Fade to Blue

John Fahey - Carnegie Hall, New York City, Sept. 21, 1973

Hey, let's just hang out in September of 1973 for a little while longer. While Lou Reed was laying waste to Europe and Neil Young was opening the Roxy, John Fahey played a unique triple bill at Carnegie Hall in NYC, sharing the spotlight with jazz-pop mystic Gabor Szabo and bossa nova pioneer Laurindo Almeida.

I stumbled across this advertisement in an old Village Voice a little while back and had to ask: "Is there a tape?!" Lo and behold, yes — but maybe only of the Fahey set? Was the taper a die-hard Blind Joe Death-head who left after John opened the show? Maybe. Or maybe I just can't find the Szabo and Almeida recordings. Help me out, Gaborians!

But John sounds good enough for now — great, actually. He wastes no time getting to the serious stuff, opening his portion of the show with a dazzling, almost half-hour "Fare Forward Voyagers." This is, in many ways, peak Fahey, kaleidoscopic in its ambition, his technique flawless, his sense of adventure boundless. Despite the composition's epic length, it's a gripping performance throughout, leaving you hanging on every note. This is your real destination, as T.S. Eliot reminds us.

John wraps things up with relatively briefer versions of "Dance of the Inhabitants" and "Beverly," his in-between song patter as typically laid-back as can be, in spite of the hallowed setting. What happened next? Not sure, but I like to think the evening concluded with an all-star jam — Fahey, Szabo and Almeida performing a 45-minute improv raga or something. Stranger things have happened, right? At least a few!

Shuffle your favorite playlist and post the first five songs that come up. Then copy/ paste this ask to your favorite mutuals 💌

It can ever be said enough.

I love my stabby friend.

Thank you @cuttincandyyyy for the ask!

This morning's (afternoon, whatevs) playlist is called "bend the fucking notes". Here's the shuffle...

9:25 AM EDT April 22, 2024:

John Fahey -   "Medley: Imitation Train Whistle's, Po' Boy" From the album Railroad (1983)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

Mines is the 1992 Shanachie CD reissue

File under: American Primitive Guitar

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"Auld lang syne" (NYE mix) - John Fahey

john fahey -- how long

Soul Eater Post Chapter/Episode/Draft 44

Read it on Webtoons or Ao3

Two chapters left in the arc, trynna push it out so that's why I'm back at a stable tempo - let's just hope a certain release won't slow me down again lol.

(Also both songs are great)

Tracklist

Ghosts

Garbage

You Can't Cool Off In The Mill Pond, You Can Only Die

The Mill Pond Drowns Hope

John Fahey—Proofs & Refutations (Drag City)

Photo by Betty Herzner

Proofs & Refutations by John Fahey

This release documents the beginnings of the final phase of John Fahey’s career. In the mid-1990s, suffering from a range of ailments and holed up in a Salem, Oregon motel or boarding house, Fahey continued to record himself. The results document a middle-aged man facing mortality and the decline of the composition and playing skills that had supported him throughout his adult life while continuing to express himself as an artist.

I was living in that part of Oregon at the time and saw Fahey play twice during this period. He wasn’t touring, but acquaintances and friends of friends hired him to play for an hour or so at small venues in and within easy driving distance of Salem, in my case, a church (in a double bill with Peggy Seeger—a pair of opposites if there ever was one, and I don’t recall any interaction between them) and a bookstore. He was disheveled and truculent and had difficulty keeping his guitar (still an acoustic at that point) balanced across his ample midriff. He picked out pieces of his songs, broke off to tune, asked for requests and refused to play them, and, a couple of times, locked in and played for seconds to several minutes with passion and precision.

This collection includes both acoustic excursions and experimental pastiches. Fahey was always interested in musique concrète, and he may have turned more to this aspect of his expression as his guitar skills began to desert him. “All the Rains” stitches together vocalizings of the title and various cliches (“It is but it isn’t!” “You want to have your cake and eat it too!”) with echo and sound manipulation and is well placed as the first of the tracks in that it is easy to skip. “F for Fake” begins with acoustic slide guitar and Fahey’s pseudo-Tuvan throat singing — which achieved recognition in the U.S. about this time and which he played for laughs at the concerts I saw — but then, about halfway through the track, the vocals become plaintive hoots and moans over chords that drone like a sitar, and the music becomes truly affecting, harrowing but lovely. “For LMC 2” is a heavily treated stew of vocalizing and electric or treated acoustic guitar. “Untitled without Rain” (the relationship to “Untitled with Rain” on the posthumous Red Cross [2003] seems unclear) also combines acoustic slide with increasing distortion and reverb and resembles the playing and sound of City of Refuge (1997).

Apart from the latter half of “F for Fake,” these tracks are often difficult to listen to. In between them are “Morning” parts 1 and 2 and “Evening, Not Night” parts 1 and 2, acoustic instrumentals, fingerpicked without a slide, that are more user-friendly, both, according to the liner notes, inspired by Fahey’s love/hate relationship with Delta blues legend Skip James (the man and his music). Fahey meditates on notes and arpeggios and occasionally finds the syncopation that characterized his better-known recordings. Some of the riffs seem to suggest James’s playing, and some resurface in various places on Fahey’s final run of albums. There are moments of beauty as well as pathos here as one of the greatest musical innovators of the twentieth century tries to find a way forward.

Obviously, Proofs & Refutations is not the place to start for those not already familiar with Fahey, but there are rewards here for longtime fans and the merely curious. The sound quality is excellent, cleaned up over the versions of some of these tracks that have been circulating on sharing platforms. This release presents the man as I remember seeing him, still fierce and untamed if increasingly bewildered and distracted by his maladies. As it happened, the music world rediscovered Fahey not long after these tracks were recorded, and he was able to reclaim the conspicuous outsider status that he coveted and enjoy some of the respect that he deserved.

Jim Marks

John Fahey - Fresh Air with Terry Gross, July 25, 1980

The Transfiguration of Blind Terry Gross?! Yeah, something like that. Here, fingerstyle adventurer John Fahey drops in on the NPR grande dame in Philadelphia before a show at the Main Point club, playing a few tunes and chatting amiably with his host. Topics start out with the usual — canvasing the south for rare blues 78s, Takoma Records' rise and fall, the acoustic guitar as a worthy solo instrument. John really perks up, however, when things start to get into philosophical and spiritual matters, as he gamely advises Gross on how to best get rid of religious zealots who approach you at the airport or on the street. Thus Fahey on the battlefield!

100+ Famous Modern Art Artists of All Time

2/8/2024 ♦ Framed Poster Print ♦ Canvas Print ♦ Metal Print ♦ Acrylic Print ♦ Wood Prints 🌐 Worldwide shipping

4:00 AM EDT May 5, 2024:

John Fahey - "The Last Steam Engine Train" From the album The Best Of John Fahey 1959-1977 (1977)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm