John Fahey

Considering how much trouble he often had selling records and the low regard in which he sometimes held his vintage work, John Fahey might have been amused to see so much unreleased (and worthy) live material unleashed on the marketplace shortly after his death. In 2004, there were the late-'60s concert recordings of The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick; the following year, Some Summer Day unearthed more than an hour from a show in Syracuse, NY on July 15, 1972. Although eight tracks are listed, it's more like one continuous (and very well-recorded) suite, roaming through the fields of acoustic guitar wizardry with a singular ability to unite classic Americana folk forms and an exploratory, almost avant garde restlessness. Some of the riffs will just about, but never quite, settle on a standard blues progression; just when you think you've picked out a reference to Rev. Gary Davis or some such icon, he's off on another tangent, quoting from a hymn, peeling off hasty circular riffs as if dispensing a storm warning, or gliding into some beautiful yet disquieting glissando slides. The grandly titled "Thus Krishna on the Battlefield" (an epic 27 minutes) and "The Dance of the Inhabitants of the Place of King Philip XIV of Spain" (at 12 minutes) alone take up more than half of the program. Though not one of his core recordings, the CD's a nice supplemental addition to the main Fahey discography, the nearly six minute (and nearly inaudible) "Tuning and Talking" aside. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide