TS - derek bailey "ballads" vs john fahey "red cross"

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i only have one cdr with me, and i want to know which one to take home for weekend listening.

― toby (tsg20), Friday, 7 March 2003 14:38 (twenty-two years ago)

read good things about "red cross" in the voice this week but have not heard it.

i have "ballads" and it is good. all over the place, but cool. bailey goes from playing the head of whatever tune he's playng to all of his usual atonal madness. its more listenable than other d.b. i've heard, but i have not even heard that much. i bet the fahey is more standardly melodic.

― marcg (marcg), Friday, 7 March 2003 14:54 (twenty-two years ago)

also posted in the banal conversations thread on ILE. I thought it was appropriate:

me playing derek bailey's ballads:
derek plays 'tune'.

dad enters room.
d: what are you doing?
me: er...listening to music
(d sits down and listens for a bit)
d: this is nice
derek bailey starts to improvise
me: yes it is
d: and this is noise.

dad walks away and shuts the door.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 7 March 2003 15:14 (twenty-two years ago)

rip them to mp3 and burn then both onto the same cd-r!

i haven't head either but my friend said he thought the fahey was the strongest fahey release since his "comeback".

― john fail (cenotaph), Friday, 7 March 2003 15:26 (twenty-two years ago)

"red cross" is mind erasing, completely beatific and overgratifying, a posthumous masterpiece driven in context

--------
go.to/stevek

― steve k (stevek10), Friday, 7 March 2003 16:23 (twenty-two years ago)

what steve says.

i'm listening to fahey right now. the red cross album is wonderful. lots of yummy reverb. less trad fingerpicking. only thing you'll miss out on is the great packaging.

― JasonD (JasonD), Friday, 7 March 2003 18:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Fahey by a longshot, buddy. I like Ballads too tho

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Friday, 7 March 2003 19:42 (twenty-two years ago)

from the Guardian UK
http://shopping.guardian.co.uk/music/story/0,1587,904059,00.html

John Fahey: Red Cross

4 stars (Revenant)

Richard Williams
Friday February 28, 2003
The Guardian

More pop CD reviews
It is always tempting to look for signs in the last work of an artist, and on this occasion it would be useless to resist. John Fahey, the pioneering primitivist of the folk-blues guitar, died two years ago, at 60, and on these, his final recordings, he seems to have been searching for some sort of resolution.

Fahey's explorations of old blues, folk and country tunes and the Episcopalian hymnal were usually distinguished by a spiky stubbornness, like a series of unfinished arguments. Here, in seven solo items and one trio piece, he delves far beneath the surface of his material to produce performances of enormous emotional impact, their power intensified by constant hesitations and uncertainties that seem the product of intense thought rather than technical frailty.

And not since Albert Ayler, 40 years ago, has anyone drawn so much blood from Gershwin's Summertime, the riveting highlight of an elegantly packaged memorial.

― steve k (stevek10), Friday, 7 March 2003 20:14 (twenty-two years ago)

It is always tempting to look for signs in the last work of an artist, and on this occasion it would be useless to resist. John Fahey, the pioneering primitivist of the folk-blues guitar, died two years ago, at 60, and on these, his final recordings, he seems to have been searching for some sort of resolution.

Why should the first sentence excuse the second? I hate reviews that begin like this.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 7 March 2003 20:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, but Amateurist, surely Fahey knew he was going to die. So he made a statement!

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Saturday, 8 March 2003 10:44 (twenty-two years ago)

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