ILX Gonna Shine in My Backdoor Someday (new post-Fahey folk for ppl posting in Takoma/Tompkins Square threads Pt II)

I knew this would happen if we waited long enough. They're going to need opening local bands when they inevitably schedule their tour...

Lol @ "need", other way around more like, haha

just a few dates coming up, would love to see 'em

SUN, Feb 7 Crystal Ballroom, Portland, OR (Sabertooth Music Festival!)
THU, Mar 3 Starline Social Club, Oakland, CA
SAT, Mar 5 Resident, Los Angeles, CA (w/Morgan Delt)
SUN, Mar 6 Til Two, San Diego, CA
FRI, Mar 11 Marfa Myths Festival , Marfa, TX Tickets
FRI, Apr 29 Carson Creek Ranch , Austin, TX (Levitation Fest!)
SAT, Apr 30 Carson Creek Ranch , Austin, TX (Levitation Fest!)
SUN, May 1 Carson Creek Ranch , Austin, TX (Levitation Fest!)

Ha! I was gonna say if they're not already bumping around on the festival circuit! I feel so demographically targeted :-/

mesmeric compilation of English folk rock and earthy West Coast psychedelia spiked with feedback and explosive dissonant elements.

bleeurgh

carry on

haha

heh heh.
did we know about this? new to me: http://lightintheattic.net/releases/2218-christopher-idylls
samples are gorgeous - kinda like big star on wyndham hill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT6ZwtLMmM0&list=PLJXxdfjsMlG1uJVHnOLW9s9FnAWuKwBfl&index=1

This is gorgeous, thanks for the heads up. Gotta pick this one up immediately.

http://www.aquariumdrunkard.com/2016/01/22/michael-chapman-the-aquarium-drunkard-interview/

yeah, nice interview! chapman seems like he'd be a good guy to hang out with at the bar...
maybe i mentioned it before, but that last tompkins sq. LP of his, Fish, is really nice (as is his contribution to the 3 Lobed parallelogram thang).

& let me reiterate -- everyone should check out that gimmer nicholson LP posted above: http://lightintheattic.net/releases/2218-christopher-idylls
kind of unbelievable!

Listened to the whole thing yesterday. Loving it.

Did you get the Big Star connection partly because: "Album cover by William Eggleston (Big Star, Alex Chilton, Spoon, Silver Jews)"?

yeah, and it was recorded by Terry Manning at Ardent Studios -- definitely an explicit connection to Big Star there. liners say that at least chris bell was familiar w/ it.

Yeah, it's definitely of the same universe with regards to the general vibe and atmosphere.

yeah, nice interview! chapman seems like he'd be a good guy to hang out with at the bar...

― tylerw, Friday, January 22, 2016 11:54 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i did get to kick it w/him at a bar for about 1/2 hour and he's about as down to earth as it gets

http://hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/MichaelChapman-HiLo.jpg
ha, i guess the answer is YES

Mmmm, this Gimmer Nicholson thing is sounding really nice...

Gimmer is a cool name, and yeah that is super nice.

So the photos in this Basho e-book on Grass-Tops are nice and all but Richard Osborn's notes are kinda bullshit. I feel like Osborn trivializes Fahey's accomplishments, calling him "more of a stylist" than an innovator. He also accuses him of "stay(ing) between the fences of double-thumbing," moans that he "constantly references old blues musicians" and that Fahey "operated within Western folk and blues traditions, and most obviously the 4/4 rhythms of double thumbing fingerpicking and typical song chord changes which greatly limit melodic development." Huh?

I mean, of course, some of that is true, especially if you've only heard one or two Fahey records, but seems to me this guy should know better.

Also, it's not like you have to choose between them. I know the personal (and professional?) relationship between Fahey and Basho was uneasy, but they weren't adversaries; it's not an either / or proposition, especially given how completely different they are as composers / players.

