Why is John Fahey So Boring?

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I just threw a rock into the pond, and it made small waves.. then they ended.

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.

Dom iNut (donut), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 18:22 (twenty years ago)

Are we going to debate what soul is again? I hope so. I hope it's also kind of racist and completely uninformed. I want some more of that.

And Leo Kotke rules so watch it, pals.

!~~~~11@@, Tuesday, 10 January 2006 18:23 (twenty years ago)

http://www.desert-survivors.org/images/indexpic.jpg

Excelsior Syndrum (noodle vague), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 18:24 (twenty years ago)

I just threw a rock into the pond, and it made small waves.. then they ended.
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.

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

By the way, that's really beautiful.

~~~~~, Tuesday, 10 January 2006 18:27 (twenty years ago)

http://www.hi.is/~oi/Siberia%20photos/Nenet%20tents%20on%20the%20tundra,%20Yamal.jpg

Excelsior Syndrum (noodle vague), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 18:27 (twenty years ago)

http://mmi.tudelft.nl/~charles/Sinai-plain.jpg

Excelsior Syndrum (noodle vague), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 18:30 (twenty years ago)

All music is boring.

o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 18:34 (twenty years ago)

i'm falling aslepe just reading this.

imbidimts, Tuesday, 10 January 2006 18:39 (twenty years ago)

speaking of reading, anyone out there know the date of the SPIN issue with Byron Coley's article on the man? know it's from '94, but not sure of the exact month. i ned a nap.

imbidimts, Tuesday, 10 January 2006 18:41 (twenty years ago)

Bert Jansch is cool. He's not boring.

M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 18:43 (twenty years ago)

What's so interesting and hip about a guy who plays repetitious music like he's got no soul?

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.?

QuantumNoise (Justin Farrar), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 18:51 (twenty years ago)

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

Dom iNut (donut), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 18:53 (twenty years ago)

otherwise, it's boring

Dom iNut (donut), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 18:53 (twenty years ago)

read fahey's books everyone. i don't give a shit if you don't like his music. whatever, fine. but you should read his books! they're good books! they're not willfully nostalgic, "orientalist" or repetitive. they're great. maybe they are willfully nostalgic.. but not in a trite way. great writer. beautiful.

Special Agent Gene Krupa (orion), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 19:21 (twenty years ago)

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/troll.jpg

Edward III (edward iii), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 19:30 (twenty years ago)

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/screwtroll.jpg

Edward III (edward iii), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 19:33 (twenty years ago)

hey valdemar please tell us the other two things you know about music

jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 19:34 (twenty years ago)

speaking of reading, anyone out there know the date of the SPIN issue with Byron Coley's article on the man? know it's from '94, but not sure of the exact month. i ned a nap.
-- imbidimts (i...), January 10th, 2006.

Does this help?

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

Edward III (edward iii), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 20:10 (twenty years ago)

edward, no. according to jason PSF, this is not the SPIN article but something else. not sure if he meant expanded or what, but i'll be damned if i can find the date of pub. for that piece.

imbidimts, Tuesday, 10 January 2006 20:32 (twenty years ago)

That is Coley's Spin article from 94 - but yeah, expanded (I think).

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

TRG (TRG), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 20:37 (twenty years ago)

OK, so when Chrisgau maintains that the Reprise Fahey is good but the Vanguard stuff "wanders" too much, is he right? (and let's not make this another bashin'-Bob thread, I just wanna know about this specific statement). izze rite?

edd s hurt (ddduncan), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 20:49 (twenty years ago)

Well the first Vanguard LP, Requia is half made up of the botched Requiem For Molly which Fahey disowned although I kind of like bits of it (the deconstruction of California Dreaming with sea lion barks is a glorious Fahey-moment), but the rest of it is great. And the Yellow Princess is pretty widely regarded as one of his better albums and is quite accessible I think.

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.

Ogmor Roundtrouser (Ogmor Roundtrouser), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:07 (twenty years ago)

thx, Ogmor...

edd s hurt (ddduncan), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:32 (twenty years ago)

OK, so when Chrisgau maintains that the Reprise Fahey is good but the Vanguard stuff "wanders" too much, is he right?

no.

hstencil (hstencil), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:36 (twenty years ago)

