In my January 2020 Listening column, I wrote about a place where three things overlap: the joys (and benefits) of being a record collector, the natural tendency to grow and challenge ourselves as listeners, and the need to forgive ourselves for the shortcomings of our youth. The hook was the story of how I started out disliking the music of guitarist John Fahey (1939–2001) and ended up loving it. But it could just as easily have been about cooking or hiking or Jethro Tull or any of a number of other things.
At the end of that bit, I invited readers to send in their own such stories, and I’m happy to say that the response was the most extraordinary I’ve seen since the days of Listener magazine (1995–2003). This outpouring wasn’t just the largest volume of mail I’ve ever received in response to a Stereophile piece—although it was that—but also the most heartfelt and overwhelmingly positive. (Only one reader had a negative reply, and even that was from a frequent and reliably good-natured correspondent who expressed annoyance that I drew attention to the out-of-tune instruments on so many recordings by itinerant country blues musicians. Fair enough.) Literally dozens of readers had worthwhile things to say; here is a small sampling of my favorite responses:
I was a radio announcer at the University of New Mexico’s KUNM in Albuquerque in the early ’70s. Like you, I thought Fahey’s music had a sound akin to cotton field, cigar-box, funerary blues, and lacked much, if any, technical glamor.
John Fahey came to a small side venue at the university’s Popejoy Hall around that time. I found him to be nervous, temperamental, and generally unfocused during his mesmerizing, nearly two-hour performance. He was sipping from two 16oz cans of 7 UP and who-knows-how-many cigarettes. After a few pieces, some of them from Blind Joe Death and others that he seemed to be still in the process of working out, he mused aloud that recording artists like Leo Kottke and Robbie Basho (on his own Takoma label) were colleagues of a sort. Nevertheless, he drew a sharp and memorable distinction between his playing and Leo Kottke’s, saying, “Leo Kottke is a better technician, but I’m a better writer.” Why he said that, I didn’t grasp at the time, but I couldn’t help but remember the statement as significant to explaining the sentiment that you expressed in your article, and which I found fascinating.
I’m hardly a credentialed audiophile, but I could hear strains of Fahey in the music of both Kottke and Basho, and generally preferred Kottke and Basho when first introduced to the recordings of these two men. It was impossible to avoid comparing the skill sets, or the now-hard-to-ignore raw, enigmatic passion of Fahey compositions when dissected side-by-side with the technically astonishing guitar work of Leo Kottke. In my mind, I hear John Fahey as a busker on a parched Southern California sidewalk and Kottke as a virtuoso concert performer in a large music hall.—Jim Wellborn
Beginning in 1967 (when I was 27), I gradually acquired nine Fahey albums, starting with Blind Joe Death, which is Vol.1 of the Takoma 1967 reissue. I also have Vols.2, 3, and 6, as well as a Christmas album with no date of issue. My last acquisition was of a 180gm vinyl LP with no date or label (a bootleg, I assume), entitled Poor Pilgrim’s Work, based on an enclosed reprint of an “historical” brochure.
I still do not know what drew me to Fahey, especially as I was still playing records on a no-name system in the late 1960s. By the early ’70s, I had a “proper” playback system (Heathkit AR-1500 receiver, AR turntable, and Large Advent speakers). But by then, the Fahey bloom was starting to fade. Perhaps, in the beginning, I was captivated by something just beyond my grasp. Today, the grasp is not so hard, but I don’t seem to find as much “there” there. Or maybe my emotional hot buttons have simply changed.
I realize these comments are the reverse of what you asked for, but maybe they provide grist for the mill if not food for thought. Keep up the good work, though you do sometimes wear me out with your rehabs and reconstructions!—Michael Bruer
In the late ’60s, I had the good fortune to (sorta) attend Fairfax high school in Los Angeles. Directly across Melrose Blvd. was a new, small record shop called Aron’s Records. Behind the counter more often than not was the owner, Manny Aron. I passed far too much time with Manny, as he was generous with both his time and his thoughts.
After cruising the new arrivals section (which was frequently filled with promo records dropped off by the local reps), I’d ask Manny’s opinion of the new Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Doors, etc., albums. He’d likely steer me in the right direction. On occasion he’d make a suggestion, and one day he put the first Caravan album in my hand. I didn’t like the looks of it, the vibes weren’t right, and I handed it back to him. He told me to take it home and listen to it, and not wanting to annoy him, I did so. That evening I gave it a listen and confirmed everything that I felt about it—too weird—and brought it back to the store. Manny wouldn’t take it back until I took it home and listened to it again. I had plans for the $2 tied up in that record but reluctantly gave it another shot; I liked it even less. It was progressive, bombastic, and much too British, so I brought it back to the store again, and again Manny refused to put it back into stock, telling me that I needed to keep listening to it until I heard it.
That record remained, unheard, in my record collection forever. Finally, other record stores opened, and I was able to trade it in for something, anything, and be done with it.
Jump forward 15 years, and I was now the owner of Bow Wow Records, in Albuquerque, New Mexico (footnote 1). The kind of interchange that I had had with Manny was now part of my every day. I made suggestions, some of which were accepted willingly, others coming back later as used LPs.
