Customer Reviews

Voice of the Turtle

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This album wasn't the first I heard by John Fahey, but it was the first music that I listened to SERIOUSLY. At the time, I had no choice--it was the only record I had. Fahey did a number of remarkable things in his early career, but with this album he created a world that is more like a theatrical illusion--as opposed an artist simply performing on a guitar. Its a collosal prank, to be sure, but, the joke isn't immediately apparent. When I first heard it, 34 years ago, I absolutely did not know how to interpret or comprehend it--it just broke down all of my cognitive categories. It was truly liberating. The thing resonates on so many different subtle levels. At that point in my life, I lived in a little shack in the canyons of northern CA, had a little old record player, and about 3 records that belonged to a girlfriend, one of which was The Voice of the Turtle. I listened to it over and over, became obsessed with it, studied every detail of the album liner notes. Tacoma Park, MD, Fahey's boyhood home, is frequently referenced in his song titles. Back in the 40's and 50's when Fahey was a kid, steam engines hauled freight and passenger trains every few minutes through the heart of Tacoma Park, spewing white steam and black smoke. They kept it up into the 60's by which time Fahey had transmigrated to Berkeley, CA. Tacoma Park had a real rural character back then, and many of Fahey's songs mythologize familiar places along the right of way through that neighborhood. For example, Fahey has a song on one of his albums titled, "The View East from the Riggs Road B&O Railway Trestle". I spent many days rolling by that location when I worked for the B&O--made a tape recording of the song and went there to listen to it--looking East, of course. Even though Voice of the Turtle was the recording that piped me into the Magic Mountain, it is not necessarily my favorite of Fahey's recordings. That would have to be Volume 6, although I love everything he ever released. Either this music speaks to you, or it doesn't. If you like the convergence of chanting monks and temple bells with locomotive whistles and thunderstorms swirled with archaic, primitive, blues guitar, that could serve as the soundtrack for Steamboat Willy, then do yourself a favor and tune in.

John Fahey was truely a marvel, rediscovering, performing and recording traditional country blues with a precision and dedication unmatched by any other artist. So it might seem a little heretical to suggest that after any number of volumes of this work that there was a sense of extreme focus, or even a clinical approach. This album goes along way in rebuking that notion, showing the artist's wickedly droll sense of humor, along with a welcome experiment with some decidedly psychedelic tinge, indulging in the powerful counterculture zeitgeist.
It is this unexpected quirkiness that adds real personality and affection to the steady underlying brilliance. This is a very interesting project, and highly recommended to those who would prefer their Fahey clothed with a little offbeat style.

Being a Fahey album, it's full of good music--but be warned--it is not similar to his other recordings. Not in sound alone--that much is obvious from the samples, I don't need to tell you that--but also in the atmosphere. If anyone is good at building up an atmosphere with one single instrument, it's John.

This album instead has a very different atmosphere... It's very subtle, but the subtle feelings it gives you are like subtle glimpses of something much, much larger. After the album ends, it's hard to tell what was behind what you just heard.

Perhaps it's Fahey just messing with our heads. I have a feeling he is.

The Voice Of The Turtle....A beautiful title for a beautiful record!

Going to the task of writing on The Turtle is like climbing The Himalaya of Faheyverse and it seems like it is necessary to write just as much on what is not on this record as what is actually on it!

What is on review here on this cd-reissue is what among Fahey-aficionados generally is referred to as the BLV12-version. Which means that there also is a BLV11-version...and an OLV-version...And I can fully understand if this sounds like jibberish for the average reader but I will try to bring some order on this matter ...if at all possible?

I will begin this story in Philadelphia PA autumn 1972 where I found a copy of BLV12 with the gatefold sleeve in a record shop on Chestnut Street, just two blocks away from Norwegian Seamens' Mission. I had begun collecting Fahey records some three years earlier when some of them became available in Europe but The Turtle was new to me...so of course I was very pleased with what I just had found ! Returned to Sweden I played the record and was least to say mildly surprised of the music I heard! Most of it did not sound like the Fahey I was used to...And still almost forty years later it does not...

There seems to be a lot of "Roots Of"-records around today...Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, Rolling Stones etc...seems like everybody is cherished with a "Roots Of"...But The Turtle is to my knowledge the first and original one of them all...The Volk Roots And HiArt Leaves Of John Fahey...Originally planned as a 2LP-record set to document the musical influences of Fahey...in itself a nearby impossible project...later realized as a 1LP-record in a luxury gatefold sleeve with inserted text and photo booklet ...so luxurious that it was later found out that the more was sold the more money was lost!...A most typical Fahey financial situation! And the record itself...in fact three different records under the same name! This cd is a reissue of the Black Label 12 tracks Turtle. There is also a Black Label 11 tracks Turtle where Bean Vine Blues is "manipulated" and then there is an Orange Label version with completely different music under the same titles as on the black ones, on some of the tracks...And rumour has that there also exists a 1967 BLV 11-tracks version prior to the official release in 1968!...I think I will stop here...for the sake of mental safety...

And what about the music? The record starts with a majestic strummed chord, reminiscent of Fahey's intro to Canned Heat's Parthenogenesis, and leading directly over to Sylvester Weaver & Walter Beasly playing Bottleneck Blues on a 78 rpm from the 20s. And on some versions Fahey plays along with this old record.! Next Fahey accompanies old time fiddler Hubert Thomas on Bill Cheatum and there is also a track Fahey as accompanist to fiddler Virgil Willis Johnston. One track with Fahey playing duet with flautist Nancy McLean...and so on...In fact, among all those sound-collage Ragas and old 78 rpm records and similar stuff, there is only one "proper" Fahey track and that is The Story Of Dorothy Gooch Pt.1, which is something like what was presented on Days Have Gone by one year earlier. And now over to what is not present on this cd!...On the Orange Turtle was a third Bean Vine Blues besides the two presented here. There was another Train and the two Ragas were differently mixed with other sound collage effects. And as if this was not enough there also exist some more duets with McLean and a Texas&Pacific Blues and the hymn Lo How A Rose, which all were most surely intended for inclusion on the planned double LP.

As I said earlier this is a beautiful record even if it is not Fahey like we are used to hear him... But my wish is that TAKOMA, whoever owns the rights today, does a proper job and issues a "Complete Turtle", including all of this material which is mentioned above. Just as they have done so successfully with Blind Joe Death and Death Chants Breakdowns And Military Waltzes! The Turtle deserves it!

But, speaking honestly, I do not think that the "average music listener" will enjoy this one, as also I suspect can be the case with a lot of other Fahey records...It is perhaps a little bit too much!

Put Your Past Ahead Of You

"That whole record was a hoax. On all the songs that say it's me it isn't and vice versa." - John Fahey A lavish autobiographical fantasy, an absurd exercise in self-gratification, or self-deprecation, hard to tell; a labour of love for sure, a financial disaster, definitely, a grand folly, a lovely indulgence, a holiday from seriousness, a mosaic of diverse musical traditions and a discographical nightmare; "The Voice of the Turtle" is all these things. The most rococo expression of Fahey's sense of the absurd, with its lying notes, self-mythologising and lunatic picture book, this is a serious joke. With those notes, and that picture album so lovingly subtitled, the sleeve in all its gatefolded glory - "the author age 17" , the quote from the Bible which everyone including Fahey knows means turtledoves, not turtles, this record comes at you like a conceptual piece, a bold encryption of a dream of a possibility. Fahey, I award you the Turner Prize for 1968.