God, time and causality

John Fahey found revelation and redemption in the acoustic blues primitivism of this expansive expressionistic exploration.   Fahey had studied philosophy, psychology, and folklore at the University of California at Berkeley and  UCLA while releasing his music on his own Takoma Records.  He also released albums on other labels like Riverboad, Vanguard, Reprise, and Varrick over the course of three decades.  His music is rooted in a seminal revisionist blues aesthetic that utilizes odd tunings and brings in old recordings and international classical styles, while his albums have employed an extensive backstory involving an alter ego Blind Joe Death.   Starting with 'Blind Joe Death' in 1959 and continuing with other accomplished albums like 'Death Chants, Breakdowns and Military Waltzes', 'The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death', 'Dance of Death & Other Plantation Favorites', 'The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party and Other Excursions', 'The Voice of the Turtle' , 'The Yellow Princess' , and 'Fare Forward Voyagers (Soldier's Choice)';  Fahey established a new avante garde movement in folk music that he coined American Primitivism.  

The music that was released as 'God, Time and Causality' was recorded in 1977 at Spectrum Sound Studios in Portland, Oregon with producer Terry Robb and engineer Mike Moore.  The sessions featured John Fahey on guitar.  Takoma refused to release the recordings at the time and they remained on the shelf until 1990, when Shanachie Records put them out.  Fahey explained away the title:   "It's just a joke from a former philosophy major ... When I play the guitar, even when I am practising, I am besieged with images, memories, deja vu experiences, and emotions; and for every chord I play, for every tune I write, there is within me a distinct and unique image, emotion, or feeling. What made and continues to make guitar playing exciting for me, and what makes it bearable during long, long two-set jobs, is the continual show of emotions, images, memories, etc., that comes before me internally as I continue to practice or play... Where was I when I wrote this song? What is the name of this strange feeling I am having while I play this chord sequence or this song? Consciousness is in a constant state of flux."








http://www.johnfahey.com/







"Red Pony"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSh-YsyjpXk









'God, Time and Causality'
full album:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKiEBsOXrNf7cYPM-9g6oq2_qCilYliyC



All songs by John Fahey

"Revelation" – 3:47
"The Red Pony" – 6:28
"Lion" – 6:38
"Medley: Interlude/The Portland Cement Factory/Requiem for Mississippi John Hurt" – 11:37
"Medley: Snowflakes/Steamboat 'Gwine Around the Bend/Death of the Clayton Peacock/How Green Was My Valley" – 11:46
"Medley: Sandy on Earth/I'll See You in My Dreams" – 16:29




Rockpalast 1978
part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPKS_JCK6ok


- On The Sunny Side Of The Ocean 2:22
- Hawaiian Two-Step / Spanish Two-Step 6:05
- Lion / Tiger (evolved from How Long) 8:08
- Wine & Roses / Red Pony / Approaching The Disco Void 15:47


part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twG4YFFJEXk


- Wine & Roses / The Red Pony / Approaching The Disco Void 0:00
- Poor Boy Long Ways From Home / Steve Talbot on the Keddie Wye 3:12
- Steamboat Gwine Round De Bend 8:22
- How Green Was My Valley 12:20
- Candy Man / Brenda's Blues 15:10


part 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFt2Bo4ts7Y


- Beverly / Indian Pacific Railroad Blues 2:01
- Take A Look At That Baby / I'll See You In My Dreams / Ann Arbor / Death By Reputation 06:50
- Revolt of the Dyke Brigade / Funeral Song for Mississippi John Hurt 15:56


part 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98wAn5FOs9o


- Revolt of the Dyke Brigade / Funeral Song for Mississippi John Hurt 0:00
- The Grand Finale / Camptown Races / Old Southern Medley / The Discovery of the Sylvia Scott 6:08
- Encore Slide Medley / Poor Boy / Steel Guitar Rag 11:42

blind joe death

John Aloysius Fahey recorded and released his debut album independently and pioneered American primitive guitar with the timeless transcendence of this folkloric fusion of country, bluegrass, and classical forms.  Fahey grew up in the Washington D.C. suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland and developed a passion for music after hearing Jimmie Rodgers' "Blue Yodel No. 7".  He ordered a guitar for seventeen dollars from the Sears-Roebuck catalogue and began collecting records and learning to play them.  Blind Willie Johnson's "Praise God I'm Satisfied" awakened an enduring love of the blues.  

Fahey would recount:    "I was listening at first just to country western and then the radio station we listened to to hear country western, in Washington D.C, changed it’s format and started playing nothing but Bluegrass. So then I got very interested in Bluegrass. Early Bluegrass is my favorite kind of music, not too many people know that. But I couldn’t learn to play it because you had to play so fast, you know? So I learned a few country western songs, I bought a chord book, and right away I started writing my own stuff, which nobody else did that, I don’t know why. I had a big background in listening to classical music and I started trying to compose, like I was playing the guitar but I heard an orchestra in my head. So I was really composing for full orchestra and of course I didn’t know enough chords or harmonies yet but I came up with some interesting stuff ... On the one hand, the more I played the guitar the more I began to really love the guitar and to love virtually any kind of music that anybody played well on guitar. In the music I was composing I was trying to express my emotions, my so called negative emotions, which were depression, anger and so forth. Like Stan Kenton did. He got away with it. I ‘ve always admired him for that. I listened to Stan Kenton a lot then and I still do. And I was trying to put together some distant music, I was thinking mainly of Bartok as a model, but played in this finger picking pattern, which I still use. So I was trying to put those things together into a coherent musical language which people would understand and it worked pretty good. Everybody else was just trying to copy folk musicians, I wasn’t trying to do that. I was using them as teachers for technique but I was never trying to be a folk. How can I be a folk? I’m from the suburbs, you know ... The other thing in composition is opening up the unconscious...When I play, I very quickly put myself into a light hypnotic trance and compose while playing, drawing directly from the emotions ... Well when I made my first record I thought it would be a good joke to have me on one side, have the label say John Fahey on one side, and this guy Blind Joe Death on the other side. The reason it said 'blind' is because a lot of the people I learned from were on old 78 RPM records and a lot of them were blind, and their names were Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Joe Taggart, on and on, a whole bunch of them were blind. So me and a guy named Greg Eldridge we were sitting around drinking a beer one night and I was trying to find a catchy name for the other guy and he was helping me and he finally said 'Blind Joe Death', and I said 'um, That’s it!' Also I was thinking, when ever you print the word 'Death' people look at it and I was thinking of record sales already even though I was only going to have a hundred copies pressed ... I thought I'd be wasting my time to go to commercial record companies and make demos for them, because don't forget, I was doing what I was doing and nobody understood what I was doing ... The whole point was to use the word 'death'.  I was fascinated by death and I wanted to die. I probably could have told you that at the time, but I wasn't being that honest. Blind Joe Death was my death instinct. He was also all the Negroes in the slums who were suffering. He was the incarnation, not only of my death wish, but of all the aggressive instincts in me.  Initially he was everything that had to do with life and death that a person in our society is not supposed to feel. You're not meant to feel miserable in American society, you're supposed to keep the smile up. With Blind Joe Death I was secretly throwing hatred and death back in the faces of those people who told me I was bad and sinful because I had these feelings."  

'Blind Joe Death' was recorded at  St. Michael's and All Angels Church in Adelphi, Maryland.  Fahey spent three years disseminating copies of his self-made record, giving some to friends, sending some to music scholars, selling them from the trunk of his car, and even going so far as to put them in the stacks at local record shops.  The simple steel string guitar music was avante-garde as well as traditional, drawing from his developing interest in folklore and psychology.  Fahey would later create Takoma Records, on which 'Blind Joe Death' would be re-released several years later with some of the songs re-recorded.  







http://www.johnfahey.com/










'In Search of Blind Joe Death:  The Saga of John Fahey'
http://www.johnfaheyfilm.com/
http://vimeo.com/49603263









"West Coast Blues" (Blind Blake)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh3x7ENK_NY


"St. Louis Blues" (W. C. Handy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAo4w2WyLY4


"I'm a Poor Boy a Long Ways from Home" (Barbecue Bob)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP7DzOV0y-Y


"Uncloudy Day" (Josiah Kelley Alwood)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVKRH_hvgyo


"John Henry" (Traditional)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4j0j_g_nIs


"In Christ There Is no East or West" (Episcopal Church Hymn)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu-IF_p6W7Q




"The Transcendental Waterfall" (Fahey)



"Desperate Man Blues" (arranged by Fahey)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQnPJqeH80I


"Sun Gonna Shine in My Back Door Someday Blues" (arranged by Fahey)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H9zRTtfg24


"Sligo River Blues" (Fahey)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21HwdNkzYq0


"On Doing an Evil Deed Blues" (Fahey)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv4oFC5ySmw








'Blind Joe Death'
full album
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu-IF_p6W7Q&list=PL9FBA92F0F66E570B






Side one
"West Coast Blues" (Blind Blake) – 3:13
"St. Louis Blues" (W. C. Handy) – 5:28
"I'm a Poor Boy a Long Ways from Home" (Barbecue Bob) – 3:12
"Uncloudy Day" (Josiah Kelley Alwood) – 3:24
"John Henry" (Traditional) – 3:21
"In Christ There Is no East or West" (Episcopal Church Hymn) – 2:42
Side two
"The Transcendental Waterfall" (Fahey) – 6:36
"Desperate Man Blues" (arranged by Fahey) – 4:06
"Sun Gonna Shine in My Back Door Someday Blues" (arranged by Fahey) – 3:34
"Sligo River Blues" (Fahey) – 3:05
"On Doing an Evil Deed Blues" (Fahey) – 4:40

the voice of the turtle

John Fahey immersed himself in the folk and blues music that inspired him and experimented with other forms for the scratchy eclectic mythmaking of this mock autobiography.   'The Voice of the Turtle' was constructed over years using old blues recordings and new music manipulated to sound old.  The music draws in blues, country, cajun, and folk with experiments in raga and psychedelic noise.  The album credits John Fahey on guitar; L. Mayne Smith on banjo (on "Train"); Mark Levine on guitar (on "Train"); and Nancy McLean on flute; but also listed as contributing are:  Blind Joe Death, Hubert Thomas, Blind Thomas Curtis, Harmonica ED, Virgil Willis Johnston, Tibetan Buddhist Monks & Gamblin' Gamelan Gong.  

