Why is John Fahey So Boring?

want!

was sure this was a New Possibilty revive...it remains the only xmas music I can handle repeated listens of

@NTI: ISO pic of tshirt pls?

How’s the sound on that set? I’ve heard not-great things about some of 4MWB’s reissues.

Awes thread, don't recall it! Thisun's good too Search and Destroy: John Fahey
For inst:
At a friend's urging, I've finally checked out some Faheytronica: part 1 of my first-listening notes:

after googling started with Requia, "Requiem For Molly," in four parts.
Part 1 turns out to be very handsome, perhaps courtly but not genteel solo guitar,
the other three parts include "sonic collages." as online sources put it ( with which he is assisted by music writer Barry Hansen, AKA Dr. Demento, maestro of the syndicated novelty radio show). "Collage" is especially appropriate because the news reel etc. bits sound like animated newspaper clippings, maybe wiggling envelopes sometimes, and mainly I like the way their contours and the pacing of placement---also the cadences and intonation of spoken word and other sounds, Hitler and bombers and so on, go with the guitar sound. Fahey said later he didn't like the results, though did consider this experiment a valuable "learning experience." It's not that different from other "underground" tracks you find on LPs of that era, '67 or so, in terms of choosing what we'd call samples, but I haven't heard any other American artist from that neck of the woods--the rock folk weirdo neck---who made it all work as this kind of ambient experience, social commentary and hipster humor aside, although I guess those might be in there too (first listening)

Probably better though--not as dependent on my own quirks/glosses of hearing----is "The Singing Bridge of Memphis Tennessee," from The Yellow Princess: much more sophisticated, in terms of no newsreel, newspaper clippings glued on, just what does indeed sound like a singing bridge---of steel guitar strings, various other metals used in constructing a bridge over a body of water, maybe some water effects pulled in, vibrations and whistles and other nice things (incl vocal?), all layered and merged, just attached and distinct enough. It's based in part on "Quill Blues" by Big Boy Cleveland, and may incl. some of that original recording (think I saw that statement or speculation somewhere)

The Epiphany of Glenn Jones is all over the place,
Conceptually I totally dig the opener, "Tuff, " right away, although the glacial zen groove trek had me nodding a bit, so it turns out even good drones can do that, h'mm.
"Gamelan Collage" different enough to keep me awake, but lost me sometimes,
"Maggie Campbell Blues" quite splendid courtship again,
"New Red Pony" is heavy smokey red rock, awright,
"Out Puppet Selves" is UFO Bebe Barron dub plate equiv of op art, which I like: if you're gonna go this way, bear down on the basic texture FX, awright again.
"Gamelan Guitar" like a real good dream I forget right after it's over (but I can go back again to this dream, yay).
This version of "Come On In My Kitchen" is discreetly tweaked, also tweeked, just enough to enhance it in ways prob unnec but v enjoyable.
"Magic Mountain" is back to the science fiction soundtrack, but much more varied than "Out Puppet Selves," and a little too soft-focus for me, so far.
The spoken word-based closers go on very long, though I like that, even though Fahey keeps ending up with nothing, even when the pretty lady persuades him to board the bus to scenic Exstinkyville, he eventually (very eventuallly) remembers "the basic dialectic of life," or some kind of dialectin and sings a hearty "No-o-o," then an equally hearty "Ye-e--e-s," continuing while the band makes noise around him.
Next will be City of Refuge, Womblive, The Mill Pond EP, located here and there, mostly posted track by track on YouTube. The albums I'm talking about above are all on Spotify, at least the version we get over here. (Meaning America; guy I was responding to is in Europe.)

― dow, Tuesday, 26 April 2016 22:25 (three years ago) link

Pt. 2, dammit! (Maybe some of this will sound better as I listen more; despite what I said toward the end, I did keep all of City and Womblife)(Snapped up The Mill Pond EP from WFMU)

