Search and Destroy: John Fahey

Ok I'll aggree that the colaboration with Cul De Sac its not his best work, but most of his Takoma records are well worth investgating. America and Live In Tasmania are in high rotation around my place. I aslo remember hearing several CD-Rs of unreleased material being broadcasted on WFMU after his death. Anyone got copies of those??

Apart from that Rhino comp, 'America' is prob. the best all-round intro, esp. the extended CD version (rub sleevenotes by Charles Young, tho'...) 'Days Like These' strikes a gd balance between Fahey's more trad early blues-based style and the later tape loop/freeform stuff - ditto 'Requia'. I have a real soft spot for the two orch/jazz Reprise albs, 'Of Rivers and Religion' and esp. 'After the Ball'.

And if you like O'Rourke's sub-Fahey stuff, I'd say check out Robbie Basho (there's a gd 'Best Of' on Ace/Takoma) and esp. Sandy Bull, who was doing the whole orch psych/pop thing years before 'Bad Timing'...

not to be overlooked...

I've also got "Yellow Princess" and "Requia", these are from around 1967-68 and you can tell. I prefer "Yellow Princess", though it took me a while to get really into it. The tape/ concrete music stuff on "Requia" just isn't well enough done to be interesting, it's very hamfisted - stick to guitar John!

A recent acquisition is "After the Ball". This is one of the Fahey albums you're supposed to avoid but if you ignore the straight dixieland jazz of the title track and "New Orleans Shuffle", it's really an exquisite little album, stuff like "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free" and "When You Wore A Tulip (And I Wore A Big Red Rose)" could bring a tear to a glass eye! I just wish it was a bit longer!

it's not quite like anything else he's done. has much to do with the lp old girlfriends and other horrible memories, which looked back to fahey's childhood in 1950s suburban washington d.c., but in a different way from the proposed azalea city memories.

anyway, the late 80s/early 90s are generally thought to be fahey's down years. he had some sort of syndrome, whose name i don't recall, that effect his playing before he was diagnosed and treated (was it epstein-barr??). but "tuff" is extraordinary.

Except it's the studio recording of "Beverly" from After the Ball with studio-looped cheers tacked on at the end. Never seen this addressed by Fahey or his documentarians; Fahey seemed to be pretty open, even a myth-buster, in his later years. Anyone know of a mention?

You might want to look into Matt Valentine's stuff, esp. the recent Ragas and Blues and Glorious Group Therapy.

my favorite john fahey moments are prob--
"knot's berry farm molly"
"when the springtime comes again"
"i am the ressurection"

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/general/2010/02/22/dust-to-digitals-john-fahey-box-may-come-out-in-august/
Dust-To-Digital’s John Fahey Box May Come Out In August
great intro there :/

obviously this is excellent

yeah, it's gonna be sweet

amateurist's recommendation of "tuff" is pretty funny in hindsight.
― hstencil (hstencil), Tuesday, August 23, 2005 5:25 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark

wait, why?

also am i wrong or is this quote from lance ledbetter kind of incoherent?:

“To me what John Fahey represents is a little bit like what Harry Smith represents to old music. The old-time records that were made in the 20s and 30s, everyone sees Harry Smith as this gateway. For me, and for a lot of people, John Fahey is in that same category….When he first started making these records, he was a teenager….At the same time, from a music historian standpoint, knowing what John Fahey became just to hear him working it out on these recordings, especially the early ones, you learn a lot where his mind was… and the later material is right there with some of his great work. It’s John where he’s been playing for four, five hours everyday.”

I think 'Tuff' was one of the Charlie Schmidt songs that snuck on to the that Fahey comp. Not really funny.

That quote is real murky, like Harry Smith:'old-time'::John Fahey:¿John Fahey?

There are shitloads of little winks in the form of deliberate anomalies in Fahey's discography, but I don't think Fahey was just being a dick w/ Voice Of The Turtle or whatever.

It's not an incomprehensible quote, but it's to very eloquent either.

it's a lot of little thoughts I agree with that don't have much to do w/ each other. editor done the man no favours.

I think 'Tuff' was one of the Charlie Schmidt songs that snuck on to the that Fahey comp. Not really funny.

whoa! never knew that. another dadaist provocation from john-beyond-the-grave? anyway, i suppose this justifies my description of it as "not quite like anything else he's done.

iirc he had tapes of charlie he intended to fob off to shanachie in the late 80s - same time he gave them decade-old recordings to release as new (god time&causality) - and clearly they remained kicking around deceptively labelled and slipped by whoever put the comp together.

whoooaaaa http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/sfc/index.php/2010/02/24/dr-demento-and-john-fahey-interview-son-house/

that's so great! awesome to hear the moment something lodges into fahey's mind that would come out on his last album over 35 years later.

some more fahey goodies to tide us over til the box set: http://delta-slider.blogspot.com/

Any good Fahey albums with lots of backing instruments - aka Bryter Layter - Nick Drake?

there's some stuff where he's backed by a dixieland kinda band, but that might not be what you're looking for.

probably not :/

you probably know it, But Jim O'Rourke's Bad Timing would scratch that itch ...

good call. there are always the christmas LPs with the 2nd guitar, but those aren't really that good...

i was listening to 20 different fahey records the other day. not at the same time. some i like more than others. i like him, but....sadly, his records = currency to me. i never feel like hanging on to any cuz they are always good $$ or have good trade-in value. this is also why i don't own any sun ra records despite the fact that i have bought dozens of sun ra records over the years. i was digging the turtle record the other day. and his notes in the gatefold booklet are funny too. also digging the record that fahey recorded with jeff fuccillo. disturbed strings. fahey said hey i want to record you and jeff went in to the studio and started playing and fahey started laying down all this noise and fx onto the recording and freaked this young dude out. he didn't know what to make of it. sounds pretty cool!

not at the same time.

