John Fahey: Where do I start?

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=8:59:36|AM&sql=Av2jc7i78g77r

But don't take it as fully indicative of his work, just a start.

As for music, you could do a lot worse than The Return of the Repressed 2-disc comp of his work until he went all O'Rourke in the 90's. Great stuff...

Of the things that are in print, I'd recommend most highly:

http://www.johnfahey.com/media/fonotone.gif

v

I Remember Blind Joe Death

Also, don't forget Fahey's own ridiculously exhaustive Web site, www.johnfahey.com

--Sandy Bull is a nice one to look up, also.

but not song? why do people feel compelled to dress up fahey's work with such lofty terms?

Dead horse, etc. RS made the point adequately.

I clearly just hate words, their implications and ambiguities.

Thanks for noticing!

I have a neurotic compulsion to avoid using the same word twice in a post, if possible. And yeah, I don't refer to compositions as songs unless they have lyrics. If his songs had vocals, I likely woulda called 'em "song" and "cut". Just my own personal quirks. Again, thanks for noticing.

as for "composition," i suppose you'd use this word when you want to refer to the way a piece was written, as opposed to the particularities of this or that performance or recording. the distinction can be important. i don't really think of the word as pretentious since it has a very practical function. but in the case of "FFV" i think performance and composition are basically one--there aren't any other recordings of it, and it's not as though fahey is obviously stumbling over some preexisting score (i doubt the thing was even completely through-composed actually). i often wonder how much of fahey's musical decisionmaking was left to the moment of performance and how much he really had down to each note in his head (or on paper, but again i really doubt he composed much on paper). i'm sure it varies a lot by recording.

i sort of figured revenant was basically over and done with, but then i remember that albert ayler thing that came out recently. they put out six or seven releases in their first year and, i believe, fewer than that over the next six years in total. strange. they had a lot of stuff promised that i hope comes to fruition.

what other things did revenant promise? I only knew abt the ayler boxset?

- fare forward voyagers
- the yellow princess
- america
- best of vol. 2

On the Sunny Side of the Ocean, When the Catfish Is In Bloom, Portland Cement Factory, Juana. it's easier to pick out albums rather than specific tracks, just start with the two i posted further up, along with Yellow Princess and America. A good late-period album of his: Womblife.

what other things did revenant promise? I only knew abt the ayler boxset?

aside from the aforementioned Fahey Fonotone recordings, there was supposed to be a Crime boxset/dvd in the works for 2005.

in a few cases other labels beat revenant to the punch...that's what happens when you put out one cd a year...

I kind of like that stuff, actually — particularly how it sort of functions as an overture to his guitar pieces. And it's Andy Williams' band, apparently.

yeah, that's a really good one. fahey and some of his ardent fans don't like that record much--he says he was on crazy drugs when he recorded it, and thus his playing seems slow and buttery to him. i can sort of hear it. i like the lp--not one of my favorites, but it's good.

Also, great story that I may have told elsewhere on ILM: apparently, JF played a show at Oberlin College (my alma mater) in the mid-Seventies. And he showed up piss drunk, alternating between swigging a bottle of wine, assaulting his guitar and incoherently screaming at the top of his lungs. After about 10 minutes of that, the longtime booker of Oberlin gigs went on stage and literally dragged him off.

I have the first New Possibility and it is awesome. Definitely sounds like Christmas, the melodies are very clear. Doubt it would have sold so well otherwise.

got sealed copies on hold at work, not sure if they're worth the $8 apiece it'd cost me, though.

hi andy!

also thurston moore's fahey pieces on these three albums are totally worth reading:

http://www.emusic.com/album/10605/10605728.html
http://www.emusic.com/album/10813/10813460.html
http://www.emusic.com/album/10827/10827160.html

x-post

Don't know the other two.

xxxpost

well, not ALL the usual suspects. but some. m.ward put it together.

pre-rediscovery, there's not a one not worth picking up.

do you mean anything prior to 1997? or just stuff from the early 90s?

i have some of his later pre-"alternative" lp's and they are disappointing. esp the "old girlfriends" one.

if you read fahey's liner notes to the first volume, you'll see that it's part of an elaborate if none too rigorous conceit involving paganism, etc. although certainly country blues and similar styles (not to mention "black" styles for centuries) have been pegged with "primitive" associations.

i think the word ("primitive") has helped this music find a sort of niche among (for the lack of a better term) the "other music"-type crowd. and that's good. but i still think it's a very unfortunate label. i suppose fahey &co. were being deliberately outré in using it.

I love Fahey more than pretty much anything else in the world and my appreciation is so personal that I hate trying to write little things about him. There's a couple of pretty good Fahey yahoo groups with a lot of hardcore Fahey fans, but they're only of much interest if you're pretty hardcore yourself.

www.johnfahey.com has a great discography, among other things which is a valuable resource.

Most people seem to love the first 15 years or so of Fahey's career the most, and any album from this period is pretty easy to recommend. Of the things I've played/recommended to friends, The Yellow Princess has probably gone down the best.

I can't believe andy beta can really recommend acquiring all of Fahey's 70s and 80s albums, which most people regard as uneven at best, especially the 80s stuff. All those Christmas albums! I much prefer some of his later stuff like Hitomi and the John Fahey Trio stuff. I can see why people might not be so keen, but it's a lot more raw and fresh than the often pretty tired sounding stuff he did in the 80s. Something about hearing Fahey slowly speak over his music really hits the spot for me. And I love both of the later books he wrote, although I haven't read the Patton thing. I'm going to stop now before I really annoy myself.

but i do think fahey & co. wanted to reclaiming the perceived messiness, the occasionally clumsiness, the sort of immediate/performative/er...phenomenological aspect of this music since so much writing on "blues" emphasizes historical progression, nice licks, etc. fahey tried and sort of failed to account for charley patton in his m.a. thesis (published as a book, maybe it never was submitted for the m.a.) and since then i think he's been jaundiced against musicological approaches to the blues.

xpost... more in a minute...

"untaught"--sort of a knotty idea when you think about it. i guess it implies a lack of "formal musical education." but then many if not most popular musicians fall into this category.

i suppose one thing that unites most of the performers collected in those "a.p." volumes is that they weren't musically literate (there are some exceptions...don't recall if the miss. sheiks are on either of those, but the chatmons could sight read) albeit musically sophisticated (by the standards that matter to me).

the word "primitive" has all sorts of meanings. most of them have a fair amount of applicability to the music fahey labeled as such but there are problems too:

- Not derived from something else; primary or basic.
- Of or relating to an earliest or original stage or state; primeval.
- Being little evolved from an early ancestral type.
- Characterized by simplicity or crudity; unsophisticated: primitive weapons. See Synonyms at rude.
- Anthropology. Of or relating to a nonindustrial, often tribal culture, especially one that is characterized by a low level of economic complexity: primitive societies.
- Linguistics. Serving as the basis for derived or inflected forms: Pick is the primitive word from which picket is derived.
- Being a protolanguage: primitive Germanic.
- Mathematics. An algebraic or geometric expression from which another expression is derived.
- Relating or belonging to forces of nature; elemental: primitive passions.
- Of or created by an artist without formal training; simple or naive in style.
- Of or relating to the work of an artist from a nonindustrial, often tribal culture, especially a culture that is characterized by a low level of economic complexity.
- Of or relating to late medieval or pre-Renaissance European painters or sculptors.
Biology. Occurring in or characteristic of an early stage of development or evolution.

I sympathize with the rhetorical function to which "primitive" is being put but still think there are some weird connotations there that may not be for the best when they get disseminated....

i totally disagree. he was sick of "folk" and the often fake connotations that went with it and basically wanted to refer to his music/record label with something more sensible or specific than just "folk". don't know how this can be seen as unfortunate as there is no "american primitive" section in record stores and he still gets filed in folk despite his efforts.

Amateurist, I think I know what you mean about Fahey's ideas about Patton/country blues/whatever, but it's hard to generalize. And I don't know who you might imagine being the "& co." in "Fahey & co." I think (judging purely on what I've read of his stuff) the most striking thing about the way Fahey felt about blues or any style of music was how personal his relationship with it was. Any sort of less musicological/'rigourous' attitude seems to me to most likely be a result of his very personal response to it. When he writes about Bill Monroe's version of Blue Yodel No. 7 or something, his connection with it is very personal and profound and it hints at music having a very important and essential role in his life rather than a decadent hobby or casual interest.

Any guessing at what Fahey thought about things is going to be very vague at best. I feel very defensive about Fahey and I'm cautious about anyone (including myself) trying to pin opinions onto him.

Ugh, more replies, more after tea...

dean blackwood...

is ennio morricone autistic?

dean blackwood...

