneers.” Danny’s delicate-turned-jazz piano work and Rachel’s lush strings (as opposed to heavy guitar) make this a track to behold and celebrate. Truly, this track is a thing of wonder.
The band then gives us an in-studio live version of Swan Hunter’s rather sensuous and pondering “Summer’s Lease” and a subtly reworked version of track two of The Underfall Yard, “Master James of St. George.”
To conclude disk one, BBT offers a slightly shorter version of “London Song.” What was once barely over 34 minutes is now, with a bit of pruning and reworking, just barely under 34 minutes. Each version though—whether the original download or this CD version—is simply outstanding, a manifest demonstration of BBT’s compositional skills and dedication to excellence.
Disk two is, for the most part, much more straight forward with few surprises: “Victorian Brickwork”; “Judas Unrepentant”; “East Coast Racer”; “Curator of Butterflies”; “Swan Hunter”; “Transit of Venus Across the Sun”; Nick’s latest song; and “Brave Captain”.
On disk two, the only real surprise is the just-mentioned Nick D’Virgilio’s latest song, the undeniably mesmerizing “Don’t Forget the Telescope,” a track of seemingly endless possibilities, a tangle of love intertwined in a spirit of exploration. The song feels live, and it feels as though we’re listening to it an Irish baptism or wake (you know, the kind wake that celebrates life) being held on the south side of Chicago in the 1920s. Glorious.
Finally, I must write something about the packaging. BBT understands well that its fan base likes tangible things, and this package does not disappoint. Each of the two CDs come in nice cloth sleeves, the booklet is long (though, in Japanese!), and Sarah Ewing’s artwork is. . . well, just perfect and fantastic. Indeed, this is now my favorite BBT album cover. I would love to own a print of it.
No matter how bleak the world looks at the moment, Big Big Train wields the light, encouraging us to keep going, no matter the cost and no matter the doubt.
Russell Kirk: Charitable Mythmaker, 1948-1994*$
Moving Toward Dread Conformity ~ The Imaginative Conservative
1953 was a banner year for the conservative soul and intellect. Russell Kirk’s seminal The Conservative Mind came out that year. As did Leo Strauss’s pathbreaking Natural Right and History. Daniel Boorstin published his close study of Americana, The Genius of American Politics. Eliot penned his critical play, The Confidential Clerk, and Ray Bradbury offered the world Fahrenheit 451.
The zeitgeist had yet to exhaust her resources, however, and Robert Nisbet produced his magisterial The Quest for Community, a work that mightily complemented the other works of that year, almost, but not quite, forming a whole with Kirk’s The Conservative Mind. Oxford University Press released Quest on February 12, 1953, exactly a month before Regnery published Kirk’s book.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/04/moving-toward-dread-conformity-bradley-birzer.html
happy international talk talk day
As some of you might very well know, today is International Talk Talk Day. Sometime in 1987 or 1988—the memory fades—Kevin McCormick and I vowed that every April 5th, we would listen to the entirety of Talk Talk’s mid-period masterpiece, The Colour of Spring, as a reminder of three things.
First, that no matter how dark the world might become, beauty endures and promises—through the seasons—eternal renewal.
Second, that no matter where we are in the world, our friendship endures.
Third, that Mark Hollis (RIP) was a genius.
Since the late 1980s, Tad Wert has joined in the pledge. Please join us in celebrating that miracle that was Talk Talk.
Here she comes
Silent in her sound
Here she comes
Fresh upon the ground
Come gentle spring
Come at winter’s end
Gone is the pallor from a promise that’s nature’s gift
Waiting for the color of spring
Let me breathe
Let me breathe the color of spring
Here she comes
Laughter in her kiss
Here she comes
Shame upon her lips
Come wanton spring
Come for birth you live
Youth takes it’s bow before the summer the seasons bring
Waiting for the color of spring–Mark David Hollis, 1986
To get a copy of The Colour of Spring, go here: https://burningshed.com/talk-talk_the-colour-of-spring_cd?filter_name=talk%20talk&filter_sub_category=true
Keep the Faith: Marillion’s “Afraid of Sunlight” at 25 ~ The Imaginative Conservative
Each of these four tracks builds in soulful intensity and bardic purpose until Mr. Hogarth is begging us to answer, “how do we now come to be afraid of sunlight”? It is a plea for a recognition of the human condition, in all of its majesty and tragedy.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/04/keep-faith-marillion-bradley-birzer.html
The Founders’ Moral Mind Was Revolutionary, and Free | The American Conservative
Thompson sees his own work as a fulfillment and filling out of the work of his beloved mentors, Bailyn and Wood. As such, Thompson’s book is, properly and justly, filled with attempts to understand free will. Where Bailyn and Wood gave too much credence to the power of ideas (again, as somewhat determinisms and deterministic), Thompson wrestles with the much more difficult problem of individual free will. After all, imagine a world in which every single person—past, present, and future—is a moral agent. The world gets very, very complicated, very, very quickly
— Read on www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/bradley-thompson-birzer-america-revolutionary-mind-founders/
John Marshall: A Primer ~ The Imaginative Conservative
Perhaps more than any other figure in the early history of the American Republic, Marshall shaped the Supreme Court as well as attitudes toward and understandings of the U.S. Constitution. While many of the cases over which Marshall presided are important to a constitutional understanding of America, five in particular stand out. The first, Marbury v. Madison, 1803, established the power of the Supreme Court to Judicial Review, which served as a defense of the judiciary against the other two branches of government. In the twentieth century, the Supreme Court reinterpreted Marshall’s advocacy of Judicial Review to mean judicial supremacy, but such an interpretation was never Marshall’s intent. Marshall only desired for the third branch of the federal government to be equal to the first two.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/03/john-marshall-primer-bradley-birzer.html
What if This Is the End? ~ The Imaginative Conservative
What if Chesterton was right, perhaps in some kind of Blakean fit of ecstasy? Maybe all of our worrying about The End is for naught. Perhaps it did happen long ago, and we live somewhere in the final days. The Apostles certainly believed the End of the Age was near to them, and the New Testament confirms and affirms this repeatedly.
Of course, I am only being half serious. Still, look at the news. The Coronavirus might as well be the Black Death. As I type this, the governor of Michigan has declared (unconstitutionally, it should be noted) a “stay at home”/lockdown order. Walking the dog (named, by coincidence?, Chesterton) this afternoon, my hometown of Hillsdale, Michigan, might very well have served as the set of some Twilight Zone episode, so quiet and abandoned does it seem. (This might be the ideal time to become close friends with a Mormon.) And, of course, this is just one view. China and Italy have already gone through hell, or continue to exist in it. With this viral threat, half of the world seems to have lost its collective mind.
Well, for the sake of argument, let’s say this is The End. It wasn’t nuclear war or an asteroid or a rogue planet or even some mystical force. But, merely—in a whimper—a damned bug. Would it really matter?
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/03/what-if-this-is-the-end-bradley-birzer.html
Forthcoming Rush Super Deluxe Edition of Permanent Waves.
Sigh. . .
Spirit of Cecilia 
You must be logged in to post a comment.