Really stoked about a F.J. McMahon reissue!
― JacobSanders, Monday, 18 June 2012 01:53 (eleven years ago) link
:D it's a good record, and this is gonna sound better than the boot. i have heard the test pressing.
― one dis leads to another (ian), Monday, 18 June 2012 03:29 (eleven years ago) link
Is the boot you're referring to the UK CD on Revola?
― Lil' Kim Philby (Call the Cops), Monday, 18 June 2012 06:17 (eleven years ago) link
i.e. this: http://www.cherryred.co.uk/shopexd.asp?id=2112
― Lil' Kim Philby (Call the Cops), Monday, 18 June 2012 06:18 (eleven years ago) link
I have not heard the CD.. there was an LP bootleg from maybe 10 years ago or so. Paste-on cover, no label info, mediocre sound.
― one dis leads to another (ian), Monday, 18 June 2012 16:06 (eleven years ago) link
GUYS!
GUESS WHO'S WIFE GOT HIM 6 GUITAR LESSONS WITH PETER LANG FOR FATHER'S DAY???XD
― wack nerd zinging in the dead of night (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 15:49 (eleven years ago) link
wife otm
― tylerw, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 16:00 (eleven years ago) link
result!
― gonna send him to outer space, to hug another face (NickB), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 16:07 (eleven years ago) link
pretty excited, i just need to call the west bank school of music to schedule
― wack nerd zinging in the dead of night (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 16:22 (eleven years ago) link
that is cool, i wanted to take lessons with a takoma-style dude who lived around here, but he moved away. keep us posted on how it goes! when is Transfiguration of the Upper Mississippi Shakedown scheduled to be released, anyway?
― tylerw, Tuesday, 19 June 2012 16:27 (eleven years ago) link
!!! awesome matt.
― one dis leads to another (ian), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 16:41 (eleven years ago) link
haha yeah i don't know when i'm going to schedule them, i almost feel like i'm too shitty to take lessons from him now
but at the end of the day just even being able to geek out and be in the same room, watch him play stuff etc
my friend that took lessons from him had a bunch of handouts from him like tabbed out sheet music for "in christ there is no east or west" by fahey and stuff like that :)
― wack nerd zinging in the dead of night (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 19 June 2012 16:45 (eleven years ago) link
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_I2cHuaRju4M/S4S576UqMBI/AAAAAAAAAEs/Q0IOHNNs0JA/s400/p000.jpgfull scans of this book over here: http://delta-slider.blogspot.com/2010/02/best-of-john-fahey-guitar-tab.html
― tylerw, Tuesday, 26 June 2012 19:31 (eleven years ago) link
that is really exciting, matt!
― 69, Tuesday, 26 June 2012 19:36 (eleven years ago) link
not takoma, but this is great. only heard one other track by this dude previously. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jYLDKDXUoNo/T-qbT9WISHI/AAAAAAAAEcM/xD7rSjqwaRo/s1600/conflower+front.jpghttp://ghostcapital.blogspot.com/2012/06/suni-mcgrath-cornflower-suite-1969.html
― tylerw, Wednesday, 27 June 2012 16:29 (eleven years ago) link
dl link seems to be down for the moment tho :/
― tylerw, Wednesday, 27 June 2012 16:32 (eleven years ago) link
That Mark Fosson record is sounding great today, thanks for posting that. Stream posted upthread still works btw. Pretty amazing sound for a home recorded set of tunes.
― grandavis, Wednesday, 27 June 2012 17:15 (eleven years ago) link
yeah i've been listening to that a ton.
― tylerw, Wednesday, 27 June 2012 17:18 (eleven years ago) link
It's sequenced/recorded as almost one continuous performance, or at least the mix and consistency of the performance makes it seem so. Can picture the guy (who looks super-young in the picture) sitting down and banging them out in one take, which would be pretty astounding. Considering he was renting the mic he recorded with, that just may be the case.
― grandavis, Wednesday, 27 June 2012 17:25 (eleven years ago) link
That Fosson record is incredible! Cosmic Hiccup is transcendent. And to whomever is getting the lessons from Peter Lang: how I envy and am saving up for what you're doing... as a wannabe fingerpicker, you'll have to let me/us know how it goes. I feel like it's something I should jump on once I get the cash, as it doesn't seem like an opportunity to be missed and one that won't be around forever...