Oh scott, how u do amuse me!

that jeff fuccillo album IS fun. loved his story about asking fahey about the recordings later and fahey expressing "strong dislike" as they sounded "too nice".

to lorax, fahey did plenty of stuff w/ bands, just not normally the uh, nice finger-picking stuff, but they're all great. there's the dixieland orchestra albums (all dope), cul de sac record, john fahey trio records, dance of the inhabitants w/ spirit on yellow princess and shitloads of duets.

bad timing hasn't got that much instrumentation for a lot of it, but he does use Fahey's Old Fashioned Love trick to good effect, I think he did it on a gastr del sol album too.

Anybody else notice "Desperate Man Blues" in the newest Corvette commercial?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJW9Up0nJT4

ian wrote:

my favorite john fahey moments are prob--
"knott's berry farm molly"

is there a more "spacier" version of KBFM made available on mp3 somehow? I have a version in my itunes that sounds like super reverby and the backwards masking sounds really crazy compared to the LP version.

the lp version i have has the reverse/reverb/tape-manipulated part at the end of the piece; don't know what the issue is? iirc vol. 4 only had a few pressings (black label & then blue/gold?) but the tracklisting remained consistent.

weird (the corvette commercial). too bad john didn't live to collect the bucks!

I wonder who administers his estate/approved that license.

No idea who would get the cash from it -- Fahey didn't have any kids, did he?

presumably it goes to whoever owns the copyright in the recording. this should be a matter of public record.

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l9konefHxs1qa7wy0o1_500.jpg
Five CDs + book coming in 2011.

stoked.

who is doing this? Dust-to-Digital or Revenant?

looks like dust to digital is taking the reins, but i think revenant's involved.

:)

wow awesome!

good news!

Surprised not to see a mention of Georgia Stops, Atlanta Struts and Other Contemporary Dance Favorites, which is probably my personal favourite Fahey album (even over the Takoma material). Is it generally not rated?

Re the box set: this is his earliest recorded material, right? Is it an obsessives-only kind of deal or something a dilettante fuxxor could love?

"Georgia Stomps..." of course

I don't think Georgia Stomps is particularly well thought of - a few ppl love Juana & I remember Fahey regretted releasing it at some later point - but who cares. Prefer the tone on hitomi & other similar live sets that are floating about, some amazing stuff, a little Heavy though.

Hmm ok...for me Hitomi was a less interesting album from that era.

was listening to The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick just the other day, wld make a really gd intro disc for Fahey newcomers, imho - really strong playing, great sound and some v. funny patter between songs. had avoided it before cuz fahey was always meant to be an inconsistent, even willful live performer, but he was totally ON that evening.

love the live in tasmania set and after the ball too (listened to after the ball a hell of a lot more though). never noticed that the "live" set borrowed a track from the latter. lol.

listening to both to check, and yeah. they sound quite a bit different for me, cuz i've only got after the ball on CD and live in tasmania only on LP, but it seems to be exactly the same performance. so, is the rest of tasmania, uh, "externally sourced" or what?

...for me Hitomi was a less interesting album from that era.

certainly not one of my favorites. much prefer red cross and that "hard time empty bottle" thing.

at the moment after the ball might be not just my favorite john fahey record, but one of my very favorite records period. i notice that whenever a track from it comes up on shuffle, i immediately want to hear the rest of it, the whole thing, from beginning to end, and usually more than once. so good.

^ not highly regarded by fahey fans, i know. too close to arlo guthrie territory, maybe. but i love it to death.

I think Tasmania is just two reels, the 14 minutes of Introduction by Stefan Markvitch/On the Sunny Side of the Ocean/Tasmanian Two-Step and then on side B, the 9 or so minutes of Fahey Establishes Rapport with the Tasmanians/A dissertation on "Obscurity" (spoken)/The Return of the Tasmanian Tiger/Funeral Song for Mississippi John Hurt. I have it on CD but I haven't listened in ages; "Beverly" is definitely the same recording, I suspect the rest of the stuff is studio catchall as well, filler to pad running time.

That said the performances on this slay me, the aggression and tension in volume, plucking, the tempo fluctuations, it's stunning expression. "On the Sunny Side of the Ocean"...[∞ hyperbole].

after the ball is awesome -- I think it's handicapped because it has some of the lamest album artwork of Fahey's oeuvre
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41GPVJVM1BL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
"Beverly" is top five Fahey for me ... and I dig the dixieland stuff on there, too.

