John Fahey - Days Have Gone By

 Days Have Gone By · John Fahey

Days Have Gone By, Vol. 6 ℗ 1967 Takoma Records

more guitar from John Fahey

More references to Jesus! This from Gary Lucas Facebook page - JOHN FAHEY: In Christ There is No East or West

 

In Christ There Is No East Or West

John Fahey

which is weird coming from a confirmed atheist but hey , , , , , . . .    ... we knew he was interesting!?

John Fahey - What The Sun Said [The Dance of Death and Other Plantation Favourites]

 John Fahey - What The Sun Said 

[The Dance of Death and Other Plantation Favourites]

as suggested by

Gary Lucas

John Fahey - Juana | jt1674

John Fahey

 Now we had some wondrous guitar from Leo Kottke recently and here’s another unique guitar voice in the legendary John Fahey . . . . . . mostly for Sealyman!

https://www.tumblr.com/jt1674/776039777057357824/john-fahey-juana

ADVERT : UNCUT | New Edition out now!

The new Uncut Magazine is now on sale! Talking Heads! Bob Marley! Kim Gordon! The Waterboys! Julia Holter! Phosphorescent! Rosali! John Fahey! Michael Moorcock! DION! Mud! A free, 15-track new music CD! 

More here: https://bit.ly/UncutTalkingHeads

JOHN FAHEY LIVE! - EVANSTON, IL 1975 | Big O

 More John Fahey

over at Big O - Evanston, IL 1975

there’s lots of banter and tuning which frankly I could do without . . . . . finding out negative views of musicians is always a problem and referring to a woman as "a dog" is not helpful!

but still the quality of the recording is great and the guitar legend is on form here . . . . . . . 

 Live at Amazingrace (at The Main), Evanston, IL; August 16, 1975. Very good soundboard.

+ + + + +

Track 01. banter, tuning 2:44
Track 02. Some Summer Day/Candy Man/Stomping Tonight On The Pennsylvania-Alabama Border/Christ’s Saints Of God Fantasy/In Christ There Is No East Or West/Beverly 23:39
Track 03. tuning 2:42
Track 04. Owchita/The Dance Of The Inhabitants Of The Palace Of King Philip XIV Of Spain 17:45
Track 05. tuning 0:16
Track 06. Gaucho (first time ever played publicly) (banter) 5:05
Track 07. break, tuning 5:46
Track 08. On The Sunny Side Of The Ocean/Spanish Two-Step/Lion 15:27
Track 09. tuning 1:14
Track 10. The Revolt Of The Dyke Brigade/Requiem For Mississippi John Hurt 9:09
84 mins

 In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey 

here . . . . .

JOHN FAHEY :: SHANLEY HALL NW UNIVERSITY Evanston, IL 1974 | Reed College, Portland, Oregon; April 8, 1967 | BIG O

 One of the most extraordinary things about Big O (despite the tirades of filth from largely US trolls with their racist sexist school boy filth) is the amazing eclectic range of postings and recently there is no exception with this item here. A favourite and fascinating guitar savant ( I would maintain) in John Fahey the extraordinarily gifted and unique self taught player and composer of guitar pieces without equal

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Disc 1
Amazingrace Coffeehouse, Shanley Hall, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL; August 24, 1974

Thanks to OldNeumanntapr and frenfri for sharing the show at Dime.

Track 01. Thus Krishna On The Battlefield 10:10
Track 02. Fare Forward Voyagers 24:08
Track 03. Owchita/Dance Of The Inhabitants Of The Palace Of King Philip XIV Of Spain 19:00
Track 04. On The Sunny Side of The Ocean (false start) 0:19
Track 05. On The Sunny Side of The Ocean/Spanish Two-Step 9:45
64 mins

Bonus:
Track 06. The Revolt Of The Dyke Brigade/Requiem For Mississippi John Hurt 7:05
Live at the Great American Music Hall; San Francisco, CA; October 10, 1974 (soundboard)

Disc 2
Reed College, Portland, Oregon; April 8, 1967

Track 01. St Louis Blues 2:50
Track 02. The Great San Bernadino Birthday Party Part 1 2:22
Track 03. The Great San Bernadino Birthday Party Part 2 5:00
Track 04. Requiem for Russell Blaine Cooper Part 1 2:20
Track 05. Requiem for Russell Blaine Cooper Part 2 5:02
Track 06. Red Pony (Wine & Roses) 4:48
Track 07. On the Banks of the Owchita 5:06
Track 08. When the Catfish is In Bloom 6:45
Track 09. Dance Of The Inhabitants Of The Palace Of King Philip Of Spain 5:10
Track 10. In Christ There is No East Or West 3:10

 

John Fahey LIVE in Riverside CA 1976 - Floppy Boot Stomp

 We were talking about John Fahey and he seems to crop up time after time and somehow this time of year especially too. So go check this over at Floppy Boot Stomp (where else?)

