[atsonicpark]

Fahey is one of those musicians who I've listened to a thousand times, and I still hear new things. Quite remarkable when you consider it's 99.9999% time just a guy with an acoustic guitar. He really thought these songs out, every little detail. It's remarkable. There's so much depth ine one little section of his music. It's insane.

[The Lung]

Yeh I don't think i'll ever get sick of Fahey. Like you said the depth he creates with just 2 fingers and a thumb is insane. I've been playing Impressions of Susan lately and its so varied and beautiful. I can only dream of writing songs like that.

[Rob Instigator]

been listening to Fahey this past week. good stuf, but not suited to listen to with friends. it is a sit-alone-and-listen kinda music.

with other people around it turns into a fucking snooze fest

[pbradley]

I killed a party once with John Fahey's music.

[Rob Instigator]

I believe it!

[Stijn]

What's your favorite?
I like days have gone by best

[fugazifan]

its probably not his best but transfiguration of blind joe death gets me every time....

[atsonicpark]

http://record-fiend.blogspot.com/200...humb-1969.html

the only fahey album left to be shared on the interwebs has been unearthed.. superrare...

[Derek]

Can't stop listening to Fare Forward Voyagers... top 10 album.

///

1. Fare Forward Voyagers
2. Requia
3. God, Time and Causality
4. The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death
5. Days Have Gone By

Honourable mentions: the rest.

[atsonicpark]

GOD, TIME, AND CAUSALITY will always be my favorite work, as its like a greatest hits album, with medlies of some of his best songs, played ferociously, extremely well produced also.. then it has new songs (like the last track) which are the best he's ever made. He never made a bad album though, I quite like HITOMI a lot, it's basically just him playing slowly through a delay pedal, almost sounds like a Mark McGuire album at times, but it's top notch. RED CROSS is also awesome, and since it was his last album... yeah. I highly reccomend every album he released through his record label, as well as his books.

Basically, anything he was involved in was topnotch.

But yeah, Fare Forward Voyagers is an incredible album, and he's probably the most consistently great musician to live. 45 or so albums and not a single bad one in the bunch. I was on youtube watching a video last month and someone actually called his playing "sloppy" and "inept". Sad world.

[atsonicpark]

in time for christmas, everyone can learn fahey's AULD LANG SYNE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrJQystmyl8

You can also learn that his name is pronounced fay-HEE... I for a while thought it was fay-hey. So, this is good.

[jon boy]

john fahey's work is about the most honest music i have heard. its all guts and just plain wonderful.

[themawt71]

on the sunny side of the ocean is my favorite. so so nice.

i was looking for some tabs so i could learn the version from the transfiguration of blind joe death but the only one i could find was a different version or was just very wrong. so i ended up tabbing it out myself. i figured maybe some of y'all could get some use out of it so here is a link to the tab.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/x632mk

[atsonicpark]

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/b...out-in-august/


A 5 cd Fahey box set has been in the works for about 4 years. Fahey is god, but this is 5 cd's of recordings before '63.. so probably just blues covers and such.

Odd that this is in the works but no one seems to be concerned with releasing AZALEA CITY MEMORIES (an unreleased studio album that is pretty awesome, if a bit uneventful) or any of the other studio sessions/new songs that have never been released (go to the "official" Fahey site and read up on all the albums he's appeared on and studio work he's done)...

[atsonicpark]

Anyway, I have some presents for you all..

January 1968 - Live in Santa Barbara, California:
1. The Yellow Princess (8:07)
2. Requiem for Molly Part Five (8:31)
3. Requiem for Lion (5:58)
4. Commemorative Transfiguration and Communion at Magruder Park (11:53)
5. Irish Setter (9:58) *only known live recording of this*

http://www.sendspace.com/file/e5vwdo

and

July 1972 - Syracuse, New York - Jabberwocky Club

01. Stomping Tonight Fantasy
02. In Christ There is No East or West
03. Beverly
04. The Dance of the Inhabitants of the Palace of King Philip XIV of Spain
05. tuning
06. Thus Krishna on the Battlefield
07. Some Summer Day
08. Brenda's Blues/When You Wore a Tulip


http://www.sendspace.com/file/8f7gf6

[atsonicpark]

btw, derek, fare forward voyagers I think is my girlfriend's favorite. You really understand girls I think.

btw, who likes fahey collaborator GLENN JONES? A lot of people have said Rose was the new Fahey (RIP), but -- no disrespect intended here -- I felt like he usually didn't add much to what Fahey had already done. BLACKSHAW, while quite awesome in his own right, is doing something pretty different, and while it's awesome, it doesn't have a Fahey feel at all. Other contemporary guitarists, like Harris Newman and Steffen Basho, are awesome, but none really seem to have that ... feel ... like GLENN JONES. I'm sure anyone interested in Fahey already has this, and I myself have been jamming it for well over a year now, so I think it's okay to post this:

http://www.mediafire.com/?zagzatwxiym

BBQ BOB IN FISHTOWN... it's influenced by Fahey, but isn't derivative of. PLEASE, only listen to this album if you want your mind blown! Truely an excellent album. It's only about 50mb, and only about a half an hour long, so please give it a whirl. You won't be sorry, I can gurantee that.