Yeah "Beverly" is way up there, his last-best in my view. "Sligo", "Sunny Side", "Princess" and "Catfish" would round me out on a Top 5 I think.

last two tracks on Live In Tasmania sposed to be studio efforts w/ dubbed applause. love the Approaching Of The Disco Void & jim o'rourke's description of it as 'ice cubes in a blender', and waltzing matilda is fantastic too.

the first two dixieland albums have really grown on me I love the enormous disco ball moon on after the ball&the gloss of hawaiian two step & om shanti norris, but of rivers & religion is my favourite, first true emergence of big drunk fahey playing big reverberating medleys w/ glacial syncopation & supreme relish, love Visits Washington DC, God,Time & Causality and Railroad for when the same thing shows up. maybe this was what old fahey was talking about more when he felt his earlier music was dishonest, idk, but it has Heft.

http://delta-slider.blogspot.com/2011/03/glenn-jones-on-john-fahey-fonotone.html
wow, lots of info about the upcoming box set from glenn jones here. can't wait. crazy stuff about losing everything via hard drive failures. also, anyone know about the legal trouble that the ayler box set caused revenant, which jones refers to? terrible that it caused the label to cease functioning!

just sent these guys an outlook calendar notice reminding them to back up their files

lol, yeah. can you imagine?

have never heard the ayler story either. amazing box and it really comes off like a labor of love from those involved. to have it kill your label as a result... well, that just sucks!

btw, backing up my files tonight. have been ignoring my google calendar reminders for about a month. :-o

The soundtrack to the game Diablo is pretty good (not really) and sounds kind of like Fahey. What I've heard of his stuff is dull, especially the record with Cul De Sac.

― adam, Saturday, July 20, 2002 12:00 AM (8 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i have no idea what john fahey i had heard 8 1/2 years ago (besides the boring cul de sac one) that would have led me to write this. diablo sndtrk is totally faheyed out tho.

can't wait for the next deepening in yr fahey/diablo thought in 2019

what is the diablo sdtk?

a little more info
DTD-21 : Late September / Early October 2011
Edited by Glenn Jones
88 page book with 5 CDs
115 tracks, most available on CD for the first time
A co-production between Dust-to-Digital and Revenant
http://www.dust-digital.com/fahey

Apologies if this is mentioned elsewhere, but don't recall seeing it here, & they've got a lot of money still to raise in the next few days:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/963556219/in-search-of-blind-joe-death-the-saga-of-john-fahe

(I'm nothing to do with the movie, just interested in seeing it get made)

Hmmmm, just over 9 grand needed with 28 hours to go.

I have probably heard it a hundred times but "Sun Gonna Shine In My Back Door Someday Blues" is probably my favorite thing by Fahey ever -- the perfect balance of blues, dissonance and rhythmic hypnosis.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m1kvbphaBmw/TngYVLEY71I/AAAAAAAABiM/7gJlrIEzK2w/s1600/tumblr_lqr1p665z41qg4e4uo5_1280.jpg

As I've always found Fahey to be particularly enjoyable when listened to on a record-by-record basis (as opposed to comps), I've now spent the last month buying every record of his used on Amazon that I didn't own already.
I think the most exciting thing about it is listening to all the different renditions of songs at different points. Like, "Wine and Roses" on Dance of Death is revisited, raga-style as "The Approaching of the Disco Void" (from Live at Tasmania) and again, post rocked out as "The New Red Pony" (from The Epiphany of Glen Jones.

Or "When the Springtime Comes Again," which returns as part of the epic "Mark: IV" on America.
And those are just his own pieces. Part of what's so interesting is that you really hear Fahey the Musicologist come out in Fahey the Composer -- see www.faheyfiles.com for a complete listing, but reading thru his career and seeing the connections and how all the strands, riffs, melodies and patterns become mutated and regurgitated is pretty remarkable. Given how zonked out Fahey was for so much of the 70s and 80s, I actually wonder how much of it was subconscious.

rip

http://www.wowwee.com/static/images/PaulyD.jpg

i think this is out now?, is up on the honest jon's site.

Just got this. Looks amazing.

that kickstarter funded doc upthread is a go, apparently

yeah the box set is out. kind of pricey but i'm going to go for it.

so what the hell is THIS box? Volumes 1-6 reissued?

"John Fahey - The Transcendental Waterfall: Guitar Excursions 1963-1967 6xLP box set $124.99 (4 Men With Beards)"

he Transcendental Waterfall - Guitar Excursions 1963-1967 is a 6-LP box set drawing from John Fahey's best, and most influential, period. Included in the set are Blind Joe Death, Death Chants, Breakdowns And Military Waltzes, The Dance of Death and Other Plantation Favorites, The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party, The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death, and Days Have Gone By, all reissued on 180 gram vinyl with deluxe tip-on jackets. Also included are a t-shirt, poster, and a postcard, all of which are housed in a deluxe box with stunning graphic design. An amazing package featuring some of the most important guitar solo recordings of the 20th century. Limited to 2000 numbered copies!

expensive times to be a fahey fan. hoping to get the dust to digital box for xmas. will shell out for it if i don't.

mmmmmm those are all great records. worth owning. cheaper and easier than trying to get originals.

also a postcard

i think i might feel weird wearing a t-shirt with john fahey's face on it.. any pics?!?!

important records do a cool fahey t-shirt (all their shirts are next to nothing, also, so)

http://importantrecords.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/product_node/apparel/fahey_tee.jpg

originals of those recs are really $20+ these days? jeez.

http://www.popsike.com/php/quicksearch.php?pagenum=1&searchtext=john+fahey&incldescr=&sortord=ddate&thumbs=&currsel=

fonotone box saving my life

Picked it up the other day as a birthday gift to myself!

happy birrrrrthday indeed.
box was mentioned ... on some other thread, can't remember now. but it is fantastic, really a beautiful thing. there are some recordings on there that are just curiosities (mostly anything where john sings), but also tons of magical sounds that can rank with his best stuff. it's funny, having dug pretty deep into the post-fahey acoustic guitar landscape, he still sounds the best, even if some of his followers are technically "better" players. not sure what it is -- fahey's compositions are often these monumental, impeccably constructed creations. hearing some of the early versions of some well-known tunes on the new box only drives this home.

