Fahey: Let's Wrap This One Up, Shall We? Uhh, Not So Fast - Part One...

John left Takoma, his own label (huh?), to record two albums for folk standard-bearer Vanguard (oh, more $$$, okay, I get it), and other than the tracks excerpted on the "Repressed" set, I haven't heard these albums. It's confusing to me, because the Fahey recording timeline is very intertwined -- he'll release an album on Vanguard while he's still recording for Takoma and/or Reprise.

So skip ahead to "America" from 1971 (on Takoma), imagined at the time as a 2 LP set, edited down to 1, but re-issued on CD as the 2 LP version (minus 2 minutes). Sounds like A MAJOR STATEMENT is intended here, and..., well, he pulled it off. Traditional tunes rub elbows with classical transcriptions ("Dvorak") and John's longer pieces -- and it all works for me. Okay, I'd happily take back the missing 2 minutes if you'd instead take them out of the last song "The Waltz That Carried Us Away and Then a Mosquito Came and Ate Up My Sweetheart". Oh, and 6:30 or so into "Voice of the Turtle", there's a series of descending guitar chords that later show up (also 6:30+ minutes in) in 1973's "When the Fire and the Rose Are One". Yes, I listened carefully many times to verify this - no slacking off here! I do my homework!!

"America" contains 3 longer songs, between 11 minutes and almost 16 minutes -- and they work. I mentioned much earlier that John doesn't really do 'back-porch, settin' on the porch swing' tunes -- his version is much darker -- but "America", "Dalhart, Texas", "Mark 1:15" and most of "Voice of the Turtle" wouldn't be out of place on that porch. Maybe John's demons were taking the summer off?

   Then the leap to Major Label again, this time Reprise Records (Frank Sinatra's boutique label, part of Warner Brothers). Woo-hoo, big bucks once again! What to do? Hey, let's hire Andy William's touring band to play Dixieland! Good idea? We'll see ... next time!

Tig Notaro Live (I'm Just Now Catching Up...)

This was a big story last year, but I just now heard the routine (thanks, library!), so this isn't nearly as timely as it should be... but hey, with Thanksgiving right around the corner, maybe it is.

Tig is a stand-up comic, and prior to a show, she learns she has breast cancer. Suddenly, the jokes she'd planned to tell that night seem shallow, even pointless compared to what she's experiencing in her life. So she dives off the deep end, ditches her prepared material, and instead talks that night about what's on her mind, the cancer, the recent death of her mother, the recent illnesses, the recent romantic break-up (tough few months!) -- basically, using the audience as therapist -- a recipe for disaster, right ? The recording isn't easy to listen to, but it's not depressing, it's ultimately about survival and being supported by your audience, about facing the worst and taking it and sharing it and getting through it.

You really have to hear it to understand how it's NOT depressing. It's certainly not 'funny', but there are laughs, and I actually teared up at the moment Tig apologizes for not doing her usual material, and asks "Should I just go back to telling jokes?" and a guy from the audience responds "No, this is f**king amazing!" (well, that's my best recall).

The second (shorter) disc in the package is worth a listen, but it's not the revelation that the main show is. So, bottom line: I wouldn't listen to this in the car on the way to Grandma's, but we sat down and listened together as a family for the 30+ minutes and had a moving experience. Maybe you will too.

A Very Late Correction

Good evening, faithful readers!

Way back on 9/10/11, I made another mistake! The Pullman WA Tull performance I referred to was on the '25th Anniversary Box Set', NOT "A Little Light Music". Apologies to all of you who rushed to purchase ALLM and were sorely disappointed!

Fahey Part 3

And once again, serendipity! Found a used copy of Fahey #3, "The Dance of Death and Other Plantation Favorites" at Everyday Music in Bellingham (probably the one I sold them a year or two ago...) It's great -- what was I thinking? DOD has more dissonance mixed into the traditional, so maybe I wasn't used to it at the time, and one or two songs sound like John's still tuning up, but still a good album. One thing I have noticed working through the canon is that to me, the early records were in black and white, and John slowly added color when he wrote his own material. Later releases added some studio refinements (echo) and uh, oh -- many more musicians. But that's further down the line. Now, back to our story..

"The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death" continues the awful record cover tradition, and oddly enough, it's not on Takoma, John's label, but Riverboat Records, John's other label -- huh? I don't get it, but it's considered John's 5th album, even though some sources say it was recorded before #4. I'll leave that to the scholars. Bottom line: to me, it's the last of John's 'traditional' albums, and one of his very, very best. (He'd still do trad, but he'd experiment more, and his songs were becoming more John than the source material.) Surrealistic moment: "Tell Her to Come Back Home" -- wait, that sounds familiar, where have I heard it before --- oh jeez, Andy Griffith sang it on the porch on "The Andy Griffith Show" where it was called "Get On Home, Cindy Cindy"!

#6, "Days Have Gone By", features so many of my favorites: "Night Train of Valhalla", "The Revolt of the Dyke Brigade" (he's since apologized for the title), "A Raga Called Pat - Part One". He gets more experimental here (or weird, depending on your perspective). "A Raga Called Pat - Part One" mixes in snippets from the railroad sound effects classic "Steel Rails Under Thundering Skys" (yes, that's how they spelled it). Then "A Raga Called Pat - Part Two" adds bird songs. No, not chirping, but squawking -- egrets??  Sounds like "Last Train to Okefenokee Swamp".  And here the traditionalists break camp...

John Fahey Again

First of all, a correction or rather an explanation: the mistakes in track listings I ranted about on "The Best of John Fahey" were evident on my old 1979 edition; it's since been remastered with 3 bonus tracks, so I assume the problem has been corrected. But still... 

So here's where it all started for most of us: "The Legend of Blind Joe Death" (hereafter referred to as BJD), the first in the true canon of John Fahey (Revenant Records resissued some of the fake 78s he recorded, but I think those were mostly hokum and novelties.) BJD was recorded in 1959, and John sold LPs from the gas station where he worked at the time, and he later re-recorded most of the tracks in 1963 and again in 1967. The CD version of BJD features both the 1963 version and the 1967 version, and they both have their charms, 1963 sounding dusty and a little tinny, and 1967 has better sound and more refined picking. These are all traditional (or traditional sounding, at least!) There's also a bonus track of the 10+ minute track from 1959 "The Transcendental Waterfall", but to me, it lacks the cohesion of John's later experiments in longer forms. BJD is a great album, and if you were going to limit yourself to 2 or 3 Fahey albums, this would certainly be a top contender.

"Death Chants, Breakdowns and Military Waltzes" is the second album, and the first of too many with awful covers (I seem to remember it having an altogether different cover, but that may have been another reissue.) This too contains 2 versions of the original, one from 1963 and the other from 1967. Again, the 1963 tracks gain in atmosphere what they lack in fidelity. This one's also trad, and another for 'must have' contender. Song titles continue John's whimsical/arcane references.



Sadly, Volume 3 is currently missing from my collection (but a lot of it ended up on "The Best of John Fahey"). When I had a copy, I never listened to it as much as some others, but I' guessing I was wrong in my assessment, so it may be time to reevaluate "The Dance of Death and Other Plantation Favorites".

I think this may be where I came in; my college girlfriend had a copy from an old boyfriend. John started experimenting more with Volume 4, called "The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party and Other Excursions". The title track is 19 minutes long, and there's some backwards guitar on "Knott's Berry Farm Molly", plus flute and organ (separately) on other tracks. This doesn't usually pop up on 'John's Best' lists, but I've always liked it a lot. Later I heard John's Christmas guitar album, and a collection with labelmates Leo Kottke and Peter Lang, and my collecting days began in earnest.