'The Voice of the Turtle'  has several subtitles:   "Being a Musical Hodograph & Chronologue of the Music of John Fahey, including his most recent composition, The Story of Dorothy Gooch."; "The Volk Roots & Hiart Leaves of John Fahey, Blind Joe Death, Hubert Thomas, Virgil Willis Johnston, L. Mayne Smith, Mark Levine."; and "The Fahey Picture Album: Genuine photographs of Blind Joe Death, Knott's Berry Farm Molly, The Adelphi Rolling Grist Mill, Etc."

According to the original liner notes:    "The recordings which comprise this record comprise a well defined yet non-directive channel of Mr. Fahey's roots and the progression of his music for the casual listener to be entertained thereby, the inquisitive listener thus may have his curiosity satisfied and the casual listener may, in the same manner, as it were be entertained. And that, the former is exactly the point of this record: A history, chronicle and documentary recording - all in one - of Mr. Fahey's musical creations, and of what is, to the scholar, or the inquisitor of more significance, Mr. Fahey's musical influences which led to his creations."  

Fahey would later reveal:   "Mainly it's a parental situation.  I was writing these things as an escape, as a possible way to make money. The sentiments expressed come out of a fucked up situation. I was creating for myself an imaginary, beautiful world and pretending that I lived there, but I didn't feel beautiful. I was mad but I wasn't aware of it. I was also very sad, afraid and lonely. By presenting this so-called beautiful facade I looked good to myself and my audience. This went on for years.  I always tried to put a peaceful element into the music, but it was false because I was not at peace. I didn't know what I was doing and felt pretty phony. I didn't understand any of this until I had psychoanalysis...Before psychoanalysis, I used to accidentally get so high or prescription drugs and booze that, sometimes, wouldn't show up for a show. Or I'd be there and not know it. For a while I thought I was going insane. People would tell me I did these crazy things, but I didn't' attribute it to the Quaaludes I was taking so that the memories of my father abusing me as a child wouldn't come back...When I was about four or five years old I saw what thought was a penis walking across the front lawn.  It was just a box turtle, but it kind of upset me...The obsession comes from the psychic meaning of turtles, reptiles and amphibians. In dreams they symbolise genitalia. That's why I went to a psychoanalyst because I had all these repressed memories."  

The album sleeve also quotes from Song of Solomon 2:11-12:  "For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land".  






http://www.johnfahey.com/









"Bottleneck Blues" – 3:06
This is a lo-fi recording with hissing and pops, an old 78-rpm recording by Sylvester Weaver and Walter Beasley.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3kW0G4iMRc






"Nine-Pound Hammer" – 1:59
https://myspace.com/johnfahey/music/song/nine-pound-hammer-26907-35693
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMcjgMnzcDM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEDNpH0ymvI








'The Voice of the Turtle' 
full album:

https://myspace.com/johnfahey/music/album/the-voice-of-the-turtle-3077




http://www.music-bazaar.com/world-music/albums/view/id/132657/name/The-Voice-Of-The-Turtle


http://oracleplaylist.com/?l=album&id=182848745&t=The_Voice_of_the_Turtle__Remastered_


http://www.iheart.com/artist/John-Fahey-20321/albums/The-Voice-Of-The-Turtle-833028/


http://www.rhapsody.com/artist/john-fahey/album/the-voice-of-the-turtle



http://www.last.fm/music/John+Fahey/Voice+of+the+Turtle

Side one "Bottleneck Blues" – 3:06 Blind Joe Death & John Fahey "Bill Cheatum" – 1:56 Hubert Thomas & John Fahey "Lewisdale Blues" – 2:18 Nancy McClean & John Fahey "Bean Vine Blues" – 2:45 Blind Thomas Curtis, Blind Joe Death & John Fahey "A Raga Called Pat, Part III" – 9:04 Tibetan Buddhist Monks, John Fahey & Gamblin' Gamelan Gong

Side two "A Raga Called Pat, Part IV" – 4:28 Monks, Fahey & Gong "Train" – 1:47 L. Mayne Smith & John Fahey "Je Ne Me Suis Reveillais Matin Pas En May" – 2:22 Harmonica ED & John Fahey "The Story Of Dorothy Gooch, Part I" – 5:27 John Fahey "Nine-Pound Hammer" – 1:59 Blind Joe Death & John Fahey "Lonesome Valley" – 1:42 Virgil Willis Johnston & John Fahey