I really wanted this before. Now want it even more.

some of the tunes w/ fahey's singing as blind thomas are A+

HERE COMES BIG JEAN PAUL SARTRE, HE'S GOT THE BLUES TOO

so what the hell is THIS box? Volumes 1-6 reissued?

"John Fahey - The Transcendental Waterfall: Guitar Excursions 1963-1967 6xLP box set $124.99 (4 Men With Beards)"

― sleeve, Friday, October 28, 2011 10:20 AM (4 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ugh. fuck a format fetishist. you can get all those records on CD for like half that much.

still want the fonotone thing though, goddam it's pricey.

not only can you get them on those Fantasy CDs, they all have a shit-down of bonus material

grr shit-TON, i mean (how did that happen)

that transcendental waterfall thing obv has awesome music but i happened upon all of those takoma lps at a store in l.a. (all in pretty pristine shape) and snapped em up for $40 total.

yeah, i bought the first four for $50 a few years back, they're around

I bought all of early ones except Days Gone By about six months ago used on Amazon as well as the single disc comp of Of Rivers.../After the Ball. I don't think I paid more than $7 for any of them and got most for, like, $2 meaning the shipping was more than than the CDs.

Quick note, the version of "Tuff" that appears on the Cul De Sac collab is indeed Fahey. The one that appears on the 1977-19whatever "Best of" is a Charlie Schmidt song that is totally different. I really do dig Fahey's version. Been awhile since I've listened to the other one.

Some of this live John Fahey (on Sea Changes and Coelacanths) reminds me a bit of Durutti Column. Does Reilly have any known (long-standing) admiration for Fahey? I suppose a guitar is going to sound a little like a guitar in general.

listening to this new to me concert from 1975 on wolfgang's vault: http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/john-fahey/concerts/great-american-music-hall-august-08-1975-1st-set.html
so great. the intro to "red pony" sounds like fahey's about to go full on metal.

IN SEARCH OF BLIND JOE DEATH: THE SAGA OF JOHN FAHEY
A documentary on folk, blues and beyond music legend John Fahey, native of Takoma Park, Maryland.

Two shows only! Oct. 26 & 27, 1:00 p.m. near Washington D.C. at the AFI Silver - 8633 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring

www.afi.com/silver

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/music/2014/01/31/listen-john-faheys-strange-mixtapes-for-a-record-store-clerk/

yeah we were freaking out about those over on the post-Takoma thread

http://www.amazon.com/Dance-Death-Fahey-American-Guitarist/dp/1613745192

oh cool that's exciting!

Yeah, gonna check that out at some point!

Listening to "Vol. 6 Days Have Gone By" for the first time in a while by the way UMS, thanks for plunking that in my head.

anyone know steve lowenthal? how should i calibrate my expectations? days have gone by is def a transitional record, has the last of the really good old recordings on, he was turning professional about then, has his sound collage stuff, by the time he got to voice of the turtle that early takoma shtick had bulged to byzantine, ridiculous, self-parodying levels (yellow princess was a different thing). days have gone by is mb the best fahey though, first 6 tracks are pretty much all incredible classics.

looks like he is the dude behind this label: http://www.vdsqrecords.com/
so he'd probably fit in over on the ilx brigade thread

has he written much before?

his mfa? http://books.google.com/books/about/In_Christ_There_is_No_East_Or_West.html?id=86QppwAACAAJ

that looks interesting... i'm very curious about the format, how much will be stitched-together interviews, how much narrative there'll be...

Think Lowenthal might also be one of the people behind Swingset (which I have only read a couple of times, so not sure how much that means):

http://swingsetmagazine.com/about/

Issues of Swingset I bought were pretty cool, mostly just interviews and reviews of weirdo stuff, but he has been at "it" since 2001 at least if he is the same guy.

looks promising! will read.

Verrrrry late to the party here, but a good portion of this Fahey Fonotone Years box set is terrific. I was misled by an early listen to those, err, admittedly tough "Blind Thomas" tunes and a friend who referred to the box set as 'unnecessary,' but I'm finding most of it engrossing and much of it at least on par with a lot of Fahey's best early stuff.

haha, yeah, some of that vocal stuff is kind of rough going (though occasionally pretty funny), but there is more than enough amazing material to make up for it.

fahey week at delta slider is in full swing! i wrote up an interesting radio performance/interivew from the early 90s today. http://delta-slider.blogspot.com/

heard mixed things about this documentary, but so far the highlight has been seeing joe bussard play + interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p--IpvvFJ4A

i thought the documentary was pretty bland overall but the bussard bit was excellent. idk why they spent like 5 minutes talking to some dipshit from the decembrists who looked straight off a barenaked ladies album cover

I enjoyed the documentary. But I don't know enough about his life to take issue with what they may have left out.

And honestly they didn't spend very much time with the Decemberists guy. I really didn't find his presence that annoying, and I'm not going to otherwise complain about him just cause I also don't like the Decemberists.

he is probably a cool guy.
the zabriskie point tapes are interesting! very meandering, but in a good way for the most part. all solo, wonder if there are any tapes floating around w/ various collaborators (fahey mentions bringing in other musicians).

i didn't mind the decemberist guy or even townsend but it was a little weird to reach out to them and not, say, Peter Lang or Leo Kottke who were close associates to Fahey and might have a had a little more to add other than "I like John Fahey a lot"

yeah opening on townsend was really weird, i was struggling to draw a line between their respective playing

True! Was hoping Glenn Jones would show up too.

