Tír Na HiFi

Pre ordered this and got a free flac download, three weeks before it's official release.
Great start to the new year...

Since Tuesday last, when I first got this monster 6 Lp, I've been spending all my listening time to it. Just listening and not worrying too much about why this music moves me like no other. Also trying my best to avoid reading the booklets inside each of the albums which remind me of a certain Erik Satie with his playful titles and in their sense of false and jokey mythologisation of the sacred history of American Primitive blues. But I digress, this is music played from a well of deep love and understanding of the acoustic Blues canon with a few Classical pieces thrown in for good measure. And he doesn't sing! Not one note over 12 sides....To me that is his trump card and the reason why his music will live on in the memory of those people who are not afraid to accept this quirky but typical Fahey trait. When people ask me what his music is like I smile to myself. American Primitive? Endless slide guitar excursions interrupted by abrupt (and primitive - that word again) sound collages? John Fahey's music can't be explained away in one or two sentences. It's a lifetime of learning. His music is something that has to be learned. I have to learn what John wants to tell me. I have to listen to the stories there in his music time and time again before I can hear the voices, follow the narratives of his music's unique,haunting spirit. Whether we're conscious or not, all music is a narrative, even if it's a narrative we hear only with our senses. We just feel it, and with the subtleties of the tonal system and the suggestiveness of the rhythms we are led through the story until we come to what the music tells us in an ending. Something has been communicated (or not!). And make no mistake there is a story to everything John plays. He often helps us to find our way into the story if we pay the requisite attention. His titles can flood our sense with pictures of the piece he is performing. Certainly we can hear the the rushing train in "Night Train To Valhalla", and his awestruck sweeping chords sketch for us the massiveness of the old building in "The Portland Cement Factory at Monolith, California". Part of John's creative strengths was his ability to use other elements in the stories his music was telling. Thunderstorms,train whistles,electronic rumbles,mumbled voices all turn up somewhere. In the version of "Poor Boy" on The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death album a dog barks a few seconds after John begins playing. The dog is shushed and after a few seconds John begins again. What he understood was that the dog's barking was as much a part of the story of that piece, just at the moment he was playing it. it's a life time of learning and endlessly wondering and all the wonderful things in between. And I'm still learning.....

On the original ABC vinyl

One thing leads to another ...

cybot wrote:

That was a very interesting post Dermot and you now have me intrigued!

fergus wrote:

cybot wrote:

That was a very interesting post Dermot and you now have me intrigued!

Thank you Fergus :) Be warned though he's not for everyone! Still, all you can do is, at very least, give his music a chance.....

About time I listened to this anew....Her voice on Crayon Angels is something to behold. Sad the way her life turned out...

'Phoney prophets stole the only light I knew,
and the darkness softly screamed'