Ha, I guess you were thinking about this specifically with regard to Revenant? That makes sense. As for this perceived clumsiness/immediacy or whatever, I'm not really sure about it, and I'm not familiar with anything Fahey said that made anything more than a vague allusion to this sort of idea, but it does seem interesting, and certainly a more interesting way of looking at Patton, say, than musicologically.

As for Fahey's mid period i.e. late seventies to early nineties, more or less, it doesn't seem to have anything really outstanding in it. The albums I've got are lame by Fahey's standards, but I'd still rather than listen to them than pretty much anything else. There's a real paucity of original material, and some of the medleys and covers he made up for that with are pretty interesting/satisfying, there's a lot of stuff that feels a bit pointless. It's sad but I don't feel a lot of those 80s albums really mattered that much to him. The playing feels disconnected and weirdly sort of professional for Fahey, whereas with the best Fahey I feel like Fahey's almost laughing he's entertaining himself so well (not that I actually imagine him laughing while playing angst-wridden tracks like The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party, but the selfish reasons for playing are still there). Fahey was pretty unapologetic about occasionally making music for purely financial reasons (that comment about making Christmas albums because they kept selling well?) but the stuff I like the most is his most self-indulgent. I'd rather listen Fahey shouting "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!" on the Epiphany Of Glenn Jones album he did with Cul de Sac in 97 than any of his 80s output (except God Time and Causality, which I think was actually recorded in 77 and Fahey told the record company the tapes were new).

Phew.

Bizarre that amateurist speaks of a Fahey/Mallick collaboration as these are my chief examples of people who studied philosophy at university and then went on to be kickass in (pretty much) unrelated areas, who I think of when I'm feeling bad about my choice of degree.

when was "fare forward voyagers"? my mind tells me either 73 or 78. anyway, that's one of my favorites, one of the last i really adore.

and i have to say i don't find any of his post-97 stuff particularly compelling either.

a good place to start is this show from 1969 (parts 2,3 and 4). it's an interview with laura weber who knows something about guitar play too and he plays a couple of his instrumentals. he is unbelievably relaxed and concentrated. at the same time totally down to earth and completely detached from the world.

something i asked myself when i watched and listened to this. aren't true innovators who have created their own sound almost always autodidacts? as they have to learn everything on their own and can go into directions nobody who is classically trained can go? as a musician who learns an instrument at a music school would be forced unintentionally to follow the known paths. it's a trade-off. your teacher teaches you the standard techniques but at the same time he/she narrows your horizon. or is this a half-baked projection?

This is really powerful stuff to watch. You kind of feel like this interview could go on in perpetuity -- Fahey and Weber have such a nice rapport and there's this really amazing space in the studio. I miss him.

wow, this is great!

I agree with alex's premise that education may narrow ones potential. My ex was/is a graphic artist who would spend hours looking at Matisse or Kandinsky to get inpiration for a particular project. True originals might not always be great, but they certainly stretch the boundaries.

this is from a DVD that came out a few years ago. i blogged about in on ILM somewhere. i'm sure you all remember.

i started with the Rhino double disc comp, but I'd probably just as soon recommend the live CD from a couple years ago The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick. Good God, it is good, and a wonderful recording as well. "Magruder Park"! :-o

There's an older dude who plays acoustic regularly at my local Farmers Market and in between requests for Beatles songs and other dull stuff, he'll pull out a note perfect version of "When The Catfish Is In Bloom" or "When The Springtime Comes Again". It sounds great. I've thought about taking lessons from him sometime, but am afraid I would get disappointed quickly.

What The Sun Said

an Under-regarded tune. the ascent & descent at the beginning is straightforward-inevitable fahey, tectonic in level of effect. the high & low strings seem to resonate like separate instruments. that incredibly direct, righteous repetition, never really emulated by any of his copycats, neither the relish w/ which those repetitions are performed.

these are blues riffs as chants to be reiterated endlessly. the chants&repetition tools in his hypnotist's arsenal - the subject of his hypnosis, of course, is always one john fahey. that deep effect it still has on me - tectonic - perhaps the sensation of my subconscious being tickled by that waxing&waning over that awesome bass. all the tender, fleeting, shivering, glorious moments are stretched over this syncopated frame, they are all dragged out in faheytime. faheytime is a topic in itself.

http://imagecache6.allposters.com/LRG/37/3763/2OMZF00Z.jpg

fahey must have thought he was up to this when he named that album