― global tetrahedron, Wednesday, 27 June 2012 23:14 (eleven years ago) link
Will keep you guys posted on how it goes....btw I don't think it's super expensive for the lessons, but I guess if you were traveling that could get expensive
― wack nerd zinging in the dead of night (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 28 June 2012 00:24 (eleven years ago) link
I live in MPLS, but I live below a poverty wage at the moment so we'll see on that. I never even considered looking him up for lessons until you mentioned it, though, so thanks! Holy shit man.
― global tetrahedron, Thursday, 28 June 2012 00:37 (eleven years ago) link
He teaches through the west bank school of music if you want to inquire, but yeah a friend did it and had a lot of fun and said it really helped
― wack nerd zinging in the dead of night (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 28 June 2012 00:48 (eleven years ago) link
hey i just downloaded that Fahey tab book.
ayo...um...did any of you guys, like, read some of the essay stuff he wrote at the beginning of the book o_O
like especially the "Homosexual Guitar" section is over the line in parts.
i guess i don't know that much about fahey as a dude, was he like super crazy?
― wack nerd zinging in the dead of night (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 29 June 2012 16:08 (eleven years ago) link
he was kinda nuts, had some lame opinions/ideas. he probably just enjoyed pushing people's buttons too.
― tylerw, Friday, 29 June 2012 16:49 (eleven years ago) link
i haven't read that essay, though. was he saying that some male guitars like to have sex with other male guitars?
― tylerw, Friday, 29 June 2012 16:51 (eleven years ago) link
um...i wish...
can't C&P but here's a sampling:
"Those who fear their guitars are essentially cowardly faggots who have allowed themselves to be conquered by perverse tendencies. They are unable to sit anywhere for six hours under any circumstances. Their span of attention is short, but what is much worse is that they don't care....They have constituted themselves essentially as hatred, opposition - pure negativity. Homosexual guitar playing is an imitative gesture of the non-essential (i.e. temporary) characteristics of women - bitchiness, frivolity, flightiness, and super-sensitivity."
that's just a sampling
― wack nerd zinging in the dead of night (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 29 June 2012 16:59 (eleven years ago) link
eek! would be interesting to ask Lang about that particular theory. provided he doesn't start your first lesson by calling you a "cowardly faggot."
― tylerw, Friday, 29 June 2012 17:03 (eleven years ago) link
i get the sense lang is a little more "normal" than fahey was
― wack nerd zinging in the dead of night (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 29 June 2012 17:09 (eleven years ago) link
I'd heard quotes about how weird Fahey was in person and read him described as 'practiced at being obnoxious'. I'd say that type of writing up there is kind of a logical extension of his insane ramblings that made up his liner notes and his counter-counter-culture tendencies. Ever wonder where the title "Revolt of the Dyke Brigade" came from? In the Return of the Repressed liner notes he said that it was written 'around the time of women's lib, i was scared and insecure' or something similar. I feel like he reigned it in near the end, In 'How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life' he writes a quite sympathetic chapter about his gay friend that died and who couldn't be visited by his SO. I dunno.
― global tetrahedron, Friday, 29 June 2012 17:46 (eleven years ago) link
Doesn't hurt/help that you can tell how hammered he was in a lot of his live cuts (and on record! the slurring voice on the song 'Days Have Gone By' is Fahey)
― global tetrahedron, Friday, 29 June 2012 17:48 (eleven years ago) link
78 Collectors: Why are they so weird?
― tylerw, Friday, 29 June 2012 18:01 (eleven years ago) link
whoa holy shit @ that fahey excerpt
― 69, Friday, 29 June 2012 19:04 (eleven years ago) link
Not only is that passage willfully offensive, it doesn't really make any sense at all.
― global tetrahedron, Friday, 29 June 2012 19:33 (eleven years ago) link
Hmm, not to defend J. Fahey too much, as certainly I haven't read this passage, but I imagine that the "(not) really making any sense at all" part of the equation should be weighed heavily. Guy struggled with a lot, but I don't think he was really a bigot in any way.
― grandavis, Friday, 29 June 2012 19:41 (eleven years ago) link
i shouldn't characterize the whole this like that, like from what i've read some of it is really good....it's just, i dunno, lots of stuff in that era (like lester and nick tosches as skot mentioned in another thread) were a little too free with the f- and n-words in their kinda jive writing
but that particularly line of though is pretty stupid macho bullshit, continued:
"Mastering a guitar is very similar to conquering a woman, and when you fail to master it, like when you fail to master a woman, you have the same feelings of humiliation and violence."
but honestly for there's tons of great stuff too!
