Re: Fahey, was Re: Nature of Reality

[David Coffin <dpcoffin@earthlink.net>]

MANY thanks for all these great Fahey tidbits and reminicenses...I'll skip recounting the depressing late-80s concert I saw in upstate NY (except to recall that about 2 minutes into the first performance after his intermission break JF stopped mid-phrase, took a swig of his beer, said he had to "answer a call of nature"....and walked off-stage again for about 5 minutes). But I'll remember to the end dragging my girl-friend and best buddies into my freshman dorm-room at GWU in DC in 1966 to lay motionless, speechless and stoned on the bed while I played them the entire 20 minutes of The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party; it's among the top 5 formative musical experiences of my life, and single-handedly responsible for me even owning a guitar today. There was another guy in the dorm who had grown up in Annapolis, had a little mahogany Martin and "knew a guy" who knew Fahey and was part of some Tacoma Park fingerstyle scene...it was all so delicious and mysterious and awe-inspiring....and oddly accessible. Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, JLHooker (and The Strawberry Alarm-Clock...) all played that year or the next at the Ambassador Theater where I peddled pipes and papers in the upstairs headshop....and I turned all my buds onto this groovy looking record I'd found called Piper at the Gates of Dawn.....but Fahey was at the top.

dc

On May 4, 2005, at 7:18 PM, Timothy Mungenast wrote:

Of the several hundred great guitarists I could name,

he is in my top 20, perhaps even my top 10, and he will stay there.