November 02, 2020

Episode 87: Brad Birzer / Genesis [ Part 2]

3 hours 28 minutes

Scot and Jeff discuss second part of Genesis’s career (the Phil Collins years) with Brad Birzer.

Introducing the Band:

Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) with guest Dr. Brad Birzer. Brad is the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies and Professor of History at Hillsdale College. He’s the co-founder of, and Senior Contributor at, The Imaginative Conservative. And he’s the author of a number of books, including Neil Peart: Cultural (Re)Percussions. Find him online at bradbirzer.com or @bradleybirzer on Twitter.

Brad’s Music Pick: Genesis

After joining us to celebrate life of Neil Peart and the career of Rush back at the beginning of the year, Brad Birzer returns to discuss his other great musical love, Genesis. We pick up where we left off last time with Patrick Frey, telling the story of Genesis from the departure of Peter Gabriel after The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway to the present day.

And what an amazing musical tale it is, the story of a niche British progressive rock band that was all but left for dead by the musical press after Gabriel’s departure, only to immediately come blazing out of the gates with one of the most impressive albums of the Seventies in 1976’s A Trick Of The Tail. With their diminutive balding drummer (a gent you may be familiar with by the name of Phil Collins) accidentally promoted to the role of lead singer during the sessions for that album, Genesis went on to not only weather the loss of their lead guitarist Steve Hackett, but to improbably ascend to the heights of worldwide commercial superstardom with Phil as their frontman. Genesis was ubiquitous during the 1980s, and in a good way: as Scot, Jeff, and Brad all argue, NONE of these albums have dated much at all, and in fact their stature has grown over the years (not even Patrick Bateman jokes could prevent it). Welcome to Political Beats’ loving conclusion to a tale that spans from Genesis to Revelation, one of the great underdog stories of the rock era . . . a band that spent 30 years making new music, evolving constantly, and never getting lost in a changing world.

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