If you’re a fan of John Fahey—a fan of his music, his writing, his thoughts on life, whatever—and especially if you’re sort of sad, like I am, about having never met him, then you’ll enjoy this disc. The Three Day Band is Fahey and musician
Ayal Senior who, in addition to capturing Fahey on four-track here, also edited much of Fahey’s second collection of stories,
Vampire Vultures. (Senior’s also got a bunch of good-looking cassettes available.)
Ayal Senior jumped in a car with John Fahey and a couple of pretty girls and headed back to Fahey’s little room at the Woodburn Hotel (Inn?) where they grabbed some instruments and made some noise. The first two tracks are spacious jams that build and collapse and get all knotted up in the bed sheets, tug gently on the wool socks. The remaining 15 tracks bring Fahey into greater focus, capturing the sound of his kind voice, his uninhibited laughter, as he reads from his tattered notebooks stories about the great Koonaklaster and the Krell-like pedophiles of his childhood town, Takoma Park, Maryland.
Greatness, greatness, greatness. The sound is so-so, but who cares? Last night, I stayed up late and listened to John Fahey talk about: the disease of record collecting; what it’s like to be an entertainer; the God of Children and Creativity; the Precious Inner Nazi; the dangers of the Spirit of Seriousness; god and causality; Freud
vs the Existentialists; and all kinds of other cool, weird stuff. The only unfortunate thing about this disc is that it’s too short. Sixty-eight minutes aren’t nearly enough. I want to hear more. I wish Fahey’s words weren’t edited at all. I could listen to him talk all night long.
You can get it from
Important Records.
