Revolt of the ILX Brigade: New Post-Fahey Folk For PPL that post in the Takoma & Tompkin's Square Threads

Cool, it sounded like it changed in a cool, slippery way. Definitely added more than a usual loop would, just couldn't tell if my ears were playing tricks on me or not!

http://www.drudgesiren.com/siren.gif

http://itslostitsfound.blogspot.com/2014/11/john-fahey-azalea-city-and-other-toxic.html

http://www.drudgesiren.com/siren.gif

haha!
apparently this was made available over on the delta slider blog a while back, but i missed it then.

and who could resist this
http://38.media.tumblr.com/a297e00eae893c0cb83c4c83092dc15e/tumblr_nfju82glL51qzy30io1_500.png

btw did you see ryley walker talking shit about fahey on twitter? haha cian nugent, forsyth, nathan bowles all got involved

he tends to troll a lot on there. he can be pretty entertaining tho

links?

https://twitter.com/Ryley_walker/status/535036315876990976

finally getting to the fahey's biography -- good stuff, but feels a little slim, lots of stuff I'd want more detail on. i think what i actually want is a big history of american primitive book, a la that fantastic overview of UK folk, Electric Eden, from a few years back.

haha i deleted like 2 tweets calling ryley a sam's club bert jansch to be a dick but yeah whatever he seems to cultivate an "outrageous" persona and he's usually pretty funny

though i think the "oh i can't stand fahey" thing is already getting more popular in certain aspects of the scene just to contrary and distance themselves from it

haha, yeah i think he was just being provocative/funny. certainly can get why people in this scene might be tired of fahey mentions -- it'd be like every jazz musician getting miles davis comparisons. not necessarily inaccurate, but maybe a bit too surface. i don't know, it's tough to get around when you're writing about it, because (this thread to the contrary) not many people (even plenty of serious music fans) even know who john fahey is, so you gotta start somewhere.

re. that unreleased album

This is an unreleased original John Fahey album. Written, recorded and completed at the same time as 'Old Girlfriends And Other Horrible Memories'.

isn't that generally considered one of fahey's worst albums, recorded when his health problems were impacting his playing?

though honestly i think the worst fahey stuff is the stuff he recorded in the years prior to his death. it was hard to admit that at the time, since he was venturing off in some dangerous new directions and enjoying some late reappraisal and rediscovery. it's not a matter of "i hate all this noisy stuff, i wish he would go back to the delicate fingerpicking stuff" since i like plenty of noisy stuff. i just don't think it was very good. :(

btw jack rose would be buggin' over that twitter exchange

listening so far, yeah his playing is definitely very deliberate and there are some audible flubs

but i'm definitely liking it, he seems to be playing within his limitations. reminds a bit of "fate is only twice" by harry taussig in that way

agreed amatuerist, i've def. tried w/the 90s stuff, but i like the IDEA of him bro-ing down with NNCK and thurston much more than the reality of it

i like red cross a lot and parts of the cul de sac collab. but a lot of it does seem like he's going for something that isn't quite there.

i tried to book fahey and the NNBB for a show at my college in 1998 or 1999, but the guy running the student affairs office wouldn't bite.

i would've interviewed fahey for my radio show, which probably would have been a good story, at least. :(

btw which is yr favorite fahey album, gents?

Vol 2 or Fare Forward, depending on the day

i actually think the Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick might be my overall fave.

man I really need to get that

the "Magruder Park" on there is incredible. whole thing is fantastic, just a really good argument for his genius.

really tough between The Great San Bernadino Birthday Party & Other Excursions & The Yellow Princess

New Possibility...America...Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death close behind....

basically the though the first six takoma albums packaged in the Transcendental Waterfall box set are all pretty perfect really

New Possibility is really really good, I seriously considered that as an answer

it certain transcends the concept of a "christmas standards" album to me & takes everything to a very sad and beautiful and meditative place

Death Chants or Days Have Gone By for me

Oil Slick is v good too

i don't think his 90s era was as 'new' as it might seem, check this, some srsly wild/vaguely unlistenable stuff here (1967):

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

heh, yeah, that is a good one... bio says that fahey and the red crayola recorded a whole album of this stuff, but the label rejected it? I'm assuming the tapes have never surfaced.

oh great, like I need any more lost albums to daydream about

the tapes are just sitting there, collecting dust in some warehouse...
http://cdn.cantechletter.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/raiders-of-the-lost-ark-last-scene.jpg

Mayo Thompson is still around, someone go check in with him. He may be sitting on those tapes himself.

i guess i figured since drag city put the live 67 thing (from whence that youtube clip came) that mayo didn't have the actual sessions... but who knows!

