Wednesday, January 05, 2011
John Fahey was a hell of a guitar player. He didn't just play the kind of music he made popular on his records, the intricate fingerstylings. He had a vast reservoir of knowledge and skill.
Sometimes a song would come across the radio and I mean underground radio of the 60s. So it was an electric guitar part on a song neither of us and probably none of the other people in the room had ever heard before. And John would listen to the thing as it played, hearing it only once and for the first time and he immediately could play it note for note. And did -- on an acoustic steel string he'd been casually holding. He'd hold a guitar across his belly as he leaned back on a couch and he was a bit slumped as he listened to the radio. How can he do that, I'd wonder.
If you've never heard of John Fahey, nor read his early liner notes nor listened to his music especially the Great San Bernardino Birthday Party you may really be missing an experience.
http://www.johnfahey.com/pages/v4note.html ¶ 1/05/2011 09:56:00 PM
Sometimes a song would come across the radio and I mean underground radio of the 60s. So it was an electric guitar part on a song neither of us and probably none of the other people in the room had ever heard before. And John would listen to the thing as it played, hearing it only once and for the first time and he immediately could play it note for note. And did -- on an acoustic steel string he'd been casually holding. He'd hold a guitar across his belly as he leaned back on a couch and he was a bit slumped as he listened to the radio. How can he do that, I'd wonder.
If you've never heard of John Fahey, nor read his early liner notes nor listened to his music especially the Great San Bernardino Birthday Party you may really be missing an experience.
http://www.johnfahey.com/pages/v4note.html ¶ 1/05/2011 09:56:00 PM
