John Fahey played acoustic guitar, which already needs some defending. No, he's not responsible (directly) for Windham Hill (a quality label that grew beyond its ability to maintain quality control) and the myriad of 'new age' albums that emerged.
Wait, let's start again: John Fahey, 'primitive' guitarist, blues collector, visionary, did not spend his time in an R Crumb 'settin'-on-the-porch-pickin'-dem'-blues' scenario. A lot of people have tried to follow what they consider the Fahey template, but John Fahey's blues were back-lit with psychic damage and tortured memories, maybe the same ingredients for 'traditional' blues, but with a different flavor. Fahey's reconstruction of plantation blues was infused with his own inner terrors, and became a different art in the process. The "Return of the Repressed" anthology is actually a good place to start, patched together by Barry "Dr. Demento" Hansen -- and even if I owned every single John Fahey release (I'm on my way), I'd still play this masterfully sequenced tribute to John's 'old,weird America'.
No comments:
Post a Comment