Customer Reviews

America

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Fahey's "America," in its expanded 79 minute form, bridges two phases of the man's musical evolution. The first half is generally in the early "Blind Joe Death" manner of 3-4 minute original compositions and arrangements of old popular tunes. We're treated to a skeletal "Amazing Grace," a skeletal Skip James lick called "Special Rider Blues," a lush reduction of a slow movement from Dvorak's 8th Symphony (trust Fahey to pass over interpolations from the "New World" symphony for his "America" program), and a couple of resonant versions of a Charlie Patton number called "Jesus is A Dying Bedmaker." Two longer tracks, "America" and "Dalhart, Texas 1967," approach the more meandering improvisational style that dominates the second half of the program - but both tracks are so tightly focused that they seem as if they'd be impossible to improvise. "Mark I:15" and "Voice of the Turtle" run 30 minutes between the two and are among the best examples of Fahey's mystical musical "voyaging."

If Fahey's other albums weren't so uniformly good, I'd assert that "America" is the only Fahey album you'd ever need to appreciate and enjoy all the artist's various facets. But it's hard to imagine anyone being satisfied with only one Fahey album, particularly one so impressive as "America." All of Fahey's albums aren't "essential," or even "classic," but they're all worth having on the shelf. Listeners who come to Fahey from rock music are fortunate if they investigate some of Fahey's blues influences - the celebrated Charlie Patton, Skip James, Bukka White, and John Hurt among them.

"America" just about sums it up. Fahey manages to cover much of the history of popular song in America with just a guitar and his mindblowing skill with the instrument. This is great, engaging listening. you'll hear snatches of old-as-the-hills folk and gospel relics woven into the notes. The impact of this record is deep beyond words, it seems to speak to a deep, collective memory within us all--- a memory of a world before superhighways, strip malls and the internet. That is what this album evokes. It almost impossible for me to discuss it in a modular sense. The overall impact is what I come away with: the evocation of a primitive, simple place. It is at once merry and deeply sad, tinged with tones of loss and regret. One of the most powerful and important records of the last century.

You may have heard a lot of hyperbole about this record -- after all, how many re-issues of obscure solo acoustic guitar recordings earn an "A" in Entertainment Weekly?

But in this case, hyperbole is understatement. John Fahey, acknowledged as the inventor of a style some have dubbed "American Primitive Guitar," is without question a seminal musician and composer, the godfather of everyone from Leo Kottke to Bela Fleck to Alex DiGrassi. Yet for years, all most people knew were his few most well-worn and anthologized tunes, and perhaps his Chrisdtmas Album, still an all-time best seller. But until now, Fahey's massive back catalog (28 albums? 30 albums? No one is quite sure) was out of print, available only on dusty vinyl. Now, Fantasy Records, inheritor of the Fahey's long-dormant Takoma label, is finally re-issuing these discs, and in the case of "America" they have found a whole lost album's worth of material recorded but never issued for what was supposed to be a two-album set. The material that was already known could easily be said to be Fahey's best album ever; what is now restored is still more stunning for its having sat in a vault for twenty-seven years.

Fahey's best qualities -- his ethereal tone, his trademark clockwork-like alternating bass, his flourishes that sound like a mechanical guitar-playing machine gone haywire, are all here. But on this recording there is something more: a compositional brilliance, a meditative sweep, a tenacious waltz between predictability and the utterly new, in short a whole new guitar presence, never heard before and rarely since.

If you only have one solo acoustic guitar recording on your shelf, this should be it. Fantasy is also re-releasing much of the other long out-of-print Fahey oeuvre, with original liner notes and all (where else can you read about the nefarious plot to pipe Fahey's music into supermarkets across America?), and every one of them is worth the price of admission. But "America"! ; stands above the rest.

From the liner notes: "This CD Contains 98.6 percent of the music recorded by John for America... Given the technical constraints of the Compact Disc medium... we were forced to edit two minutes from one track ("Mark 1:15")."

What isn't explicit in the comments above is that these two minutes were taken out of the most important cut on the original album. Of this cut, Fahey has said:

"Out of all the songs I ever wrote, I consider only two of them 'epic' or 'classic' or in the 'great' category and they are both on this record. It's taken me more than five years to complete these. Most of the melodic ideas existed a long time ago, i.e. the primary 'lyric' melody in 'Mark 1:15' is the same as 'When the Springtime Comes Again'..."

So, while this CD release may contain 98.6 percent of the music recorded by John for America, it only contains 95% of the original LP, with 13% (2 minutes from a 16 minute track) of the most important song omitted. I think this was a poor decision. This album should have been issued in a format similar to Rhino's expanded 2-CD version of Randy Newman's "Good Old Boys." The original LP should have been on one CD and the bonus material should have been on the other. This release reminds me of the original CD version of Bob Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" where "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" was trimmed by 36 seconds.

The liner notes to "America" further state that "The only alternative [to this hatchet job] would have been to release a more expensive 2-CD set." Isn't it worth the extra 3 dollars to have this thing done properly? 2-CD sets simply do not cost that much more money, at least to the consumer.

John Fahey's "America" deserves a better treatment.

John Fahey has been making beautifuls and remarkable records since i was a very young boy trying to find a guitar chord i could play. His records have been remarkably sustaining for me over these past 40 years. This is a truly great and innovative record that will more than repay a little effort in listening. A beautiful beautiful record.

John Fahey's music, for those who have never heard it, is an unlikely combination of early 20th century acoustic black blues, ragtime and Ravi Shankar Ragaesque drone sitar type music. Played on solo acoustic guitar, real time recording. No vocals. Unique. Impossible to pigeon-hole. The title track, Mark 1:15 and The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party are Faheys most complex most symphonic most involved pieces. It erquires the listener to sit and listen with full attention. For those who think they know Fahey, America, his greatest work, will come as a revelation. Instead of the 3-4 minute pieces you may be used to from his other work, on America one hears full blown 20 minute pieces which grab, transfix and hypnotize the listener.


Full of Jazz-like improvization in a blues idiom.

A symphony for solo guitar, full of invention!


Playful, tragic, bluesy, happy, profound. Illustrated with Fahey's vision of the future. Brilliant.

This record inspired much of the "new age music" on Wyndam Hill and countless other artists.

And even better, Fahey only released half of it in 1970, convinced that a double album wouldn't sell. Half of it sat in the can for over 25 years! Here you have the whole thing!

One of the ten best releases of the 90's. Cannot be too highly recommended. This is what the 60/70's were really about.

I only hope that Fantasy/Takoma will now release "The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party" and "Days Have Gone By". Buy it while you can still get it!

The late John Fahey said that he took up the guitar because of the instrument's potential to realize the orchestral scope of his ideas. True enough: no other solo acoustic guitar player has recorded music of such stylistic and formal diversity. On this album in particular, Fahey incorporated the whole of this country's roots music into an organic continuum as imaginative and as quintessentially American as "Leaves of Grass". Like Whitman's magnum opus, "America" is an epic, flowing expanse. Like "Leaves of Grass", and grass itself, this music is rhizomatic, both multiplicity and whole. Fahey's hypnotic, Indian raga influenced playing cycles through ideas, often maintaining a continuous basic underpinning from which a multitude of licks and flourishes spring forth and eddy, only to give way to further complex clusters of country/folk/blues. Each listen reveals new details and detours that always engage the heart, as well as the head. This is both melodic tour of our musical heritage and music as landscape. Some sections are bright clusters of fast-picking, with melodies piling up ever higher. Other parts are spare and contemplative, where notes hang in the big sky and slide chords carry you to the next horizon. John Fahey's America is the America of Emerson, Ives, and Thoreau; with the America of Bush, Ashcroft, and Enron nowhere in sight. For that alone, I tip my whiskey to the memory of an irascible, visionary soul as brilliantly restless as the cross-country wanderings of his music.

The story: Fahey recorded enough material to fill 2 vinyl LP's. In 1971, the company did not release the material. It released ONE LP but in fancy, multi-page, illustrated packaging. The Masterpiece track, titled Mark 1:15 is on the LP, complete. In our day of CD's, the company responsible has at last released all the other material originally recorded, as well as the tracks of the 1971 vinyl LP on one CD. BUT, in order to make it all fit on one CD, there are several cuts and edits on Mark 1:15! Chopped several sections, "corrected" at least one slurred note. The original on vinyl has more, and gentler development. The edited and cut CD version, by comparison, sort of slams into a couple sections, because the development has been cut. So one 'crime', of not releasing his original stuff, has been corrected but another crime committed: chopping bits from Mark 1:15. If you are a Fahey fan, you may well wish to have a vinyl original, unless someday the whole original recordings are released on a 2-CD set. That would be justice.

As most know who purchased the CD re-issue of a few years ago, the record company (Takoma-Concord) was forced to trim several minutes from one of the long tracks "Mark 1:15" in order to fit all songs on a single CD.

The re-issue CD was the fulfillment of Fahey's originally conceived plan to issue a 2-LP set, with all of the songs from those sessions included. I believe most fans like me had no idea there were more songs than had appeared on the single LP issue of 1972. According to some published reports the 2-LP set was axed due to cost restrictions. This seems most likely considering the budget of a small company like Takoma.

Now, a small label, 4 Men with Beards, has issued a 2-LP set, with all of the songs, original booklet as included in the 1972 release, and original artwork. The execution of the whole package is near flawless (small typo in one song title), and is presented as Fahey intended. Both LP's are on 180-gram vinyl. It's a small run of 3000 hand-numbered pieces. Sound quality is superb, as if Fahey is in the room playing his Recording King.

Unfortunately, both copies I purchased, from 2 different distributors, had many skips, pops, clicks, etc. And to make matters worse, both copies had sides 3 and 4 duplicated, same music on both sides! Which leaves me to wonder how many copies were pressed with these errors. I have returned both and am awaiting refunds.

I have no idea how many copies may be like this, so, buyer beware. Hopefully the record company will do a re-press and correct the errors. As mentioned, the package istself is extremely well presented.

What a thrill to find out that 4 Men with Beards was putting out a deluxe edition of the full 2-LP album, as Fahey originally intended. Even better is that record one has all the tracks that didn't make the original album, so that record 2 is essentially a document of the original release. Almost! Fantasy sent 4 Men with Beards their new remastered tapes which include the SHORTER, CUT version of "Mark 1:15." This is not only sad, it's frustrating, since space is with the vinyl release not an issue. There is room to include the full "Mark 1:15," but it's not here.

Still a nice release, with original art and great sound on 180 gram vinyl. But this was a major missed opportunity!