Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Weird, January 19, 2003
This review is from: Georgia Stomps, Atlanta Struts, And Other Contemporary Dance Favorites (Audio CD)
After Fahey's remarkable comeback in 1996, he could have made life much easier for himself by trying to sound like his old brilliant fingerpicking self, but no, he had to be awkward. He changed direction completely and aligned himself with a genre he called "Industrial Ambient", and put out experimental guitar-with-noise records. He called his old records lots of rude names and said that the long tone poems on such albums as "Fare Forward Voyager" or "America" made him sick with their pretentiousness. So here we have "Georgia Stomps" full to the brim of long tone poems - okay, let's call them medleys instead. The other thing John did, to annoy people, was to ditch the acoustic guitar and plug in, and this is his first electric guitar record. And it's recorded live too. But don't expect Van Halen or Metallica riffs - he turns the volume right down and he fingerpicks anyway. Oh, but he puts this strange wobbly echo effect on absolutely everything for the whole 70 minutes, so you might need a sick bag handy, because the wobbly echoey ambience can really get to you after half an hour. So that's the background - is it any good? Well, it's kind of just weird. There are 2 pieces I really like - Red Rocking Chair is a long medley based around some Dock Boggs phrases, and Song of Sara is a slide piece with some really extreme fx, but mostly this set is very s-l-o-w. Fans please note - whatever it says, the Japanese edition has NO BONUS TRACKS.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
John Fahey on the electric guitar as pleasant as acoustic!, November 1, 1998
This review is from: Georgia Stomps, Atlanta Struts, And Other Contemporary Dance Favorites (Audio CD)
Lifted unabashedly from Entertainment Weekly magazine: John Fahey Georgia Stomps, Atlanta Struts and Other Contemporary Dance Favorites (Table of the Elements) The title is typically sardonic: This is as far from dance music as you'll get. Acoustic guitarist Fahey goes electric, swapping his oaken tone for a reverberant shimmer. Through the haze, bare-boned melodies emerge ("House of the Rising Sun". Ellington's "Mood in Indigo"), beautifully hymnlike in their starkness. Fahey's doing what he's always done: painting highly personal soundscapes, using American roots music as his palette. "Juana" steals your heart and soul, a beautiful album. A-
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man--Moody, Meditative, Magnetic, January 22, 2011
This review is from: Georgia Stomps, Atlanta Struts, And Other Contemporary Dance Favorites (Audio CD)
John Fahey plays this live set on an electric guitar, which became his usual instrument in his last half decade. Other reviewers have commented on the overall tempo. I too find the playing relatively slow, but in a meditative sense, not footdragging; mild syncopation here and there, never leaden, dull, or frustrating. Fahey's talents are still here, but in a different voice.
Georgia Stomps, Atlanta Struts, and Other Contemporary Dance Favorites both recaptures some of the relaxed, exploratory assurance of what I cherish as Fahey's best, 1960s work, and it forges new ground without an iconoclastic attack on his creative past. Riffing on Dock Boggs indeed. Unlike some of his other late-period albums, where the experimental noise won out, I think Georgia Stomps lends itself to repeated listenings and deeper appreciations. If you want a better-than-representative example of John Fahey's later recorded works, then this one will do nicely.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