"And you can win -- with any guitar. Sit there with it for six hours. No guitar can withstand the creative spirit that is in every human being. Anyone who calls his guitar a "box" does not understand. Anyone who calls his guitar an "axe" cannot play it very well."
<3
― wack nerd zinging in the dead of night (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 29 June 2012 20:06 (eleven years ago) link
like you should just download the thing and read it, i feel a bit bad for calling that part out but goddamn some of it IS just offensive no other way around it.
uhm, that suni mcgrath record is great. all his records are great but that's my fave.fahey is a very complicated individual. i would suggest reading his books before judging him as a bigot
― one dis leads to another (ian), Friday, 29 June 2012 20:07 (eleven years ago) link
i wasn't saying he was a bigot! that part just kinda jumped out at me and i didn't really know much about the dude tbh!
― wack nerd zinging in the dead of night (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 29 June 2012 20:08 (eleven years ago) link
i mean large font headers called "Homosexual Guitar Playing" and "Guitar Angst" are sort of eye-grabbing
oh oh oh i know you weren't!! just advising anyone against making knee jerk assumptions abt the guy. there is a lot of sexual abuse/trauma in his past that he spent large chunks of his life dealing with.
― one dis leads to another (ian), Friday, 29 June 2012 20:09 (eleven years ago) link
plus his house was his car and it smelled like hamburgers
― manditory fun. day (Ówen P.), Friday, 29 June 2012 20:24 (eleven years ago) link
there's a bootleg from the mid 70s where Fahey suggests that everyone (including himself) commit mass suicide. "We could all go to sleep. Why don't we all go home and - why don't we go out back and have a joint suicide? Let's all go out back and commit suicide. Every one of us. The neat thing would be when the newspapers come they won't know what happened. Nobody will be able to figure it out."
― tylerw, Friday, 29 June 2012 20:30 (eleven years ago) link
huh!
Lang's musical career was postponed in the 1980s, to allow him to pursue a career in animation and special effects production.
― wack nerd zinging in the dead of night (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 29 June 2012 20:46 (eleven years ago) link
there's a bootleg from the mid 70s where Fahey suggests that everyone (including himself) commit mass suicide."We could all go to sleep. Why don't we all go home and - why don't we go out back and have a joint suicide? Let's all go out back and commit suicide. Every one of us. The neat thing would be when the newspapers come they won't know what happened. Nobody will be able to figure it out."
― tylerw, Friday, June 29, 2012 3:30 PM (49 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
whoa, which one was this? i've been just getting into some of the bootlegs on delta slider. some heavy stuff in there, musically, that is. most of his banter thus far has been lightly amusing. nothing like this.
― global tetrahedron, Friday, 29 June 2012 21:21 (eleven years ago) link
delta-slider.blogspot.com/2011/04/john-fahey-as-jim-jones.html
― tylerw, Friday, 29 June 2012 21:22 (eleven years ago) link
Wow, that's pretty disturbing stuff, dude must've been more wrecked than I ever thought.
― global tetrahedron, Friday, 29 June 2012 21:46 (eleven years ago) link
hey we all have our nights, don't we? ok, maybe not.
― tylerw, Friday, 29 June 2012 21:47 (eleven years ago) link
This older lady, a folksinger, was telling me about being backstage at a festival in the late 60s or early 70s, when a limo came cruising through the mud, and people were saying, "Yeah, Fahey's here!" A guy who looked like a Texas Ranger got out, so impressive--followed by "a little ol' snakehead in a t-shirt." The Texas Ranger type was Fahey's bodyguard, the folksinger was told. "Like a cult leader, bad vibes, and lame. He played well, of course." But also, he was known early on for a warped sense of humor, and wouldn't be surprised if this scene fit that description. Later, in his more typical econo-mode, a Creem writer saw him onstage with a 12-pack and a rented guitar (both required in the contract), watching a little portable TV while he played (again, no complaints about the playing). But he also spent a lot of time talking about his favorite shows (re-runs of Green Acres, Adam-12, etc) and the Creem writer liked some of those shows too, but wanted a little more music. Still, it was okay. Glenn Jones had some good recollections in liner notes for Red Cross, which I think was the last album Fahey finished before he died, it was pretty good. But the up close and personal memoir that really gets me is Andy Beta's (Andy used to post around here)http://www.villagevoice.com/2006-01-24/music/looking-for-blind-joe-death/
― dow, Saturday, 30 June 2012 04:21 (eleven years ago) link
thanks for the link, good article
― wack nerd zinging in the dead of night (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 3 July 2012 15:31 (eleven years ago) link