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I'm finding it hard to grapple with Fahey's passing from the scene,
because, like the America Otis sees in him, he was never really
there -- sort of floating in a parallel universe or something, where
1938 never turned into 1939, but neither did 1938 ever happen at all.
I truly enjoy his '96 album, "City of Refuge" which takes place over
a post-industrial soundscape, and which seems like the right thing to
play to mourn him. There's less joy in there, but more humor, and
more regret. I don't know. I feel like I can't do him justice. These
are stupid music-critic words.
"Voice of The Turtle" on the America album. The Requia album.
Everyone sees what they want in Fahey -- he's a traditionalist, he's
an avant-gardeist, he's folk-primitive, he's dear god... to me Fahey
was, like many artists, a sensitive boy who felt complicated things
and then tried to make pretty things to understand the complicated
things.
Or maybe that's another lie. Maybe, after all, Fahey was The Great
Koonaklaster, who assumed mortal form to tell us this simple truth:
NOTHING EVER STOPS!
BECAUSE THERE IS DURATION. AND I AM DURATION.
DON’T EVER FORGET THAT.
― Sterling Clover, Monday, 26 February 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
Thanks, Mr. Wheeler, for the tribute.
What I especially like about it is that you're grappling with one of
the most difficult things to articulate about Fahey's music (he would
insist we MUST not confuse the music with the man, something which I,
like many others, have been guilty of): why does this music, which is
comprised of some things I do understand, evoke in me a response I
can't quite name; why does it make me feel the way I do, and so
keenly?
Fahey's music, much of it which he came to reject as flawed or
dishonest, still seems to me some of the purest ever made and yet, for
all the hundreds of times I’ve played his albums, I still don’t
understand why they make me feel the way I do, why they speak to me so
profoundly. Your tribute captures some of that feeling.
I spent three days with John last summer, ostensibly to conduct
interviews with him for a new Revenant project. I wasn't especially
surprised that Fahey was critical of *The Great San Bernardino
Birthday Party*, the first Fahey album I owned and one of my favorites
(at the time about to be reissued on CD by Fantasy / Takoma). After
all, he'd been routinely knocking his early works in the press. But I
was surprised that he was dismissive of such relatively recent fare as
*City of Refuge* ("It went too far,") and *Atlanta Struts* ("I
shouldn't have let that come out,").
Even though his comments felt like a vindication of my own feelings
for those records, Fahey had been as unperturbed by my dislike of
those albums as he was unimpressed by my complete love for the early
ones. (The only ones of John's albums I have little feeling for one
way or another are the Xmas albums and *Yes Jesus Loves Me*, and the
ones he did for Varrick when he was suffering most acutely the effects
of Epstein-Barr -- though there are moments on all of these albums.)
In response to my "But I love that album John; it changed my life!," I
can hear his oft-repeated response: "Fine, but that has nothing to do
with me."
Fahey was, for all his failings and his more than occasionally
infuriating behavior, absolutely ethical when it came to music, and
especially his own. There was no room for a shred of nostalgia or
rationalization in his assessment of his own accomplishments. He
seemed always in a state of dispassionately reevaluating early works
based on where he was at currently. While it amused me to hear him
vilifying records that still mesmerize me -- and I argued frequently
with him over the merits of his own work -- I understood that, for
him, the most interesting record was the one he was working on NOW.
(He loved *Hitomi* and was at work on second and third volumes in a
series of *Hitomi*s when I was out there.)
And though I had no use for *City of Refuge*, I was glad to see John
so excited and involved with making music again. He was totally into
it at the time of its release; he considered it THE VERY BEST THING
he'd ever done!
And that's the way it should be, I think, a complete engagement in the
present.
To those folks who are asking for recommendations, I say be open to it
all. The *Return of the Repressed* collection is OK as a primer (a
catalogue as huge as John's seems to cry out for some sort of overview
or introduction), but I disagree with its premise. John's albums ought
to, I think, each be taken on their own terms and it’s expecting too
much for an easily-digestible little package to encompass 40+ years of
a man’s music.
The anthology also omits tracks altogether from some periods and,
since it was released before that huge burst of creative energy in the
last decade or so of John's life, an important period is not
represented at all.
So if you make *ROTR* your first Fahey purchase, by all means don't
let it be your last.
Glenn Jones
― Glenn Jones, Monday, 26 February 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
one year passes...
one year passes...
seventeen years pass...
Thanks, Mr. Wheeler, for the tribute.
What I especially like about it is that you're grappling with one of the most difficult things to articulate about Fahey's music (he would insist we MUST not confuse the music with the man, something which I, like many others, have been guilty of): why does this music, which is comprised of some things I do understand, evoke in me a response I can't quite name; why does it make me feel the way I do, and so keenly?Fahey's music, much of it which he came to reject as flawed or dishonest, still seems to me some of the purest ever made and yet, for all the hundreds of times I’ve played his albums, I still don’t understand why they make me feel the way I do, why they speak to me so profoundly. Your tribute captures some of that feeling.
I spent three days with John last summer, ostensibly to conduct interviews with him for a new Revenant project. I wasn't especially surprised that Fahey was critical of *The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party*, the first Fahey album I owned and one of my favorites (at the time about to be reissued on CD by Fantasy / Takoma). After all, he'd been routinely knocking his early works in the press. But I was surprised that he was dismissive of such relatively recent fare as *City of Refuge* ("It went too far,") and *Atlanta Struts* ("I shouldn't have let that come out,").
Even though his comments felt like a vindication of my own feelings for those records, Fahey had been as unperturbed by my dislike of those albums as he was unimpressed by my complete love for the early ones. (The only ones of John's albums I have little feeling for one way or another are the Xmas albums and *Yes Jesus Loves Me*, and the ones he did for Varrick when he was suffering most acutely the effects of Epstein-Barr -- though there are moments on all of these albums.)
In response to my "But I love that album John; it changed my life!," I can hear his oft-repeated response: "Fine, but that has nothing to do with me."
Fahey was, for all his failings and his more than occasionally infuriating behavior, absolutely ethical when it came to music, and especially his own. There was no room for a shred of nostalgia or rationalization in his assessment of his own accomplishments. He seemed always in a state of dispassionately reevaluating early works based on where he was at currently. While it amused me to hear him vilifying records that still mesmerize me -- and I argued frequently with him over the merits of his own work -- I understood that, for him, the most interesting record was the one he was working on NOW. (He loved *Hitomi* and was at work on second and third volumes in a series of *Hitomi*s when I was out there.)
And though I had no use for *City of Refuge*, I was glad to see John so excited and involved with making music again. He was totally into it at the time of its release; he considered it THE VERY BEST THING he'd ever done!
And that's the way it should be, I think, a complete engagement in the present.
To those folks who are asking for recommendations, I say be open to it all. The *Return of the Repressed* collection is OK as a primer (a catalogue as huge as John's seems to cry out for some sort of overview or introduction), but I disagree with its premise. John's albums ought to, I think, each be taken on their own terms and it’s expecting too much for an easily-digestible little package to encompass 40+ years of a man’s music.
The anthology also omits tracks altogether from some periods and, since it was released before that huge burst of creative energy in the last decade or so of John's life, an important period is not represented at all.
So if you make *ROTR* your first Fahey purchase, by all means don't let it be your last.
Glenn Jones
― Glenn Jones, Sunday, February 25, 2001 7:00 PM (twenty years ago) bookmarkflaglink
beautiful stuff from a legend in his own right. used to be a yahoo answers group with years worth of these kind of gems from the old guard, all gone now
― global tetrahedron, Sunday, 6 June 2021 00:10 (two years ago) link