Why is John Fahey So Boring?

-- cancer prone fat guy (wt...), January 10th, 2006

what is?

Elizabeth Cotton was adorable - check out the audience participation on her live CD on Arhoolie.

And I personally know of no remedy for falling out of love with the music of Fahey, or any other musician, for that matter. Sorry. (Why'd you like him in the first place?)

Because he was hip for a while perhaps?

When I liked him I was a stupid young person who didn't know shit about music, like many of you. Now I am slightly less stupid and know three things about music, one of them being that John Fahey, like Minimalism, is boring. What's so interesting and hip about a guy who plays repetitious music like he's got no soul? He's a defanged, emasculated, sterile copycat of MS John Hurt. John Fahey Is Boring.

Oh, and thanks for posting Fahey's own words. What a bag of hot air. Thank god he's dead!

Fahey produced an impressive variety of stuff and my feelings about it vary. If I'm not in the mood for Hitomi maybe I want to hear his dixieland stuff, or A Raga Called Pat, or The Oregon Capital Inn blah blah - he did a lot of different stuff! Seriously! And yet, maybe this is all my imaginings and projections, but I can sense the same determination behind it, the clear-headed, straight up emotionality and that killer sense of humour. Even (especially) with his writing. More than any one of his styles, or his status as an innovator or whatever, I'm mostly in love with the wonderful personality I feel behind it all. And when I listen to Sun Gonna Shine In My Backdoor Someday Blues I'm not listening to, as he describes it, a bitonal piece played in a John Hurt, ragtime finger-picking pattern style, I'm listening to... I don't know, something much trickier to word. More than any other music I feel this with Fahey. When I first heard him just after I turned 18 I was blown away by how ridiculously intuitive it seemed - it was so obvious, I couldn't believe I ever bothered with other music.

A lot of what's written about Fahey to convince you of his IMPORTANCE talks about how he was the first to do X or an exciting blend of country blues, 20th century classical, indian classical... blah blah. To me at least, it doesn't sound like that and it wouldn't be nearly as interesting if it did. All that seems incidental. The way I hear it (and I appreciate the subjectivity of all this), Fahey is trying to get to SOMETHING and all the technical details are just his way of getting to it. I guess that's it anyway, it's why I feel the same sorts of things listening to such a diverse range of music. It's not the language he's developed, but what he's saying with it.

I'm so fucking proud of throwing that rock into the pond.

Those little waves just marched around in their own order, but in no way that anyone could have predicted.

Even though the pond got back to equilibrium in about 10 seconds, I have to say that, for a small while, I was fucking make waves in that pond. I threw the rock, the waves happened, they ended, and it was because of me.

Fuck you, pond. I would never hesitate to throw another rock in you.

And Leo Kotke rules so watch it, pals.

-- Dom iNut (do...), January 10th, 2006.

By the way, that's really beautiful.

I'm no one to define soul, and I'm not defending John Fahey, but isn't repetitious music (chanting, drone, prayers, etc.) used all around the world in order for an individual to get in touch with their soul, subconcious, self, inner state, etc.?

Only if you like it it's good

Does this help?

http://www.furious.com/perfect/fahey/fahey-byron.html
http://www.furious.com/perfect/fahey/fahey-byron2.html

This says 11/94:
http://www.folklib.net/index/discog/f/fahey2_john.shtml

I'm not as keen on Reprise era Fahey as there's a lot of not particularly inspired trad jazz tunes and what not, although Of Rivers And Religion has plenty of admirers and one or two great tracks (the version of Funeral Song For Mississippi John Hurt is so jerky in parts I worry about whiplash). It makes sense that Christgau would disagree though and if you are aligned with his more populist approach (?) you might too. The Yellow Princess and Of Rivers And Religion are well worth getting though, and The Yellow Princess is being reissued soon with 3 bonus never-before-heard demo tapes including some sort of early version of Fare Forward Voyagers, I believe.

no.

there is massive internal struggle in the john fahey catalog, with sometimes gorgeous and sometimes disastrous results.

As for the other two things I learned about music, here they are:

1. Never trust a musician with any sort of beard

2. Stay away from anything Pitchfork says is good.

Props out to Mr. Roundtrouser: your winsome earnestness has warmed my heart and given me pause. Irony is the badge of the defeated!

#define NUM_VALDEMAR_HUGGLEZ 2112

tValdemarHugglez* pValdemarHugglez = new tValdemarHugglez[NUM_VALDEMAR_HUGGLEZ];

for (int i = 0; i < NUM_VALDEMAR_HUGGLEZ; ++i)
{

pValdemarHugglez[i].fBeard = g_BeardDatabase[BEARD_DATABASE_INDEX + i];

pValdemarHugglez[i].fPitchforkReview = g_PitchforkReviewDatabase[POSITIVE_REVIEWS][PFORK_POZ_REVIEW_DATABASE_INDEX + i];

printf("Valdemar loves the %s beard and thinks the %s review is groovy %lt;3\n", pValdemarHugglez[i].fBeard.GetStr(), pValdemarHugglez[i].fPositiveReview.GetStr());

