I became a Catholic—after seven years of teenage atheism—because of the lyrics of the album, "The Colour of Spring," by the English band Talk Talk. I didn’t know Mark Hollis, the writer of those lyrics, and I don’t claim that he actually practiced what he preached. But preached he did! First, I should really cool [...]
Our readers are well aware of the wide-angle conservative lens that is the purview of The Imaginative Conservative’s co-founder Bradley J. Birzer. But what would it be like to set the fruits of Dr. Birzer’s expansive vision to music? In case you were unaware, the question is not a rhetorical one; the answer is readily [...]
On Tuesday, January 7, 2020, Neil Ellwood Peart valiantly lost his three and half-year battle against brain cancer. On that same day, he entered Valhalla, escorted by at least one Valkyrie, but quite possibly by two or three. Peart has shaped many of us very quietly and sometimes not so quietly. I can state with [...]
Jerry Ewing’s greatest achievements in Wonderous Stories are to show conclusively that progressive rock never died and continues to thrive; and that it’s a vital and vibrant cultural expression, worthy of all due scholarly and cultural attention… Wonderous Stories: A Journey Through the Landscape of Progressive Rock by Jerry Ewing (167 pages, Flood Gallery Publishing, 2018) [...]
Emerson, Lake & Palmer viewed their vocation as creating things of beauty. Such a motivation is a rare gift; to have it shared by three such brilliant musicians was a once in a generation gift for us all. The show has ended. In 2016 we lost two-thirds of the most important musical group of the [...]
It’s been more than a bit of a Rush extravaganza for the last several months even in the mainstream media. The band is on tour right now, playing in venues as massive as they have for over thirty-five years. Drummer Neil Peart turned 60 last week. Relatively rare in progressive rock history, a novel has [...]
Well, Imaginative Conservative readers, I must admit, this post makes me sad. I have been thrilled to promote the work of Greg Spawton, David Longdon, Dave Gregory, Andy Poole, Nick D’Virgilio, and the entire Big Big Train team (Rob Aubrey, Kathy Blanchard, Jim Trainer, Sandra Olma, and others). Not only have they been utterly professional in [...]
In the last of his Four Quartets, “Little Gidding”—arguably the finest work of art to emerge in the twentieth century—the Anglo-American poet, T.S. Eliot, offered the following: A people without history Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails On a winter’s afternoon, in a [...]
In the opening to his lengthy 1939 academic lecture to the University of St. Andrews, Professor J.R.R. Tolkien warned that those who entered myth did so at great peril to themselves and to the very realm of myth itself. That realm, Tolkien stated, is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: [...]
One of my favorite things in life is to arrive at a symphony performance early. How amazing is it to watch the individual members of the orchestra take their respective seats and begin tuning their individual instruments. Each person does just this without command or direction. Each, however, knows her or his place, and each [...]
BBT, English Electric. Forthcoming, September 3, 2012 An Interview with Greg Spawton We’re in the middle of perhaps the largest revival of progressive rock—that form of rock music which pursues the artistic and the mythic—since the genre became somewhat suspect as overblown and over-the-top in the second half of the 1970s with the [...]
A Hot Humid Day in South Bend On July 24, 2008, Rush finished its “Snakes and Arrows” tour with a concert in Indianapolis. I was researching that day at Notre Dame, and I could easily have made the 1.5-hour trip south to see them. For lots of reason (none of which I remember very well [...]