John Fahey - Requia - Acoustic Folk LP
LP

John Fahey - Requia

Label:

Vanguard

Catalog#:

VSD-79259

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo
Record is VG++
Cover has ringwear and slight cornerwear

Country: US

Released: 1967

Genre: Folk, World, & Country, Rock

Style:

Folk Rock, Acoustic, Avantgarde




Tracklist .


A1 Requiem For John Hurt
5:05

A2 Requiem For Russell Blaine Cooper
8:50

A3 When The Catfish Is In Bloom
7:30





B1 Requiem For Molly, Part 1
7:35

B2 Requiem For Molly, Part 2
7:41

B3 Requiem For Molly, Part 3
2:28

B4 Requiem For Molly, Part 4
2:55

B5 Fight On Christians, Fight On
1:51





Credits

Effects [Special] – Barry Hansen, John Fahey, Sam Charters


Notes


From the liner notes:

"I quickly found that I can temper the guitar as I like. I can play my own tunings. I can do whatever I like with it. I am quite free with my guitar. But I am not free of it. For some remunerative neck-strap has strung me to it. I myself am no freer that one of the strings on it. And in what does that freedom consist but to be tuned up and down - or to break. But a broken string is thrown away even if it was "dead" before, being no longer of any use to anyone at all. No not that."

Hollywood Sound Recorders 1967



In his liner notes to this release, John Fahey mentions his desire to have an entire world orchestra in his guitar, Western to Eastern, bagpipes to gamelan. Perhaps it's this mental approach that sets his music so deliciously far apart from other so-called folk guitarists. Requia is essentially in two sections. One is a series of blues-based pieces in line with music he had previously recorded. These include the lovely "Requiem for John Hurt" and a wry "Fight On Christians, Fight On," both of which sound remarkably modern more than three decades after they were recorded.

The slightly off-center variations he works on these songs are more vital and gorgeous than any ten of his peers. The second major section here is a four-part suite, "Requiem for Molly," which interpolates tape collages with his guitar playing.
Still, he anticipates similar usage by Charlie Haden in his Liberation Music Orchestra from the following year, as well as pointing toward wider explorations in that field that Fahey himself would undertake in the future.