Customer Reviews

Georgia Stomps, Atlanta Struts, And Other Contemporary Dance Favorites

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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.

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-

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.

Guitarist JOHN FAHEY is, undoubtedly, an American institution. For four decades, he has been stunning listeners with his exotic and highly complex, truly American guitar playing. This latest album, _Georgia Stomps, Atlanta Struts, and Other Contemporary Dance Favorites_ (Table of the Elements), represents a creative resurgence for him. The disc captures Fahey in an intimate, live setting. It also offers an unexpected change to electric guitar and finds Fahey in an extremely experimental mood as he serves up over 70 minutes of shimmering solo guitar soundscapes. This is an album for serious guitarists. The complex textures are technically accomplished, best exemplified on a 19-minute "House of the Rising Sun/Nightmare." Listeners will find the music's transcendental power quite captivating.