John Fahey - Fare Forward Voyagers

October 16, 2007 5:36 AM

John Fahey - Fare Forward Voyagers
John Fahey - Dance Of The Inhabitants Of The Palace Of King Phillip XIV
Clips from a 2 hour performance at the Euphoria Tavern in Portland, Oregon from 1976. Among the cognoscenti at FaheyGuitarPlayers, the consensus is that these clips display Fahey in rare form on a very good night.
Apart from Fahey, Bohemia Visual Music aka Mike Nastra, the contributor of these clips, provides an interesting assortment of way too hip YouTubery offerings including, among others, Spike Jones, Dimandas Galas, Gene Krupa, Tuxedo Moon, Sun Ra, Pere Ubu and the Holy Modal Rounders.
posted by y2karl (9 comments total)

These are great performances you've linked to. Fahey was wonderful: such a keen understanding of and internalization of American folk guitar styles, combined with such a personal and unique style. He's one of the greats. Thanks for the Bohemia link, too: good stuff there!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:13 AM on October 16, 2007

I do love listening to John Fahey and have many of his records. He came to play at Oberlin when I was a student there, and played such a long set -- like four hours! -- that much of the audience walked out. It didn't help that by midway through and for the rest of the night, he was offering to barter songbooks for Valium. But yes -- now I'd love to have a good tape of that set.
posted by digaman at 7:30 AM on October 16, 2007

I have an old Holy Modal Rounders album somewhere. Don't have a turntable to play it on though. Must check out the various YouTubes when I have time later.
posted by emmaglitch at 8:52 AM on October 16, 2007

I posted this in a MeTa once - not sure why - but anyway, here's Fahey's Mill Pond EP, courtesy of WFMU.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:37 AM on October 16, 2007

Nice post—thanks, y2karl!
posted by languagehat at 11:37 AM on October 16, 2007

Great post!
posted by OmieWise at 12:44 PM on October 16, 2007

We sure do love this guy, but it makes no sense. On to the Holy Modal Rounders...
posted by Faze at 5:18 PM on October 16, 2007

I've that the record companies asked him to cut back on concerts because his record sales would go down after a tour.
posted by StickyCarpet at 8:41 PM on October 16, 2007

Late in his life, Fahey used to come up to Portland to sell cut-out copies of his records. I used to buy them. Got his awesome Mill Pond that way, and an unlabeled 10". Wish I still had them.

Sadly, the last time I heard him in person, at EJ's (long gone), he was pretty out of it, playing through a flanger's crappy pre-sets.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 10:58 PM on October 16, 2007