Either way, if you can get Townsend to say meaningful things in your documentary, it's probably worth including, if for no other reason but to get Fahey material more attention through association.

To that point, maybe they had him appear immediately to hook any casual viewers mostly unfamiliar with Fahey.

I wonder if there is pressure for documentary makers to pepper in star-power for that reason, like from a marketing stand point you need some percentage of star names to call out in promotional materials.

yeah actually townsend is townsend so i'm cool w.him overall & he was a big fan I know Fahey kinda patted him on the head when Pete wrote him and had him listen to Tommy haha

i mean i get it definitely, both are in there for interest, i just thought it was kind of lazy not to have leo or peter in, as i think both are pretty accessible and i dunno, it's like they were so close to him

Hey, maybe they tried who knows.

kinda want a 9-part ken burns doc on the american primitive scene through the ages. what are the odds!?

maybe dave grohl could narrate

I think the topic would make a better 1 of a 9 part series about traditional blues

or rhythm and blues, pace pete townsend

At a friend's urging, I've finally checked out some Faheytronica: part 1 of my first-listening notes:

after googling started with Requia, "Requiem For Molly," in four parts.
Part 1 turns out to be very handsome, perhaps courtly but not genteel solo guitar,
the other three parts include "sonic collages." as online sources put it ( with which he is assisted by music writer Barry Hansen, AKA Dr. Demento, maestro of the syndicated novelty radio show). "Collage" is especially appropriate because the news reel etc. bits sound like animated newspaper clippings, maybe wiggling envelopes sometimes, and mainly I like the way their contours and the pacing of placement---also the cadences and intonation of spoken word and other sounds, Hitler and bombers and so on, go with the guitar sound. Fahey said later he didn't like the results, though did consider this experiment a valuable "learning experience." It's not that different from other "underground" tracks you find on LPs of that era, '67 or so, in terms of choosing what we'd call samples, but I haven't heard any other American artist from that neck of the woods--the rock folk weirdo neck---who made it all work as this kind of ambient experience, social commentary and hipster humor aside, although I guess those might be in there too (first listening)

Probably better though--not as dependent on my own quirks/glosses of hearing----is "The Singing Bridge of Memphis Tennessee," from The Yellow Princess: much more sophisticated, in terms of no newsreel, newspaper clippings glued on, just what does indeed sound like a singing bridge---of steel guitar strings, various other metals used in constructing a bridge over a body of water, maybe some water effects pulled in, vibrations and whistles and other nice things (incl vocal?), all layered and merged, just attached and distinct enough. It's based in part on "Quill Blues" by Big Boy Cleveland, and may incl. some of that original recording (think I saw that statement or speculation somewhere)

The Epiphany of Glenn Jones is all over the place,
Conceptually I totally dig the opener, "Tuff, " right away, although the glacial zen groove trek had me nodding a bit, so it turns out even good drones can do that, h'mm.
"Gamelan Collage" different enough to keep me awake, but lost me sometimes,
"Maggie Campbell Blues" quite splendid courtship again,
"New Red Pony" is heavy smokey red rock, awright,
"Out Puppet Selves" is UFO Bebe Barron dub plate equiv of op art, which I like: if you're gonna go this way, bear down on the basic texture FX, awright again.
"Gamelan Guitar" like a real good dream I forget right after it's over (but I can go back again to this dream, yay).
This version of "Come On In My Kitchen" is discreetly tweaked, also tweeked, just enough to enhance it in ways prob unnec but v enjoyable.
"Magic Mountain" is back to the science fiction soundtrack, but much more varied than "Out Puppet Selves," and a little too soft-focus for me, so far.
The spoken word-based closers go on very long, though I like that, even though Fahey keeps ending up with nothing, even when the pretty lady persuades him to board the bus to scenic Exstinkyville, he eventually (very eventuallly) remembers "the basic dialectic of life," or some kind of dialectin and sings a hearty "No-o-o," then an equally hearty "Ye-e--e-s," continuing while the band makes noise around him.
Next will be City of Refuge, Womblive, The Mill Pond EP, located here and there, mostly posted track by track on YouTube. The albums I'm talking about above are all on Spotify, at least the version we get over here. (Meaning America; guy I was responding to is in Europe.)

Pt. 2, dammit! (Maybe some of this will sound better as I listen more; despite what I said toward the end, I did keep all of City and Womblife)(Snapped up The Mill Pond EP from WFMU)