i've recently gotten a big bunch of 80s fahey LPs, and there are at least a handful of good or interesting tracks per album, though sometimes his guitar tones are weird, or the mix is weird. some of em, like Railroad, have really abrasive tones. also, it goes without saying that about a third-half the tracks per album are retreads of ideas he's explored before.

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

Special Agent Gene Krupa (orion), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 21:45 (twenty years ago)

I love the Christmas albums... (well, I have two of them.. one that has a red marquee in the middle of marble, which I think is "volume I" but I could be wrong... and the Volume II record)

Dom iNut (donut), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 22:46 (twenty years ago)

Funny thing is, the Christmas records are the most boring and abominable of his entire catalogue. The best thing about those records are the songs where there's another guitarist playing. I'd rather listen to an Edison cylinder recording of a broken loom.

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!

valdemar (nubbin), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 23:04 (twenty years ago)

Haha, I'm surprised anyone really likes the Christmas albums. However The New Possibility has some of the best examples of "this is sort of ridiculous but I'm going to play it dead seriously" Fahey. I imagine his wry smile. It's funny in the way He Got Better Things For You by The Memphis Sanctified Singers on the Anthology Of American Folk Music is funny; in an inclusive way that makes life seem ridiculous and wonderful and precious at the same time.

Ogmor Roundtrouser (Ogmor Roundtrouser), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 00:10 (twenty years ago)

typedef union { tBeard fBeard; tPitchforkReview fPositiveReview; } tValdemarHugglez

#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);

Dom iNut (donut), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 00:12 (twenty years ago)

If you were a real man, you'd have written that in COBOL.

valdemar (nubbin), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 00:21 (twenty years ago)

What is ridiculous about playing "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" and stuff? It's not like he was playing "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer."

Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 00:24 (twenty years ago)

I hope you're being facetious Tim Ellison. He not only played that one, he also played the "Skater's Waltz" and "White Christmas". The abortions just don't stop with him...

valdemar (nubbin), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 00:38 (twenty years ago)

Obviously there's nothing inherently ridiculous about playing any of those songs, but I detect a real sly sense of humour in the way he plays them. I mean, syncopated hymns! For pretty much the entire album. I don't think it's just a joke or even primarily a joke, but listening to the amazing long slides up to the high notes on Silent Night brings tears to my eyes and makes me think everything is hilarious and magnificent. If only I could feel like that all the time (and if only the whole album was that good). It doesn't sound like he's making fun of these pieces, he's celebrating them, enjoying them, elevating them... it's like his version of Waltzing Matilda on Live In Tasmania. The way he plays it is GREAT. Waltzing Matilda is a fantastic tune, and his rendition is reverent and it makes you take it seriously and notice how good it is. Everytime I hear it I'm convinced it's one of my favourite tunes. One of Fahey's greatest talents to my mind, was the care and sympathy with which he would play tunes. He was so good at arranging tunes, composing intros and outros that would sometimes dwarf the actual piece, and also really good at medleys (later on anyway), something that doesn't usually interest me at all. Perhaps "ridiculous" gives people the wrong idea, but it is certainly amusing and smile-inducing, for me anyway.

Ogmor Roundtrouser (Ogmor Roundtrouser), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 02:39 (twenty years ago)

so, anyway, john fahey is so boring because he's japanoise.


...

i wonder if there are ILM trolls who just try to bait me sometimes, but i realize that would be impossible.

Special Agent Gene Krupa (orion), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 02:45 (twenty years ago)

valdemar's criticisms here (technically proficient, boring, soulless, defanged, etc.) apply more to leo kottke IMO

HAKKEBOFFER (eman), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 04:01 (twenty years ago)

For a second I thought you were saying my criticisms were "technically proficient, boring, soulless, defanged, etc." and I was going to get steamin' mad. As for Kottke, never heard of him.

valdemar (nubbin), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 04:27 (twenty years ago)

Here is a John Fahey track I talked about somewhere above. It is from I Remember Blind Joe Death and it is "Nightmare/Summertime." It's not boring. It's interesting rhythmically, and his phrasing is brutally funny. Love the cathartic feel as you approach 5 minutes in.

Special Agent Gene Krupa (orion), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 04:47 (twenty years ago)

God, it sounds like a mongoloid wearing gloves is playing it. This is exactly what I'm talking about: all these predictable gimmicks he uses like ending his phrases by slowing down, that incessant ponderous bass-line, very little sense of dynamics, flaccid chord voicings. Not sure what you mean by catharsis, the thing just peters out. Here is a guitarist who has some talent.