One day, for reasons unknown, something in the back of my head made me think about that Caravan album, long out of print. I began searching for it in stores and record shows. By then it had moved to the top of my “want list,” but I couldn’t find it anywhere. One day, at a local record show, going from vendor to vendor, asking for the first Caravan record, I found not one copy but two! Bought them both, took them home and excitedly put one on the turntable. As I sat there my mind wandered back to those high school days, but, more importantly, as I listened, I heard what it was that Manny wanted me to hear. For those who don’t know that album, search it out and discover a foundational record in the Canterbury tradition. Rejoice to the melodies, the harmonies, the inventiveness and creativity of a group at the forefront of a new musical scene.
The first Caravan record is a masterpiece, and I have a visceral response whenever I hear it. Hell, just writing about it makes me a bit misty-eyed.
There are times when a small thing can have a profound effect. Thank you, Manny: Aron’s records has shaped my life.—Andrew Horwitz
I was taking in my Sony T-3000 to be serviced when my tech gave me this month’s issue of Stereophile and pointed out the John Fahey piece. He mentioned this because I wrote a biography on him, Dance of Death—The Life of John Fahey, American Guitarist (Chicago Review Press, hardcover 2014, paperback 2018). I’m glad you came around to Fahey’s music, and it’s somewhat understandable
if you started with VOT, as it’s really a hodgepodge of various recording left-overs and jokes. The most fascinating part of that album is the liner notes and 20-page booklet with his bizarre, semiautobiographical ramblings. Fahey (and I) would consider America or Fare Forward Voyagers to be his finest recorded performances, but I greatly enjoy all his early records. Still looking for a copy of the original Blind Joe Death. I did manage to find an original Dance of Death that he pressed 300 copies of in 1964. Perhaps one day I’ll find that holy grail.
As for your question regarding music I hated when younger and grew to appreciate: Oddly enough, growing up in the 1990s, I really disliked the Ramones. As a wannabe pseudo-intellectual teen who was reading Beat poetry and listening to My Bloody Valentine and ambient techno (admittedly an odd combo in retrospect), I found the Ramones to be sophomoric and uninteresting musically. Somewhere post-college, I heard their cover of “Do You Wanna Dance,” and I heard an ennui that had never registered to me in their music. “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” had a similar longing, and it drew me into the subtlety of all their music, not to mention the fantastic recordings. It was after watching the Ramones documentary End of the Century that I can understand the pathos and suffering in Joey’s ballads. While still sophomoric at times, they had a remarkably varied emotional range for a group who essentially made the same record their whole career. Fun fact to tie it together: The first Ramones album was recorded by Craig Leon, who at the time was best known for recording orchestras for classical recordings, and Leon ended up recording a solo LP of electronic music for Fahey’s Takoma label in 1981. The album is called Nommos and is fantastic. It was recently reissued by the RVNG label out of NYC.—Steve Lowenthal
After I read the sentence in Listening #205 (w.r.t. Fahey): “Or did he consciously invent punk folk decades before the emergence of punk rock?,” I punched the air twice and shouted, “Yes!”
I keep telling this to people who pretend to be interested—I don’t think Fahey is a household name anywhere on the globe, and it’s definitely not the case here in Hungary—that for me Fahey was the first true punk. He learned the rules very well then discarded or adapted them, thereby pushing the boundaries of the art. He experimented with and juxtaposed stuff that must have seemed downright crazy at the time and still does not sound dated. Folk and turntablism (as in recordings played backwards) on Vol. 4/The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party field recordings, different tuning systems, inspiration from Indian classical music and Bart¢k, etc. (Fahey was a huge Bart¢k fan.)
As for tuning specifically, I believe he is always in tune, albeit sometimes it’s in an unusual one. Unfortunately, I lack the musical knowledge to properly explain what’s going on, but there’s a comprehensive list of the tunings that he used. For you, as a guitar player, hopefully it will be informative.
Plus, Fahey being an avid record collector, his contribution to studying and preserving early blues is invaluable. I find it an interesting and fascinating coincidence that Bart¢k played a very similar role with Hungarian folk music.
I honestly think that Fahey was one of the greatest American composers/musicians of the 20th century. And it breaks my heart that the quality of some of the reissues is a total disservice to his art. Are you happy with your copy in terms of sound and manufacturing quality?
Ok, I’ll stop gushing over Fahey and answer the question that you actually addressed to your readers. The music I really hated as a kid was electro/synth-based pop music, Kraftwerk and the like. I grew up in a socialist model town with lots of gray concrete buildings, and that music somehow telegraphed the picture of a hopeless, rainy November morning when the gray concrete is even grayer. In other words, it made me depressed.
Today, the first word that comes to mind when I think about Kraftwerk is “funk,” and I find their techno-optimism heartwarmingly innocent.—Dexler Poppe
Footnote 1: When Stereophile was based in Santa Fe, NM, a visit to Bow-Wow Records was an essential component of many of my trips to Albuquerque.—John Atkinson