Unlike all the other guitarists, it could almost be mistaken for a Fahey disc -- unlike Rose, who seemed to downright emulate Fahey's best moments (and even reused some of his riffs), Glenn saw that Fahey himself didn't repeat; Fahey was always looking ahead, which is why many of Fahey's fans stopped listening to him when he completely changed his sound (which is sad; HITOMI, RED CROSS, and all the other stuff from that period, was just awesome -- albeit in a completely different way). Fahey was all about looking ahead. So, while this has some of the American primitive trademarks, the main thing here is that Glenn is doing some truely different stuff, which Fahey would be proud of. Of all the new solo guitarists, I think Jones is the most inventive and interesting and the one to watch. Also, of course, he's probably amongst the least popular. I guess that always happens when you're doing something new.

As for Rose, his last album LUCK IN THE VALLEY was great, definitely his best, and saw him start to mostly move away from Fahey. What a tragic loss to see him pass at such a young age, when he was truely starting to find himself, I think.

FARE FORWARD:
when the fire and the rose are blah blah... best song.. you know the coolest part? About 12 minutes in, so kinda near the end, when he plays this simple, beautiful high pitched arpeggio... it's very beautiful and melodic and one of the most straightforward and simple things he's done, yet it perfectly exemplifies, and encapsulates, what makes Fahey so special, not to mention that it comes after one of his most complex compositions (I say "compositions" because he performed that song live countless times; I've actually never thought about this, but Fahey wasn't a man who improvised much, oh don't get me wrong -- he HAD improvisations inside of his songs, but he never just went at it for 20 minutes at a time, it was more "well, why not fuck with this part" or "I'm sick of the way this part is going, so I'll play it faster this time"... ANYWAY, this just blows my mind, because Fahey's songs are almost like classical pieces sometimes, with various movements all exploring the same kinda themes, he's clearly inspired by classical music in some of his compositions, and I think while his "technique" is a bit simpler than most finger pickers, I think he probably had better taste (he loved punk music, he loved Merzbow and noise music, he loved ambient and drone, he loved noise rock bands, his favorite musician was Jim O'Rourke -- this wasn't just a hard-drinkin' man who loved the blues, he was a cocaine-snorting teddy bear who could be seen blasting Pulse Demon and Harry Partch while eating popcorn out of his bedroom...).

You know how Thurston said Fahey was a big influence on SY (hence the Eternal ass cover)? I have thought about this a lot. I think it's not so much in the early SY -- or the early Fahey, for that matter, it's more like in albums like FARE FORWARD and in albms like WASHING MACHINE... unconventional riffing, and unconventional structures, unconventional tunings, that all sound somewhat conventional.. Fahey created his own language -- albeit from using bits and pieces of pre-existing language -- as did SY...... But SY regularly eschewed "choruses" in the traditional sense, but almost all of their songs have a pretty strange flow to them, even the more straightforward ones. It's definitely not a verse chorus verse chorus solo chorus chorus band, yet at the same time, the songs do feel structured, and I think part of is that they never really get too out of control -- Steve's propulsive drumming always reels them back in so they never get completey lost. They really love a good riff and will play it just long enough, never too long. And they're always inserting strange new riffs into the mix. Thurston usually holds down the rhythmic fort while Lee is constantly inserting strange and fresh new riffs, while never losing sight of the song, its structure, its driving force, etc. I think Fahey did this a lot too -- he was capable of working with very unconventional means, in a very unusual language, to get his point across, but even when kind of going off on strange new tangents in his songs, he always made sure and kept the song in mind; if that makes sense -- he always knew what he was doing, what he was trying to say, and where things were going. Despite even Fahey getting a little chaotic, the chaos is very controlled. You just have to listen to a song a few times to really get that.

[hirsute_biped]

check out:

http://delta-slider.blogspot.com

this blog has some nice Fahey (and Basho and Rose and Jones) posts with some live shows, including some of the ones atsonicpark posted (i think), as well as several others: both early and late period Fahey.

From http://www.dust-digital.com (specifically from the news section)

 

Five CDs + book coming in 2011.

They posted this Sept 30, 2010
At one point it was announced to have 3 CDs, at one point an LP was to be included. Now they are saying 5 CDs. Several vague release dates have been set, and passed with no release. I take this to mean they are working very hard to make this rease as good as it possibly could be. They make Grammy Award winning deluxe archival box sets, so however long they want to take is fine by me. Very excited to get one, hopefully this year but we'll see.

[atsonicpark]

WOW!

yea fare forward is my fav fahey album now.

[Derek]

btw, derek, fare forward voyagers I think is my girlfriend's favorite. You really understand girls I think.

I wish.

Good to know you agree with me though on best Fahey album.

[RanaldoNecro]

I was reading LZ 75, a book about Led Zeps 75 tour, and they mentioned that Page was to have a meeting with Fahey. Can anyone confirm this?