Neil Peart


Jamie123
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I'm sure this has been mentioned already, but I just found out. Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist for Rush, died this January past. (Shows how much I keep up with things!) He was only 67!

As a teenager I was transfixed by his songs. I could (and probably still can) recite most of his songs. I think my all-time favorite has to be The Fountain of Lamneth cycle from Caress of Steel - one people don't talk about much, and more subtle than the later and better-known 2112 and Hemispheres. But I loved all of them. Tom Sawyer, Spirit of Radio, Subdivisions. I'll always associate Subdivisions (and the whole Signals album) with my first year at college.

Music is cheap these days. You just download it for a small fee or naughty-naughty listen to it for free on YouTube (until the copyright owner has it taken down). In those days it wasn't. You had to save up for weeks and weeks to buy an album, and you agonized over which one to spend your money on. I'd think: "I really want my own copy of Hemispheres - I love listening to that at my friend's house - but...but...If I get that I can't afford to get the Archives collection..." etc.

But anyway, rest in peace Neil. You were a great man, and a big part of my adolescence.

Edited by Jamie123
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I had no idea what this thread was about.  I listened to @mirkwood's link.  Sorry folks I find little enjoyment in the musical expression.  My impression was music for someone lost and struggling with the experience of life.  There were time when the music caught me but I found the general theme  (especially from the vocals) sad and depressing.  Can someone help me with what I am missing?

 

The Traveler

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Guest MormonGator
5 minutes ago, Traveler said:

Can someone help me with what I am missing?

Because music is so subjective, that's virtually impossible.

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2 hours ago, Traveler said:

I had no idea what this thread was about.  I listened to @mirkwood's link.  Sorry folks I find little enjoyment in the musical expression.  My impression was music for someone lost and struggling with the experience of life.  There were time when the music caught me but I found the general theme  (especially from the vocals) sad and depressing.  Can someone help me with what I am missing?

The music and the lyrics are sad and depressing, which only helps to emphasize the "eucatastrophic" moment when By-Tor appears. (Oddly enough in the previous album - Fly By Night - By-Tor was the villain, not he hero. I can't explain that.)

There's a similar effect in the Marillion album Misplaced Childhood - near the end of Side 2, when the exceptionally dark Blind Curve segues into Childhood's End. That album has always moved me to tears.

Edited by Jamie123
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36 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

Childhood's End

An Arthur C. Clarke novel from 1953. I found it disturbing for its implicit nihilism. But then, I was in high school when I read it, and had not yet been adequately exposed to the depths of nihilism that we spoon-feed our children today.

Blue Öyster Cult's album Imaginos was subtitled "A Bedtime Story for the Children of the Damned". I thank God we are not the children of the damned, but sometimes I kinda wonder if many of today's generation shouldn't adopt Imaginos as their theme. Weaned on nihilism and fed a steady diet of endless outrage in news reports and portrayals of supposedly justified violence in entertainment, how can they avoid becoming exactly what they're being raised to become?

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2 hours ago, Traveler said:

I had no idea what this thread was about.  I listened to @mirkwood's link.  Sorry folks I find little enjoyment in the musical expression.  My impression was music for someone lost and struggling with the experience of life.  There were time when the music caught me but I found the general theme  (especially from the vocals) sad and depressing.  Can someone help me with what I am missing?

 

The Traveler

 

Oh that one is a deep cut for hardcore Rush fans.  Here is something more likely to strike your interest.

 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+spirit+of+radio+rush

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Vort said:

An Arthur C. Clarke novel from 1953. I found it disturbing for its implicit nihilism. But then, I was in high school when I read it, and had not yet been adequately exposed to the depths of nihilism that we spoon-feed our children today.

The Marillion song has nothing whatsoever to do with Clarke's novel.

I read Childhood's End in my 20s - rather than nihilistic, I saw it more as "something must be lost before something better can be gained". The "something better" of course is for the race a whole - not for the individual - which is something I struggle with. But it's exactly what you get if you look at the Pentateuch from the perspective of those who first received it. God's promises were for Israel, and by extension for all humanity, but there was no indication that the generations alive then would participate in the final result.

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1 minute ago, Jamie123 said:

The Marillion song has nothing whatsoever to do with Clarke's novel.

I read Childhood's End in my 20s - rather than nihilistic, I saw it more as "something must be lost before something better can be gained". The "something better" of course is for the race a whole - not for the individual - which is something I struggle with. But it's exactly what you get if you look at the Pentateuch from the perspective of those who first received it. God's promises were for Israel, and by extension for all humanity, but there was no indication that the generations alive then would participate in the final result.