Starting again with City of Refuge, which chronologically I should have listened to before Epiphany, which Glenn J. meant as a corrective to the former, to save his hero and help him find a way to say the new thing he was trying to say. Later, he also writes, he decided both albums what Fahey meant them to be: photographs of him at the time they were made. However, after hearing City, I gotta say, "Thanks GJ and Cul De Sac (and God I wish you could have pulled him back from Womblife, although The Mill Pond works fine")!---but I'm getting ahead of myself).
CoR: "Fanfare" is well-named: flourishes, with buzzy picking and strumming and chopping.
The second track seems more like tuning up and/or down, who cares, ditto for the title.
"City of Refuge I"' is 20-odd minutes long, first half feat. ominous peg-twisting and whatnot. The second turns up a skeletal pattern, then a sunny stroll-along, and then somewhat merges the two motifs, in a natural way: you go for a stroll, you and your shadow (not the song of that title, just the thing that happens). Wanders off somewhere, but with a good edit, hey.
"Chelsey Silver, Please Call Home" starts promisingly, the silvery Classic John, but gets a little too reliant on basic devices and reminds me that one reason he was trying new directions was diabetic nerve damage in fingers (ouch, ouch ouch just thinking about it)
Nevertheless, "City of Refuge III," with evocation of silver bells and chimes calling insistently over an earthly shuffle, is very fine, and the only one of these YouTubes I bothered to download.
Womblife has some kinda nice drone lullabys and doppler-shift x sealife imitations at times, but most of it's rubbish; I'd call it heavy new age, but not that heavy. "Juana" reverts to the more popular JF: crisp Spanishy morning sounds, cogent back and forth of a and b melodies, even underselling lyricism or at least fluidity, but another one that could use an edit: 12 minutes, jeez
The Mill Pond EP! Wasn't expecting much, but true avant garage, as Crocus Behemoth would put it, with vocal and other sweaty bristley Radio Shack Popular Mechanics bits and kits from Dad's abandoned workshop, returning via cyberTibet understages, more like whole underlives--- attention-grabbing/holding, viable moments and passages flashing by. Another scribble mentions " a good motif for soundtrack of Japanese folk-horror art film, or Roger Corman's remake, " and "Garbage" suggests more of the 50s UFO-huffing found on The Epiphany's "Out Puppet Selves," but also with traces of Hendrix emulating that kind of soundtrack,and suspense as the saucer reverb inches toward liftoff/spinoff. Some tracks may use elements of each other, and for the climax, Fahey seems to be chanting while eating his way through his guitar----which reminds me of Andy Beta's testimony, one of the very best of its kind and flavor:
http://www.villagevoice.com/music/looking-for-blind-joe-death-6400465

(Later I remembered to tell him about delta-slider.)

― dow, Tuesday, 26 April 2016 22:29 (three years ago) link

great posts & 'Faheytronica' is a fine coinage

The Singing Bridge of Memphis Tennessee definitely has a straight sample from Quill Blues - https://youtu.be/kTdIMR9bGpM - & I think it's my favourite of these efforts, alongside A Raga Called Pat, though the guitar is still obviously the star of the latter

The Epiphany of Glenn Jones is probably the strangest Fahey album, it really is all over the place & I don't love most of it but Fahey's voice/monologue/dialectic on the last two tracks is just incredible to me, love the live recordings when his introductions become circuitous and oblique for the same reason & the trio recording where he reads from the liner notes to the first album, his voice has got that same heft

― ogmor, Wednesday, 27 April 2016 00:45 (three years ago) link

xp to ARB:

https://img.discogs.com/2xsw5dfjhGcid87CeXiG8Ll2DQI=/fit-in/596x379/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-4159606-1357275142-1344.jpeg.jpg

How’s the sound on that set? I’ve heard not-great things about some of 4MWB’s reissues.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat)

mine sounded fine for most of it, there were definitely a few single-rotation pressing flaws that distorted or crackled but I'd guess 99% of the actual music was totally clear

Thanks, good to know!

my box is really good pressing wise, sounds good to me... they weren't the highest fidelity recordings to begin with but I love how they sound

the ugly colored t-shirt is an awesome and dorky extra

@NTI: ISO pic of tshirt pls?

the ugly colored t-shirt is an awesome and dorky extra

Piss, I can’t get the link to work: https://photos.app.goo.gl/5pKzgC8zTpfDQz396

Haha, awesome. I'd rock that for sure.

one for your next rave:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvfBuQ9LnWs

(^ sligo river river blues in a lo-fi house style)

(it's a bit naff tbh)

(and yet...)

lol that is kinda good.

I'm into it

had he lived a few more years would fahey have made a vaporwave record

IDK, but "american primitive synthesizer" is a concept I have thought-experimented with

^^ go straight to Sun Ra's "Space Probe"!

Re: "American primitive synthesizer" - https://hanklebury.bandcamp.com/album/delta-drone

this sounds cool! is it ... real?

oh haha, i see that it isn't. still sounds good!

"*Don't believe everything you read, folks. I'm just indulging in a little imaginative exercise with this project--HT"

you need an inauthentic backstory to be authentically american primitive!

