John Fahey LIVE poll

there are many live takes of this that are good but this is something else entirely. i've never heard an acoustic guitar sound so immense and the indulgence in microtonality brings out these ethereal overtones that i can't get enough of

https://youtu.be/0cTdPTrihlI

http://youtu.be/0cTdPTrihlI

god dammit, why didn't that embed? can a mod fix? thx in advance

this is also fantastic, and the antithesis of kottke. he plods so much that it adds this intense swagger to it all. i can't tell if he intentionally started playing joe kirby blues, or if he was riding his subconscious as he always said he tried to do. i read someone say he played as if he were alone and you were listening from the next room. this gives me that vibe.

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

the untitled track at the end of "red cross", that's live, right? that's a good one

seems like he was just running the recorder in his bedroom or wherever, not sure if it was in a performance setting. that's a great track though

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Santa Barbara Oil Slick for me — that is one of the great Fahey records as far as I'm concerned, just completely masterful. Rest of 'em are definitely good, but Santa Barbara is miraculous.

it's definitely a classic. i think i enjoy the more grandiose/epic shows of the 70s though. imagining him walking onto the stage at carnegie hall and playing the entirety of FFF... yeah

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Oh. I missed this

I also have a live album called "On Air". Recording of a concert in Germany broadcast on radio

I also missed this ! I do like Visits Washington DC, it might be third rate by Fahey standards but if anyone else had released it I'd be cooing over it. Melody McBad, Ann Arbor, a great version of Guitar Lamento - this is all good stuff.

but yes, a lot of the best fahey is live. the mixture of recording quality, acoustics, and the energy of an often booze-fuelled performance in front of an audience mark them out as something special and I can absolutely see why they might be yr favourite fahey. the studio version of FFV is fine but this sounds like the end of the world

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XsXooFFlWU

that's the university of washington performance. I heard this before the album version so it spoiled it for me. 'elemental' doesn't go far enough. I remember Fahey noting approvingly in the liner notes to the Harry Smith anthology that a track sounds like it was 'dragged up out of the earth' or similar, and the bass on this has this huge dull tectonic weight to it, no one else ever sounds anything like it

The "chorus" of View East from the B&O Railroad Viaduct is the melody to Syd Barrett's Terrapin