John Fahey 

The Barn

University Of California-Riverside

Riverside CA

1976-06-11

Soundboard 

01. Thus Krishna on the Battlefield

-Fare Forward Voyagers

02. Steamboat Gwine Round Da Bend

- Death of the Clayton Peacock

-How Green Was My Valley

03. Mark 1:15

04. Cigarette Break

05. On the Sunny Side of the Ocean

- Spanish Two-Step 

06. Christ Saints of God Fantasy

- Stomping Tonight on the Pennsylvania Alabama Border

- In Christ There Is No East or West

- Beverly

07. Dance of the Inhabitants of the 

Palace of King Philip XIV of Spain

08. Some Summer Day

- Brenda's Blues

- Spanish Dance

09. On the Sunny Side of the Ocean

- Spanish Dance

10. Lion

11. Melody McBad

- Revolt of the Dyke Brigade

- Requiem for Mississippi John Hurt

12. The Discovery of Sylvia Scott 

John Fahey - Guitar

here . . . . . .

Christmas Album No 2 | The New Possibility :: John Fahey's Guitar Soli Christmas Album | AQUARIUM DRUNKARD

The Gospel Of Fahey’s Christmas Soli

As the Turkey-fare winds down and the boxes of Christmas decor make their way from the basement, a transition is needed. Ringing in the holiday season in subtlety requires a look no further than America’s finest composer and most innovative maestro of steel string. With a discography expanding beyond 40 titles, it’s possible to overlook the holiday offerings among masterworks like Fare Forward Voyagers, The Yellow Princess, and those first five Takoma releases. Smack dab in the middle of John Fahey’s first decade shifting around the tectonic plates of traditional music came The New Possibility. 

Prior to this moment, a collection of holiday tunes assembled specifically for the steel string acoustic guitar was unheard of. The holiday-inclined were limited to the efforts of crooners or classic orchestral renderings of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “Joy to the World.” Over the course of his career, Fahey would return to the wealth of holiday music to assemble some six-string arrangements to keep the merriment going, while simultaneously conducting experiments on the construction of the tunes themselves; the solo guitar will always bring out the essential essence of a piece. As the years went on, the originality and quality would deteriorate—it appears that the constant reissuing and reorganizing of these collections became a way for the notoriously destitute genius to attain some sort of income in a culture that wasn’t ready to recognize the magnitude of his artistic contributions. With The New Possibility and 1975’s Christmas with John Fahey, Vol. II, however, St. John was christened. Fahey would be entered into those holly-decked halls of holiday lore as the albums went on to become his most commercially successful releases. It was finally time for the luddites, weirdos, and eccentrics alike to have their moment in the hearth’s glow.

Being the most influential figure in revolutionizing the acoustic guitar, there is something unnerving in the knowledge that adapting well-known festive numbers would be Fahey’s biggest communion with the general public. But like everything else touched over his lifetime, the guitarist imbues an esoteric mastery over the tunes compiled. With a technique so inherently his, the only option is to remake them in his own gnarled image. Over both volumes, Fahey takes beloved Christmas tales and converts them into something one could imagine coming from a reverb drenched cathedral in the 16th century (and even more far out—sounding like something smack dab in the mountains of Appalachia). “What Child is This” comes through painfully slow. Like a distorted music box that’s built up centuries of corrosion on its gears. Immediately followed by the jauntiest “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing” ever recorded (you could travel across the continent to the pulse of that bassline), Fahey ensures that listeners are not lulled off to a Victorian dreamland too soon. The “Auld Lang Syne” is played with such conviction that even the harshest Englishman would be brought to tears as the neeps and tatties are wheeled out for Burn’s Night. The New Possibility, while having the better production for a hauntingly Dickensian Christmas, maintains the dirge-like tempo for (mostly) the entirety of its duration. Vol II breathes more life into the affair. The numbers are quicker, the songs equally familiar, and the production is more jovial than its predecessor’s melancholy. Most important though—the fantasies remain.

Of course, the fantasies. Exactly what fucking Christmas going on here is unintelligible, but The New Possibility’s “Christ’s Saints of God Fantasy” and both parts of Vol. II’s “Christmas Fantasy” are the absolute showstoppers. The imaginary Christmas summed up in the classics is far from the experience we all have. It is with these swirling odysseys of fingerpicked spontaneity that we find holiday reality. A season that blasts past filled with imperfections, highs, lows, and surprises. Here, Fahey also exposes the listener to his Primitivism ethos. The improvised marvel of the soloist, founded on American Blues, but navigated with all ears toward the Avant Garde. Under the guise of a harmless Christmas record (his bestselling LP at that), Fahey found a way to break through to the mainstream. Under these pretenses, a hidden treatise on free music of the rootsy-est order was delivered to an unsuspecting public. And so spread the gospel of St. John’s Christmas Soli. | j rooney

John Fahey '67 - Aquarium Drunkard

 

AD have posted a great link to a YouTube concert of John Fahey the mercurial and uniquely gifted guitarist, they say:

John Fahey: resurrected once again. This 1967 soundboard recording, discovered among lost readings by beatnik poets Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, is the oldest recorded solo concert from the acoustic guitar innovator.

John Fahey - Live 1967 - Aquarium Drunkard