I think I mentioned my love of “Funeral Song for Mississippi John Hurt” upthread off Of Rivers and Religion – but I just realized that I think what I love most about it is the moment it changes to the B-section.

It has the same elated feeling of tension and release as (wait for it) James Brown’s “Sex Machine” (or a few years later,“There It Is”) – where the vamp of the verse just goes and goes and goes, building and building, before WHAM the modulation happens and the skies open and ... wow. It’s just a beautiful all-time moment for Fahey in a career that was really filled with them.

it's one of his best pieces, i personally love the herky jerky hi-fidelity version on 'of rivers and religion', close to definitive

Agreed -- I've been doing some modular synthesizer interpretations of Fahey tunes and am working off of the Requia version for this one, which has a completely different structure and starts with the B section. He doesn't get into the long, pedal-pointy A-section that leads the Of Rivers and Religion version until over two minutes in. It's a great piece all the same, but the tension and release I described upthread is totally different.

they're both great and the contrast between them makes me appreciate both more. requia one has a more classical/flowing feel, the beginning is so light and gorgeous

he had such a light touch in the 60s. it's so amazing to watch his picking hand on those 'guitar guitar' appearances

yeah he quite suddenly got a lot heavier sometime around 1969

that can happen when all you do is sit around all day playing guitar

I wouldn't rule out the influence of alcohol either

And trauma/mental illness

it's a rich tapestry!

Happy birthday JF.

I was recently discussing what made him so great with some friends and one friend dissented that all of the talent was in his right hand. All of us were pretty dismissive at first but after thinking it over for a couple weeks, I realized that my friend had some merit in his critique. My arguement is that you need to fold in the chord-structure/choices/voicings of these tunings into his left hand "technique", which then elevates his talent.

What is the best example of his left hand technique. Any serious heads want to tackle this?

brenda's blues

but i don't think that's a valid 'dissent' in any case

obviously he didn't go in for fast runs or hammer-ons or loads of wild awkward chords but a lot of what makes for a good guitarist cannot be assigned to either hand, and ofc fahey was a composer and synthesizer and so on too. his picking patterns aren't wildly complicated but the key business of timing is mostly a right hand thing so I think you can make a case on that basis. brenda's blues is a good call, yellow princess is probably his fanciest left hand era, stuff like lion, but really his slide stuff is what I would point to, esp the live performances

Thank you both. Will see these numbskulls tomorrow night at the Fennesz show and will bring up your examples.

People should stop worshipping Fahey and give credit to the blues musicians he ripped off. There, I said it!

— Sarah Louise (@SarahLouisemusi) June 12, 2020

"ripped off, streamlined and codified the techniques, thus sucking the life out of the music"

more proof these kids never got it for those who couldn't tell from the music

what a confusing revival.

guess I just find it funny that ppl are acting like john fahey, who dedicated so much of his life to championing and popularising country blues, writing about it extensively (he won a grammy for mythologising other ppl!), tracking down skip james and bukka white, finding rare records, and just getting it in a way that ppl hadn't really before and even with his example many still can't, somehow operated at the expense of blues artists

Black-and-white thinking iirc.

ogmor i thought more or less the same thing. it's like, how can you engage with john fahey to an extent that can be meaningfully called "worship" and not be aware of the extent of his commitment to the tradition he was so clearly and self-consciously participating in ?

anyway, if you want to hear what lifeless white folk guitar sounds like, head straight to her bandcamp page !

I've overcome enough of my antipathy to new age to say that as sun-swallowing dazzling reverie goes I quite like sarah louise & I think she stands out, but that tweet is steaming ignorance. mb there are a significant number of oddly annoying john fahey fans in the US, but the resentment ppl feel towards him is clearly not for the nonsense (and indeed rockist) reasons put forward in that thread. by far the most perceptive and most ruthless takedowns of john fahey i've heard all came from john fahey, who was mb more self-aware and self-ironizing than any musician i can think of, but just as the subtleties of his playing have gone unappreciated as his music has been interpreted as "aimlessly jamming and playing around w/ blues cliches in open tunings", all the care he put into negotiating the position of his own music amongst his peers and influences has been reduced to "self-mythologising"

you could say this reductive process is a necessary part of how influence functions, the way in which culture travels on the "vibrational level", to borrow a concept from noted blues scholar john fahey

might be a few good reasons we could cancel john fahey, but ripping off the blues is pretty low on the list.

wait, that tweet wasn't satirical?

I think it all stems from her performing and being on the I'll fated panel at the 1000 Incarnations of the Rose festival

jf really deserves a better thread title.