valdemar (nubbin), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 07:31 (twenty years ago)

Malmsteen wipes Snooks.

Then again Tom Lehrer wipes Malmsteen.

Game over, man.

Dom iNut (donut), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 07:35 (twenty years ago)

I've never heard Malmsteen play "High Society". Do you have an mp3 of him playing that?

valdemar (nubbin), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 07:39 (twenty years ago)

The second Christmas album is easily the best thing I've ever heard by him, side one anyway and yes the duets are the best parts.

Burr (Burr), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 13:55 (twenty years ago)

I've never heard Malmsteen play "High Society". Do you have an mp3 of him playing that?

I recorded him playing that in my 2-inch analog tape studio in Hawaii... we did lots of coke. It was rock.

(done spray-bottling Fahey fans' picnic yet? You've gotten the towels all moist now. For shame. I'm hardly even a huge Fahey fan here, so I found this all kinda funny.)

Dom iNut (donut), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 14:58 (twenty years ago)

Not as bad when I recorded Tom Lehrer performing his satirical piano revue which was about all the great folk legends.. that guy demanded crack enemas. We're talkin' Stevie Nicks shit now. That was fuckin' nasty.

Dom iNut (donut), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 15:00 (twenty years ago)

Seriously. Lay of Fahey. He's quirky, he's obv. talented, and he's willing to do something original. If you don't like him, don't listen to him.

Big Loud Mountain Ape (Big Loud Mountain Ape), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 15:22 (twenty years ago)

Irony is the badge of the defeated!

A friend of mine's mother told me the same thing while giving me a ride home from 9th grade.

jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 15:28 (twenty years ago)

jhoshea how are you?!?!? I didn't know you were on ILM!>!>! I remember that day I said that to you when I was driving you home!!>>> When did you get out of jail?

valdemar (nubbin), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 16:21 (twenty years ago)

As for whether I'm done with bitching about John Fahey, I don't think so. I am a lonely old woman who has a lot to get off her chest. John Fahey's music really does make me very upset. I've tried therapy. I've tried medication. I've tried exercise and modifications to my diet. But still, this deep seated aversion to his music just won't let me be!

And so I say to Big Loud Mountain Ape: If you don't like readin' my whingein', don't be readin' it!

valdemar (nubbin), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 16:24 (twenty years ago)

I'm well valdemar, thank you for asking. I have been out of jail for five years now!!! (hard to believe it's been that long!!!) I'm a pilates instructor at the local Y now. Can you believe that? Old ironically fat jhoshea a homo pilates instructor. Well prison will teach you some things, I'll tell you that much. One thing I learned is that writing bad checks at the truck stop is not an occupation with a FUTURE. Another is how to be a homo.

Do you still listen to npr in your volvo? To this day, the pairing of the words volvo and npr makes me pleasantly drowsy.

jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 17:05 (twenty years ago)

Solo guitar music is mood music. I've been playing guitar for 20 years, and I love the guitar and how it's applied across a myriad of music forms, but I still can only listen to solo guitar music (and, for that matter, guitar and voice) in small doses.

That said, Fahey has a big messy catalog. Some of it is inspiring, and some of it is turgid. There's a lot of context that has to be in mind when you listen to the likes of Fahey and Kottke. They are both pre-New Age, but when listening to either of them with 2006 ears, there is a great deal of bleed/crossover. There's a lot of Fahey that sounds like the stuff your elderly Aunt would listen to on a Winter Sunday afternoon. And that taints our appreciation of their form.

I like the quote Dan Bunnybrain pulled out. That he saw himself as brilliant, but not a genius, lacking in composition skills, an emotive player who played in the moment. It all rings true. And obviously the man resonates with a number of players these days: Jim O'Rourke, Harris Newman, Jack Rose, OCS (plenty of others).

There's something enchanting about tuning your guitar to an open tuning and exploring disonance amongst the drone notes. That "Bartok meets the Delta Blues" thing is fun to explore.

Brooker Buckingham (Brooker B), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 17:15 (twenty years ago)

Glad to hear you're a lithe pole smoker, jhoshea. I was once in prison, I'd rather not say why, and I got one of those crazy neck tattoos when I joined Las Cholitas Surenas Gueras y Suizas. As for NPR, I can't stand that shit any more! Fuck that ho Nina Totenburg! Still driving the Volvo though, and it's still got the stains from where you got sick from huffing kerosene. You boys!

valdemar (nubbin), Wednesday, 11 January 2006 19:43 (twenty years ago)

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)

global tetrahedron, Friday, 27 February 2026 22:55 (three months ago)

two months pass...

Was this posted anywhere?

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

change a word make a third (Matt #2), Wednesday, 6 May 2026 18:35 (one month ago)


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