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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Fine Tribute to the `Broccoli of American Guitar Music', February 20, 2006
I'll say up front I am a Fahey Fanatic, and here are the two reasons I got this disc from Amazon: a. I was curious as to what this disc might offer to me musically, and b. to point me to Fahey-like artists to fill the void now that Himself has deceased.
I was tentative about my purchase because it is a tribute album. Most tribute albums typically contain one pearl in a bowlful of cacca. I was hoping that this was the exception.
But 'I Am The Resurrection' turns out to be a great tribute to the John Fahey gestalt---that beautiful fingerpicking guitar style, the immense span of his musical dabblings, the fascinating and imperfect person he was.
Fahey has always been the broccoli of American guitar music. Nutritious and good for you, but plainly not to everyone's liking. It took a lot of guts for these musicians to get their creative arms around such an esoteric task. I imagine it was also one heckuva `gas' to creatively tackle it. I salute the artists who contributed to this work, as well as M Ward and Steve Brower whose vision produced it.
I initially expected to hear tracks of imitative playing style, the artist taking a Fahey recording and playing it as faithfully as John would. Those who try succeed:
Devendra Banhart on *Sligo River Blues* performs a classic paean to classic Fahey.
Cul De Sac boldly does *Portland Cement Factory.* My expectations here were high-- these guys actually played with Fahey for a while and they picked a tough tune to do. The only way to improve on it would be to turn down the volume on the cement factory noise just a bit.
When the Catfish Is in Bloom*, a song from Fahey's Vanguard years, in Peter Case's playing style almost sounds like The Master. But Case stays unique and non-copying. Good song choice and faithful execution; the upbeat tempo an improvement on the original.
I recommend this disc to you because of the following artists who took the tribute one step further, avoiding imitation and adding their own twist to a Fahey tune to `out-Fahey' Fahey doing Fahey.
My favorite is the *Dance of Death* by Calexico. They take an inventive approach to the arrangement, respectful to Fahey's compositional vision. It's jazzy, foot tapping, cool, and complex. I think I'm gonna check out more music by Calexico.
*Sunflower River Blues* by Pelt These guys capture the essence of Fahey's blues vision---A simple melody played well, and played tightly, in the true rural American style. I particularly like the guitar--Fahey's instrument of choice-- taking a melodic backseat, as rhythm to the lead banjo. Curious, this tune is totally unlike any of their usual 'industrial-ambient' music.
*Bean Vine Blues #2* is a quick, blues cachaphony by M. Ward. His twist is to whip it out full-tilt on an electric guitar! All tribute songs should be as good.
*Joe Kirby Blues* by Immergluck, Kaphan, Krummenacher and Hanes. A good memorial amplified, and eerily done at a slower tempo than even Fahey would try. I love the `rocky' guitar solo toward the end. Not too shabby for a group that sounds like a Dutch accounting firm.
*Medley: John Hurt Shiva Shankarah* -- Currituck Co. Nice synthesis of guitar and percussion, well-executed, and played with the Ravi Shankar-like reverence that Fahey would show when playing spiritual music. Jaya Shiva Shankarah is one of MY favorite JF tunes, from *Old Fashioned Love*, a disc that nobody seemed to like (or buy) but me. I'm goin' to check these guys out, too.
*Death of the Clayton Peacock*, one of Fahey's more esoteric compositions this side of the Wall of Sonic Angst. Although the Fruit Bats' version sounds like background music from a Quentin Tarrentino movie, I gotta give them points for the tune's degree of difficulty.
One last thing. Like Fahey's own playing, this disc sounds better and better each time I play it.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
As much as I dislike tribute albums..., November 16, 2006
I've had to make an exception for this one, on two accounts. First, John was a friend of mine, long ago, in my childhood and early adolescence, and then again, late in his life, after we had reconnected; Second, this is a remarkable album, and I generally dislike "tribute" albums. The very notion of trying to create a tribute to John struck me as ambitious at least, if not downright hubris-driven. I was of course right on the first count, but definitely wrong on the second, and the ambition is largely fulfilled here: it is a tribute, and a nice one. The artists involved seem, without exception, to understand what they were undertaking, even if it was a Mission Impossible. Some come close. A few clearly fall far short of the mark, but all do so with love and a genuine understanding, I think, of what this project was about. It's something any of us who ever knew John would have liked to try, but never had the nerve. Thank god some good volk got up the nerve. Peter case is probably the most eerily accurate in his rendering of "When the Catfish Is In Bloom", which has always taken me back to those early days when I was an awestruck teen who would listen to John noodle, compose and play as he and the other older guys sat around on the grassy slope at the edge of the Takoma Park rec center ballfield across the street from my house, at night. This is almost time travel, something John managed to introduce me to, first in theory, and later from beyond the grave with his recordings. Sufjan Stevens seems also to have captured the spirit, if not the precise duplication of notes, on his lovely "Commemorative Transfiguration and Communion at Magruder Park." This actually works very well for me, especially because I was there at Magruder Park on the 4th of July in question, and it has always stood out for me as the definitive Independence Day, even the careening arrival of John and company in his '57 Chevy, nearly taking out the brick wall flanking one side of the entrance, which was the only way one of his caliber should have arrived, and which occasioned much alarm and screaming among the attendees as well as the occupants of his car. Stevens seems to have somehow understood the meaning underlying this work and treated it with the spiritual respect it demands.
Cul de Sac, who actually played with John on an album (the recording of which was clearly traumatic for leader Glen Jones and which strained John's peculiar notion of patience)do an admirable job with "Portland Cement Factory", mainly by cranking up the noise level some, which I believe will gratify John, wherever he may be. Late in the game John was looking for noises - sounds - which helped define the spirit of place in which the music was set (listen to his "City of Refuge" album for the approximation of the B&O railroad snowplow sound of our youth - John's and mine - to get a feel for what this means to his later music).
Nothing here is bad, much of it is quite good, and it is clearly friends and admirers who have done what they felt was appropriate, whether it be attempted note-for-note reproduction (Sligo River Blues) or simply a personal translation (Calexico's turn on "Dance of Death", a piece that deserves a special place in American music outside the soundtrack of "Zabriske Point") and gets to become a standard here. Where John was composing for something he believed to be onerous and evil (the title can be misleading, but the story behind it is abundantly clear), Calexico has taken this personal horror story and turned it into something one can recognize yet listen to without one's teeth being set on edge, which was how John was feeling at the time he laid it down.
I could go on, but there are many excellent reviews here by others equally familiar with John's work, and so I'll leave it at this: I hate tribute albums, but I bought this one, and I love it. I also love the cover art, and feel the title was absolutely inspired. I knew I was going to like this in spite of myself, when at first sighting I felt a lump in my throat. This is a remarkable album and a work of love.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Tribute to a Guitar Master, April 28, 2006
John Fahey's music and style have long been a benchmark for all contemporary acoustic guitar music, and it's great that many alternative and "freak-folk" artists have rediscovered and connected with him. This tribute album is testimonial to that, and the interpretations of Fahey's songs, mostly on acoustic and electric guitar with accompaniment, run the gamut from reverent to loose. Peter Case comes closest, perhaps, to "channeling" the Fahey sound in "When the Catfish is in Bloom". Devendra Banhart and Calexico also do a fine job with "Sligo River Blues" and "Dance of Death", respectively. Co-producer M. Ward gives the fuzzbox treatment to "Bean Vine Blues #2", a tune that sounds strikingly like a Scott Joplin rag; and Sufjan Stevens remakes "Commemorative Transfiguration and Communion at Magruder Park" his own, complete with a spiritual chorus. (Stevens has found a soulmate in Fahey, who also loved long, convoluted song titles.) Cul de Sac imbues "The Portland Cement Factory at Monmouth, CA" with a touch of industrial noise, which seems strangely appropriate. And Howie Gelb plays a mean barrelhouse piano on "My Grandfather's Clock", the only track not featuring guitar. The musicianship in this mostly-instrumental collection is uniformly accomplished, and though you may not find every performance endearing, there is a lot to like and appreciate here. It's a fitting tribute to one of the true guitar masters of the 20th century.
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