}

for (int i = 0; i < NUM_VALDEMAR_HUGGLEZ; ++i)
{

printf("I <3 valdemar!!!! lol omg !!!!!1\n");
}

printf("Goodbye, world\n");
g_fucked = 1;
free(NULL);

ah so it's basically a reissue of The Mill Pond 2x7", I actually like his noise pieces esp those on City Of Refuge

When do the lost ‘77 sessions get their proper release? I can’t remember what the story was with them but at least one track was issued on Red Cross.

https://freshairarchive.org/guests/john-fahey

???

whoa, weird

👀👀

Ok, he is so wrong about the SF Symphony. At time of this interview the new symphony hall was less than one month from opening (due to the $5M gift from Louise Davies), but the symphony itself absolutely existed, sharing space with the opera/ballet at War Memorial. But with John I suspect facts are more of an illusion.

the transfiguration of terry gross

I Remember Blind Daniel Schur

wow, anyone heard this Finland-only release from 1968?

https://www.discogs.com/release/12204209-John-Fahey-Finlandia

It’s the holiday season so once again I am playing The New Possibility and trying to figure out why it’s never really worked for me.

I did read this piece in Pitchfork, which is excellent and really captures what makes the album unique and in some ways special in his catalogue: https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/why-you-should-listen-to-john-faheys-christmas-musiceven-if-you-hate-christmas-music/

Over the years, I’ve repeatedly tried sneaking this onto holiday playlists and it’s always received kind of a mildly unpleasant response from family members. And I get why. Some of it is def. stylistic. To be sure, the slide guitar and dissonances (and wrong notes) are mildly unpleasant on “Silent Night.” A jaunty “God Rest You Merry Gentlemen” (replete with a coda ripped the opening figure of Fahey’s own “Sligo River Blues”) just feels kind of incongruous. And, it seems like Fahey’s heart wasn’t really in the rather brief and disinterested versions of these well-worn Christmas chestnuts – he seemed to much prefer a ten minute workout like “Christ’s Saints of God Fantasy” (apparently a lesser-known hymn by the composer of “We Three Kings”).

But I think my biggest problem is that this never really feels like Christmas music – perhaps because Fahey just doesn’t really buy in to the idea of “Christmas music” to begin with.

Obviously this is a somewhat subjective thing. Like most people, I’ve heard a lifetime’s worth of Christmas music, good, bad and awful. I’ve seen Christmas concerts that impressed or left me cold. I’ve seen creative arrangements and amazing performances. And I’ve endured the dregs. We all have.

But as I was listening to The New Possibility, I began to realize that I don’t really listen to Christmas music as a creative endeavor the way I do pretty much all other music. Whether it’s a pop song, a choral arrangement or a solo performance, to me it’s primarily about evoking a feeling of refuge and comfort — and while the former was something John Fahey could summon, the latter was really something he actively seemed to disdain.

For instance, to choose a song the Pitchfork article cited, “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” didn’t become a Christmas classic because if its (very dark and desolate) lyric — it resonated because Sinatra (and subsequent performers he influenced) evoked its desperate need for shelter through his interpretation of its soothing melody (it also didn’t hurt that Sinatra dropped the song’s bleakest lyrics about “the woes of sin and strife” and “life’s crushing load”). We don’t want to dwell in the darkness on Christmas, we seek temporary refuge from it while recognizing its presence.

At any rate, Fahey just doesn’t do that with The New Possibility or anything I’ve heard of his four(!) other Christmas records because, I suspect, he never believed it possible – not through music much less a holiday. Fahey was many things but rather sadly being at peace, even briefly, was never one of them.

Also: these renditions are so resolutely solitary. Not to the point that they are desolate. Fahey is too considered and confident a player to unintentionally evoke that. But there is a definite feeling of alone-ness that permeates most of his recordings, and it feels out of place here.

I certainly don’t hate this record and if any commercially un-, uh, heralded artist deserved something approaching a “hit”it was Fahey. But as a holiday record I actively want to share with my loved ones, it leaves me cold.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DRz5c2qEVZZ/

^ Gwenifer Raymond plays Fahey's restored Recording King

more photos of it here...

https://www.instagram.com/p/DRz83SFkbzF/

Wondering if this holiday season is the time to finally rip off the band aid and do the Fahey Artist Poll. 🤔

Womblife for the album win.

Wondering if this holiday season is the time to finally rip off the band aid and do the Fahey Artist Poll. 🤔

fascinating / weird / never-republished Fahey essay from 1974 — PERFORMANCE AS WAR.

https://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/809718226768609280/john-fahey-performance-as-war

wow, amazing find. love the comic art

a coworker recently GAVE my partner a john fahey painting because he knew i was a huge fan. obviously became my christmas present. its insanely cool to have this

https://i.imgur.com/4grlFJP.jpeg

nice, that is great
and yeah, the MAD magazine-style art for the essay is perfect haha.

xp wow

xp Have you framed it? Please don't tell me it lives in a manila folder

absolutely framed! have a semi-temporary setup right now and am looking into UV protected glass because who knows what kind of paint he was using and how/if it holds up. (the paper is a torn-out page from a journal article about mary queen of scots)

Was this posted anywhere?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJPqmYjMC9k