The nihilism I sensed as a teenager (but could not then have voiced, or even identified) had to do with the disestablishment and destruction of all we hold sacred—society, the family, the earth itself—in the interest of an unknowable "progress" that we could neither fathom nor enjoy, that stole our children and left us utterly and wholly bereft in the name of nothing at all, at least nothing meaningful to us. It strikes me now as an atheist's picture of what Christians must believe, which may have been exactly what it was.

I don't see the Bible as you see it in this case, either. There most certainly was individual salvation offered through the living of the law of Moses, which itself worked to establish a just society that people could build enduring relationships and other social structures on. It was also a hope for their future in the person of their descendants, a promise that perhaps held more weight in older societies that looked to the future than in our society that looks to its navel.

Mine is not the canonical, One True Opinion on Clarke's novel, or for that matter on the Pentateuch. I offer it for whatever consideration you or anyone else thinks it's worth.

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27 minutes ago, Vort said:

The nihilism I sensed as a teenager (but could not then have voiced, or even identified) had to do with the disestablishment and destruction of all we hold sacred—society, the family, the earth itself—in the interest of an unknowable "progress" that we could neither fathom nor enjoy, that stole our children and left us utterly and wholly bereft in the name of nothing at all, at least nothing meaningful to us.

That's why it's a challenging book. It makes you think about things like this. Certainly the adults "left behind" see nothing meaningful in what their children collectively become, but you might also ask how "meaningful" a butterfly is to a caterpillar.

27 minutes ago, Vort said:

I don't see the Bible as you see it in this case, either. There most certainly was individual salvation offered through the living of the law of Moses...

Perhaps you've noticed things I've missed about personal salvation early in the OT, but I've only ever noticed that dimension much later in the Bible.

27 minutes ago, Vort said:

It was also a hope for their future in the person of their descendants, a promise that perhaps held more weight in older societies that looked to the future than in our society that looks to its navel.

I agree absolutely. They were the sort of people who had great hopes for their children, which greatly eclipsed what they hoped to enjoy for themselves.

Edited by Jamie123
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Having thought it over some more I'm finding this more interesting than ever. The Israelites looked forward to the promised land, knowing full well that none of their generation would enjoy it. The adults of Childhood's End had an inkling of what their children would become but feel nothing but despair. What is the difference? I think the difference is continuity - the Israel that left Egypt was not the same as the Israel that crossed the Jordan, but the one merged gradually into the other. Family relationships were not severed. Of course in the book the sudden severing of the adults from the evolving children was the only way the Overlords could protect humanity from destruction but the tragedy and sense of loss remain. It's rather like what Paul would describe as "birth pangs". That's what makes Childhood's End such a powerful book.

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I thought CE  made for a great science fiction story.  But for any philosophical benefits, I thought it was a completely pointless story.  It was about as poignant as Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  Great sci-fi.  But bereft of anything meaningful.

One thing I remember that frustrates me to this day was the explanation for why the overseers looked like demons.  I remember that the entire class, including the teacher, never knew why.  I told the class that the overseer explained why that is.  It was all spelled out in black and white.  They all looked at me as if I was from Mars.  No one remembered it.

Now, THAT would have been something to delve into in a philosophical discussion.

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I thought the ancestral future memories thing was an interesting idea. Clarke is not my favorite sci-fi author, but I enjoy his writings. The "science" part of his science fiction was, frankly, better than average for his time (or ours). While Clarke did not first invent the idea of a geostationary orbit, he popularized it.

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21 hours ago, mirkwood said:

 

Oh that one is a deep cut for hardcore Rush fans.  Here is something more likely to strike your interest.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+spirit+of+radio+rush

 

The link was to several offerings.  There is a lot of talent.  The drummer is awesome.  I cannot dispute.  I can listen for a while.  But I am a harmonic junkie.  I marvel at the simplistic complexity of the harmonic triad and find jazz progressions most to my individual liking.   For me it is difficult to concentrate through harmonic dissidents.  Thanks

 

The Traveler

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1 hour ago, Traveler said:

The link was to several offerings.  There is a lot of talent.  The drummer is awesome.  I cannot dispute.  I can listen for a while.  But I am a harmonic junkie.  I marvel at the simplistic complexity of the harmonic triad and find jazz progressions most to my individual liking.   For me it is difficult to concentrate through harmonic dissidents.  Thanks

Rush is not dissonant, at least not in the way that e.g. early 20th-century Romantic music was often dissonant. Rush is notable for their lyrical content, their highly complex melodies (not unlike jazz), and Peart's creative drumming to non-traditional time signatures—that is, not 2/x, 3/x, 4/x, or 6/x. Rush had their share of radio-pop hits and were immensely popular, which is to say that they had a large and enthusiastic fan base. But they did not aim for wide appeal.

I classify myself as a Rush admirer but not exactly a fan. I suspect there are many of my type.

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