Starting again with City of Refuge, which chronologically I should have listened to before Epiphany, which Glenn J. meant as a corrective to the former, to save his hero and help him find a way to say the new thing he was trying to say. Later, he also writes, he decided both albums what Fahey meant them to be: photographs of him at the time they were made. However, after hearing City, I gotta say, "Thanks GJ and Cul De Sac (and God I wish you could have pulled him back from Womblife, although The Mill Pond works fine")!---but I'm getting ahead of myself).
CoR: "Fanfare" is well-named: flourishes, with buzzy picking and strumming and chopping.
The second track seems more like tuning up and/or down, who cares, ditto for the title.
"City of Refuge I"' is 20-odd minutes long, first half feat. ominous peg-twisting and whatnot. The second turns up a skeletal pattern, then a sunny stroll-along, and then somewhat merges the two motifs, in a natural way: you go for a stroll, you and your shadow (not the song of that title, just the thing that happens). Wanders off somewhere, but with a good edit, hey.
"Chelsey Silver, Please Call Home" starts promisingly, the silvery Classic John, but gets a little too reliant on basic devices and reminds me that one reason he was trying new directions was diabetic nerve damage in fingers (ouch, ouch ouch just thinking about it)
Nevertheless, "City of Refuge III," with evocation of silver bells and chimes calling insistently over an earthly shuffle, is very fine, and the only one of these YouTubes I bothered to download.
Womblife has some kinda nice drone lullabys and doppler-shift x sealife imitations at times, but most of it's rubbish; I'd call it heavy new age, but not that heavy. "Juana" reverts to the more popular JF: crisp Spanishy morning sounds, cogent back and forth of a and b melodies, even underselling lyricism or at least fluidity, but another one that could use an edit: 12 minutes, jeez
The Mill Pond EP! Wasn't expecting much, but true avant garage, as Crocus Behemoth would put it, with vocal and other sweaty bristley Radio Shack Popular Mechanics bits and kits from Dad's abandoned workshop, returning via cyberTibet understages, more like whole underlives--- attention-grabbing/holding, viable moments and passages flashing by. Another scribble mentions " a good motif for soundtrack of Japanese folk-horror art film, or Roger Corman's remake, " and "Garbage" suggests more of the 50s UFO-huffing found on The Epiphany's "Out Puppet Selves," but also with traces of Hendrix emulating that kind of soundtrack,and suspense as the saucer reverb inches toward liftoff/spinoff. Some tracks may use elements of each other, and for the climax, Fahey seems to be chanting while eating his way through his guitar----which reminds me of Andy Beta's testimony, one of the very best of its kind and flavor:
http://www.villagevoice.com/music/looking-for-blind-joe-death-6400465

(Later I remembered to tell him about delta-slider.)

great posts & 'Faheytronica' is a fine coinage

The Singing Bridge of Memphis Tennessee definitely has a straight sample from Quill Blues - https://youtu.be/kTdIMR9bGpM - & I think it's my favourite of these efforts, alongside A Raga Called Pat, though the guitar is still obviously the star of the latter

The Epiphany of Glenn Jones is probably the strangest Fahey album, it really is all over the place & I don't love most of it but Fahey's voice/monologue/dialectic on the last two tracks is just incredible to me, love the live recordings when his introductions become circuitous and oblique for the same reason & the trio recording where he reads from the liner notes to the first album, his voice has got that same heft

Great stuff, dow. Very insightful. "Faheytronica" (great description, by the way) has always kind of been a challenge to me. Hard to really grasp onto the stuff and, truthfully, it often just strikes me as an interruption — get back to the actual music, John! I've really struggled with Requia —an album I really want to love— for this reason. I don't even care for it when William Tyler does his homages to the style. The only "recent" (read: post-70's) Fahey I've ventured into is Red Cross, so I don't have much of an idea of what he was up to in later years.

starting to think "God, Time, and Causality" is his best work- some truly ripping takes of older classic material fused with newer medleys and epics

wrote and deleted a load of gushing bc I've written enough rubbish about fahey on ilx but yes, it's definitely up there

awww i love your gushing, some of my favorite Posts on here

did you ever read this, ogmor? some of the best writing on him i've seen.

"The long standing difficulty in understanding Fahey’s musical proximity draws from the way he ordered meaning."

https://blogthehum.wordpress.com/2016/08/29/the-unaccompanied-guitar-soli-raga-and-beyond-part-one-john-fahey/

it is rare to find meaty pieces of writing on Fahey that look at the composition of his pieces, writers often seem to be dazzled by his status & mythology, but I love good appreciations and analysis about the music itself. this guy seems to be offering a sort of General Theory of Fahey in that paragraph you quoted from, which is an endeavour that's familiar to me and pleasingly ambitious. It was a little unclear and I was starting to write about where I disagreed with it when I started to think about what he was getting at.

"The long standing difficulty in understanding Fahey’s musical proximity draws from the way he ordered meaning."

Fahey's musical proximity = who to think of him in the company of & how that might affect our understanding. This guy wants to compare Fahey to composers, suggesting that Fahey succeeds where many before have failed in trying to disrupt (even inverse) or change the 'primary musical context' or 'dominant form' through undermining "the way the components of a piece interact through degrees of importance" "in a way that unraveled the structural integrity of each element".

'Meaning' isn't fleshed out, but surely the meaning is or is in the ordering. What makes a given passage of notes more or less significant is how it is presented. I would say one thing that marks Fahey out from the composers listed is that he is very much a performer (crucially there is no clear distinction between performer/composer for fahey), and as a performer is able to have a much stronger effect on how things are presented. this seems analagous to how much Fahey loved intros, how he would play old songs with longer and longer intros over time, until the original song was just like a coda. like a drawn out alap in a raga, a lot of fahey's pieces are in no hurry to get where they're going, and he luxuriates in approaching from various oblique angles.