Hah yeah, who knows. Maybe the best stuff was put out there and it was left at that.

i think my favorite fahey record is days have gone by (whatever "volume" that is). it's not his most ambitious record, i guess, but i love it.

does anyone rate recent (i.e. post-1990) red krayola records at all?

probably my single favorite fahey track (i know, boring choice):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwQu3JSVNGA

does anyone rate recent (i.e. post-1990) red krayola records at all?

fuck no, I'm off the bus after Kangaroo

yeah, i've often wondered if drag city releasing his newer stuff is some kind of philanthropy or something.

Mostly pre 90s Krayola too, but I imagine Drag City isn't handing out lifetime achievement awards. Favorite of Mayo-related stuff though is "Corky's Debt To His Father", as far as what I return to these days.

you do see used copies of those recent RK CDs for sale for incredibly cheap, so I can't imagine that (a) many copies are sold or (b) people who buy them regard them very highly. i bought a few myself because i tend to trust drag city and b/c of thompson's reputation and was decidedly underwhelmed. i do like the stuff w/ art & language, the '60s stuff less so, i must admit.

anyway: fahey.

There was at least a song off of Introduction (2006) that I remember liking... kind of a fuzzy memory at this point.

oh, to change the subject back to something arguably more relevant, i have a recommendation for y'all:

norberto lobo, fornalha

new record, lovely guitar/soundscapes.

you can listen to some of it here: http://isolatarium.com/2014/09/19/norberto-lobo-fran/

and buy it here: http://threefour.bigcartel.com/product/norberto-lobo-fornalha-lp

wondrous cover btw

http://isolatarium.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/norberto-lobo-fornalha.jpg

Man, the Norberto Lobo sounds great. Cool player.

yeah that is amazing

i think you can hear more of the record here: http://www.artesonora.pt/breves/norberto-lobo-edita-fornalha/

and/or here: http://www.ruadebaixo.com/norberto-lobo-fornalha-5-11-2014.html

find it hard to believe anyone finds after the ball more dour than raag manifestos. it makes sense to me that jack rose would loom larger than fahey for a lot of these guys though. there's a certain looseness to jack's playing, even when he's at his most faheyish, a swing to his syncopation (& a sort of exuberance in his busyness mb) & he didn't have fahey's laconic calm. I think rose's sunflower river blues is closest to the version on the fahey/kottke/lang record but jack's version still feels a lot more open & improvised than fahey's more composer-ly control. that kind of 69/70sish maximum mass 'high fahey' is the only one of fahey's incarnations that I think he is v close to. if you wanted some punkish challops maybe you'd point to alcohol as a common influence.

otherwise rose's music sounds much more modern. a background on electric, the influence of years playing improv drone on his sense of structure, and with a good ear for & interest in the physical sound of the instrument. fahey is audibly of a different era, you still hear glimmers of the 19th century listening to him. I can see how rose seems like a richer well to draw from for these guys & you can definitely hear much more rose than fahey in eg. daniel bachman

jack rose heckled an old john fahey when he saw him playing some electric stuff, though he was a bit ashamed of it years later.

all the red krayola I've heard has been quite inconsistent, the recording w/ fahey is not that special iirc but I liked the art & language stuff too.

basically the though the first six takoma albums packaged in the Transcendental Waterfall box set are all pretty perfect really

― i did it all for the 'nuki (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, November 24, 2014 1:21 PM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this^^^

Though I rep p hard for Railroad and even harder for Of Rivers and Religion, and I also really like God Time & Causality, (and Let Go - this whole era, really) and I sorta lightheartedly busted Swingset Steve's chops about being so tough on that stuff in his book.

Also, yall are crazy if you don't like Red Cross. That record is gorgeous. Someone once described it as Fahey taking his obviously declining ability and turning it into something beautiful, which I think crystallizes why I like this album so much.

Anyone ever hear that Three Day Band album with Ayal Senior?

Also, ogmor, good call on the strong Rose / Bachman link. Just saw him play here a few nights ago and the influence of Jack (who I was lucky enough to see play many, many times) was unmistakable.

I'm not necessarily arguing the point about rose v fahey but Ryley is kinda trolley overall on Twitter

Lots of good stuff on the recent Avant Ghetto radio show (including a lengthy delve into our own Neal's Rag Lore project). He played a track by some guy named Clay Cantrell that was pretty lovely, nice low-key acoustic playing: https://soundcloud.com/clay-cantrell/wraith-visitation-1

Ehh, other stuff I could dig up not quite as compelling, but I like a good low-key run through.