Review

The origins of American primitive
John Fahey had asked if I would tour with him on the East Coast — some point in the mid-'90s — I had never met the guy but had spent some years digging his music, which I came pretty late to. I had buds who were way into the cat. One of 'em was Ray Farrell, who was working at Geffen/DGC Records at that time. I knew Ray from the SST days and even before that when he was in SF as part of Rough Trade and was managing Slovenly. I didn't really know Jim O'Rourke then, tho I had met him at the Table of the Elements music fest in Atlanta briefly. I had heard he was working with Fahey to some degree and had also heard he started doing gigs of acoustic guitar music which was controversial becuz he was primarily seen as a tabletop-prepared noise guitarist. I knew that things were changing in the world of noise/culture as soon as I heard about this and it made sense — the aesthetic outsiderness of Fahey's vision was easily interwoven with the post punque-oid noise universe we young f-ups were canoodling within. We had heard rumblings that Fahey was telling anyone who'd listen he had no interest in any fuddy duddy folk/acoustic legend status — he wanted to burn holes like Neubauten and Sonic Youth and others. Well, damn — and right on! And here I get this call to see if I'd do some shows with the cat.

So I called Ray to ask him I he'd like to come along and he flew out and we met Fahey at the Iron Horse here in Northampton, Massachusetts, and Fahey at first thought I was some guitar repair dude he had the club try to locate. Ha HA ha — I told him I'd take a look at his axe but I knew nothing about repairin' 'em but I knows a lot about destroyin' em! That was it — we were pals. We bombed around the East Coast, me and Ray up front and Fahey, expansive girth and pants bursting at the zipper, stretched out across the back seat gobbling junk food.

Ray was interested in this LP God, Time and Causality — it was an odd, off title for JF but Ray got a good feeling from it. Fahey was at once dismissing of it then regaling it as a masterpiece. OK. I kinda ignored this LP, but years later, after John had died, I sat down with it and found it to be really central and significant to what John self-referred to as "American Primitive Guitar." I can almost call this one of my top three fave Fahey slabs — each track winds down that much longer than the one preceding, an odd sequence concept I'm not too sure I've heard on many discs. What happens is the listener gets swooped into John's mystic pull, something he conjured from meditations on Great American Blues Music. John was at once a messenger and a prophet when in this head and regardless of the philosophy student joke behind the title he really was "there."