Basho came off like the most pretentious, phony dingus in Dance of Death. Love guys music though

Also that's really dismissive of folk and blues and kinda pisses me off (the quote from the essay not Basho)

it's also implying that 'melodic development' is necessary to quality music somehow

richard osborn! I haven't read the notes and didn't know he'd put out an album in november but he put some great stuff up on youtube a few years ago. a more practical investigation of fahey's style. I recognise this is a pretty niche interest bit of music but I loved it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLDsyRfIH0A

in the description there he calls fahey the 'masterful old paranoid' which sounds about right

the double thumbing fahey is always going to loom largest and there is something restrictive in it, I'd say some of JF's best stuff is his most formally restricted and minimal tho cf dry bones in the valley or similar

i also love the way fahey deploys more cliche blues turnarounds etc., I guess you could call it smug almost (or ironic if you really don't get it) the way he slips them in with a wink, but he treats his own material in just the same way, it's the way he plays, it's organic. the way he can subtly reset something, even just through right hand timing is just gorgeous, using old material to whip up something exquisite before your eyes. & his treatment is much more subtle than the way osborn plays with faheyisms above in the video I just praised (and maintain is v fun!), but no one's in JF's league for that stuff, no shame there

if you don't love JF for being truly, beautifully laconic then you don't truly love JF imo

haha totally. pitting basho vs. fahey is understandable but misguided I think. hard to put into words, but the more i listen to both, the more it seems like they were after completely different things.

this richard osborn album was sounding good until I got distracted with that post and now I'm listening to god time & causality. prime bit of fahey squeezing something transcendent out of familiar materials

https://richardosborn.bandcamp.com/

yeah i really dig osborn's album

there is something in how completely fahey and basho diverged that makes them pleasing to contrast in some ways tho. basho as exoticist and escapist, of everything including himself, fahey as becoming more and more familiar, always going deeper into himself

That's a great read on their differences. Totally agree

Yeah if they weren't associated personally and business wise, honestly I wouldn't really put them in the same zone, not like comparing, say Fahey and Kottke or Lang where all three are different but more aligned in general

great comparison ogmor, gonna chew on that for a while

those stories about Basho in the Fahey bio are pretty funny -- I mean, he probably was a pretty huge dork

Stereogum are streaming the new Cian Nugent album
http://www.stereogum.com/1854368/stream-cian-nugent-night-fiction-stereogum-premiere/mp3s/

Man, thanks for that Basho/Fahey rundown, definitely the shit that keeps this thread fun for the ages.

Good video of a tune from Nathan Bowles upcoming solo record. I really like his phrasing/pacing, just hits a lot of sweet spots for me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AiEWshKUe8&feature=youtu.be

Man, thanks for that Basho/Fahey rundown, definitely the shit that keeps this thread fun for the ages.
― grandavis, Tuesday, January 26, 2016 11:57 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

on that note i stumbled across this group yesterday, not the most active thing in the world (also horrible to navigate) but a lot of good reflections and posts from people like rich osbourn, glenn jones, etc.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/robbiebasho_forum/info

fun topic about basho vs. fahey:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/robbiebasho_forum/conversations/topics/721

Hah hah looks like a dangerous road to go down, i.e., hours of distraction perhaps. Gonna return next time I have a blizzard at hand.

These days I'm playing more (early) Ackerman and Kottke than Fahey and Basho, but that's probably just because, like many of you, I've seriously OD'd on Fahey over the past decade or so (including reading three different books about him). I like Basho but a little goes a long way imo. Twilight Peaks is still my favorite of his.

I do seriously love Kottke's 6 and 12 String Guitar as much as any Fahey album. First Ackerman is incredible, too.

yeah Turtle's Navel is fantastic.
do i need Kottke's Ice Water? or Greenhouse?

Greenhouse, yes.

ice water was the end of my attempt to get into kottke

those yahoo groups are the real deal though, lots of veterans on there

i really like parts of Mudlark ... but mainly the instrumentals. Keep thinking I'll come around on his vocals, but it hasn't really happened yet.
this is great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh4xNFl521s

the solo version of cripple creek on fahey/kottke/lang is mb my favourite kottke thing

i feel like that and 6-and-12 string are about the only kottke i really 'need'

I've always thought that self-deprecation became structural with Kottke - like a habit he couldn't shake (certainly not something you could ever level at Basho or Fahey). It may well have been deliberate, but it ultimately means he's always a few rungs down the ladder for me.

Which is to say he had all the talent, but seemed wary of, or simply didn't have the means of, transcendence.

Weird because I understand he is (or was) one of the preeminent pot smokers of guitar soli

Maybe I'm totally misreading him and it's a kind of zen clowning or something. Ach, I dunno. I feel like I'm doing him a disservice; he's always going to seem grounded and a bit meat and potatoes next to the sheer Otherness of artists like Fahey and Basho.

Lang>Kottke IMO

feeding tube with some gorgeous reissue ish

http://feedingtuberecords.com/releases/rusalnaia/

Hmm very interesting!