I would say one of the things Fahey had the most fun playing with was this sense of musical proximity (with... varying degrees of subtlety). Fahey appreciated some of the peculiar possibilities afforded by the sound world of the guitar. he understood the raw power of fingerstyle steel string playing from an acoustic perspective (& owned that to the extent that his name is the first ppl reach for to describe it), but he also had a beautiful understanding of the ways in which a lot of music was idiomatic to the guitar, and the flattening effect solo instrumental music has on different stylistic idioms. fahey can quote anyone and sound like himself. as a side note it occurs to me that this is close to the definition of freedom according to Hegel - being oneself in an other - & there is something supremely liberating and free about the way Fahey roamed stylistically, to an extent that no one else I've heard has really matched, and in strange/intuitive ways that could involve sudden sharp turns through time and space and genre. that is to say, he was a master of hodology. the clue is in the titles "stomping tonight on the pennsylvania/alabama border"; the inhabitants of the palace of king philip xiv of spain are rehoused in the invisible city of bladensburg. it's one thing to deploy a bit of skip james immediately after vaughan williams, another to play it so smoothly that it sounds fluid, and another again so that no one even notices that's what you're doing, it just sounds like you. the sound world of the guitar is the key: it elides geography and history, it can disguise, it's a third point through which emotional heft/meaning can be triangulated, it gives the distance necessary for irony, & Fahey appreciated the huge opportunities it opens up for a performer.

anyway I agree with him that death chants is one of the best records. I was listening to it while walking through spain earlier this month, and there is something about its slightly sun-faded classicism which suits the country (Fahey took such obvious care over his titles it seems odd ppl don't pay more attention to them). the original recordings have a comfortably-worn understated quality to the playing, and I think the album flows and hangs together the best of any of his early takoma efforts. I was listening to some summer day, just thinking about how amazing it would be to hear one of the current crop of guitarists release anything like that, but no one's even trying. 'post-fahey' is a misnomer, most of the stuff in that thread would be better thought of as post-rose who himself had a more complicated relationship to fahey than can be defined simply as 'post'. no one ever calls fahey 'post-james' or whatever, but he did at least understand how the music worked and was constructed and used that knowledge to do something else. I wld say Fahey has been most grievously misunderstood by guitarists, who have echoed him in strange superficial ways and kicked up a lot of dust that has clouded a sense of what he was up to.

I disagree about fare forward voyagers, and I think it's interesting to think why its so focused on with its grandiose eliot titles, dark, slightly foreboding cover signalling an indian influence, and Fahey doing his best to lend the pieces gravitas however he can. it's so hefty and serious compared to old fashioned love, which is the following album, and lacks all those signifiers and yet seems more convincing/honest to me in the cheerful way it moves through its hodge-podge of lighter styles (which is no less or more absurd than what he's up to on FFV) and then moves up into that suddenly painful, elevated mode with dry bones which seems like the most breathtaking ending to any fahey album to me (better than but somewhat similar to the way america ends with "the waltz that carried us away..."). mb FFV is the sort of trojan horse that guy is talking about; all this alluring exoticism, poetry and mysticism which fahey has used to get generations of black metal and experimental fans to listen to him doing a 23 minute cover of goodbye old paint.

there are some live versions of FFV in which Fahey's playing is more ferocious and immediate but in terms of his long extended medleys I definitely prefer god time & causality. fahey could be funereal in some ways but I think that's an example of how it's sometimes championed to the neglect of some of his best material.

ya i think that's why i like god, time, causality so much, it captures the 'imperial' era of fahey so well (playing carnegie hall, doing these huge epics, probably peak of his technical playing- recorded in 77 but not released until later) but also some of the juxtaposition and humor that's key to his art... also his medleys/etc are a big part of understanding him but no other studio efforts sans this one capture the breadth of his material. (also 'sandy on earth' has some parts that are unmatched elsewhere in his discography). ooooh and there's even some of his prankster side coming out a la 'Voice of the Turtle' in how he passed off these old recordings as new ones

have you ever listened to 'America' with the original tracklisting ogmor? it's basically the two epics bookended with the waltz and old country rock... i love the dvorak and bluesey stuff that's on the rerelease but when it's more contained like on the original it makes a lot more sense, probably bumps it up to my top 5, almost elevated by striking some of the blues elements. i'd also agree that death chants is one of his best. 'on the sunny side of the ocean' aside transmogrification always seemed a bit overrated, honestly. not sure why it's always exalted or the conventional 'go-to', i'd say it missed elements of what made him special

also otm on dry bones in the valley, amazing song and performance aside that one is interesting because there's actually quite a bit of processing on the guitar, lots of compression and effects, etc

sorry, 'knoxville blues' on america:

"Voice of the Turtle" – 15:42
"The Waltz That Carried Us Away and Then a Mosquito Came and Ate Up My Sweetheart" – 5:49
"Mark 1:15" – 16:18
"Knoxville Blues" (Sam McGee) – 3:07

it is rare to find meaty pieces of writing on Fahey that look at the composition of his pieces, writers often seem to be dazzled by his status & mythology, but I love good appreciations and analysis about the music itself. this guy seems to be offering a sort of General Theory of Fahey in that paragraph you quoted from, which is an endeavour that's familiar to me and pleasingly ambitious. It was a little unclear and I was starting to write about where I disagreed with it when I started to think about what he was getting at.

"The long standing difficulty in understanding Fahey’s musical proximity draws from the way he ordered meaning."

Fahey's musical proximity = who to think of him in the company of & how that might affect our understanding. This guy wants to compare Fahey to composers, suggesting that Fahey succeeds where many before have failed in trying to disrupt (even inverse) or change the 'primary musical context' or 'dominant form' through undermining "the way the components of a piece interact through degrees of importance" "in a way that unraveled the structural integrity of each element".

'Meaning' isn't fleshed out, but surely the meaning /is/ or /is in/ the ordering. What makes a given passage of notes more or less significant is how it is presented. I would say one thing that marks Fahey out from the composers listed is that he is very much a performer (crucially there is no clear distinction between performer/composer for fahey), and as a performer is able to have a much stronger effect on how things are presented. this seems analagous to how much Fahey loved intros, how he would play old songs with longer and longer intros over time, until the original song was just like a coda. like a drawn out alap in a raga, a lot of fahey's pieces are in no hurry to get where they're going, and he luxuriates in approaching from various oblique angles.

I would say one of the things Fahey had the most fun playing with was this sense of musical proximity (with... varying degrees of subtlety). Fahey appreciated some of the peculiar possibilities afforded by the sound world of the guitar. he understood the raw power of fingerstyle steel string playing from an acoustic perspective (& owned that to the extent that his name is the first ppl reach for to describe it), but he also had a beautiful understanding of the ways in which a lot of music was idiomatic to the guitar, and the flattening effect solo instrumental music has on different stylistic idioms. fahey can quote anyone and sound like himself. as a side note it occurs to me that this is close to the definition of freedom according to Hegel - being oneself in an other - & there is something supremely liberating and free about the way Fahey roamed stylistically, to an extent that no one else I've heard has really matched, and in strange/intuitive ways that could involve sudden sharp turns through time and space and genre. that is to say, he was a master of hodology. the clue is in the titles "stomping tonight on the pennsylvania/alabama border"; the inhabitants of the palace of king philip xiv of spain are rehoused in the invisible city of bladensburg. it's one thing to deploy a bit of skip james immediately after vaughan williams, another to play it so smoothly that it sounds fluid, and another again so that no one even notices that's what you're doing, it just sounds like you. the sound world of the guitar is the key: it elides geography and history, it can disguise, it's a third point through which emotional heft/meaning can be triangulated, it gives the distance necessary for irony, & Fahey appreciated the huge opportunities it opens up for a performer.

anyway I agree with him that death chants is one of the best records. I was listening to it while walking through spain earlier this month, and there is something about its slightly sun-faded classicism which suits the country (Fahey took such obvious care over his titles it seems odd ppl don't pay more attention to them). the original recordings have a comfortably-worn understated quality to the playing, and I think the album flows and hangs together the best of any of his early takoma efforts. I was listening to some summer day, just thinking about how amazing it would be to hear one of the current crop of guitarists release anything like that, but no one's even trying. 'post-fahey' is a misnomer, most of the stuff in that thread would be better thought of as post-rose who himself had a more complicated relationship to fahey than can be defined simply as 'post'. no one ever calls fahey 'post-james' or whatever, but he did at least understand how the music worked and was constructed and used that knowledge to do something else. I wld say Fahey has been most grievously misunderstood by guitarists, who have echoed him in strange superficial ways and kicked up a lot of dust that has clouded a sense of what he was up to.

I disagree about fare forward voyagers, and I think it's interesting to think why its so focused on with its grandiose eliot titles, dark, slightly foreboding cover signalling an indian influence, and Fahey doing his best to lend the pieces gravitas however he can. it's so hefty and serious compared to old fashioned love, which is the following album, and lacks all those signifiers and yet seems more convincing/honest to me in the cheerful way it moves through its hodge-podge of lighter styles (which is no less or more absurd than what he's up to on FFV) and then moves up into that suddenly painful, elevated mode with dry bones which seems like the most breathtaking ending to any fahey album to me (better than but somewhat similar to the way america ends with "the waltz that carried us away..."). mb FFV is the sort of trojan horse that guy is talking about; all this alluring exoticism, poetry and mysticism which fahey has used to get generations of black metal and experimental fans to listen to him doing a 23 minute cover of goodbye old paint.

there are some live versions of FFV in which Fahey's playing is more ferocious and immediate but in terms of his long extended medleys I definitely prefer god time & causality. fahey could be funereal in some ways but I think that's an example of how it's sometimes championed to the neglect of some of his best material.

New footage of him, instant classic- that pic of him and his girlfriend holding the umbrella came from this. Hope the full thing comes out at some point

http://www.oxfordamerican.org/item/1281-memphis-blues-again

Wow, nice!

so good

Looks like a new 4xLP box, comprising his now famous mixtapes along with unreleased recordings, is coming next year via Mississippi:

John Fahey - Bestiary 4 LP box set (Unbelievable 4 LP set of unreleased Fahey recordings collaged with mixes made by Fahey of his favorite songs from all genres - Brazilian, pop, classical, blues, country, Indonesian and on and on. Also comes with a 185 page cloth bound book filled with unpublished writing, collages and paintings by Fahey. Very limited one time edition. We will also have an expensive special edition available to CSR members that comes with an original Fahey painting and an original mix tape made by Fahey. Really. This thing is nuts.)

They've been pretty quiet about it thus far (no release date, and this is the lone Google hit for "Fahey," "Bestiary") but you can see the cover art here (just below Dead Moon): https://sites.google.com/site/mississippicsr/

Hope this thing is >$150

Think you mean <$150

fahey is my musical hero but can't say i have much interest in unreleased late period stuff... and i feel like i saw those mixes on someone's blog or soundcloud at one point?

yeah I've listened to some mixtapes he made on SoundCloud before

xmas was a great reminder of how amazing The New Possibility is

it really is, we listened to it a few times. the later period 1991 Xmas CD on Burnside has some great stuff too, like a sprightly version of 'Jingle Bells'. I still need the Xmas Vol. II LP as well.

jamming new possibility in the gift shop today as we speak

John Fahey, live in early 1968: "Bursting with a manic vitality and a missionary belief in the healing properties of the alternating bass." https://t.co/lI2Ga7OVx3 pic.twitter.com/i0pciRhHbE

— Tyler Wilcox (@tywilc) July 26, 2022