John Fahey

City of Refuge (Tim/Kerr)
by Nik Rainey

Night fell and we all packed up for our departure, only to look on with shock and wonder at the belated second coming of the godfather of this land, John Fahey. We all bowed our heads in tribute to this man, a Socratic teacher of acoustic figures who had kept on with his unorthodox tutoring despite the outrage it often aroused in the elite of Puristan. In his fingers lay the entire history of Western music, a quiet revolution filtered through his open ears – there was classical, slide blues scrapings, and the sounds of his louder descendents made over into ambience. He proceeded for nearly an hour, concluding as the moon rose with twenty minutes of pure hiss and introverted clamour that sent the less adventurous running for shelter but pleasing those who remained with the stillborn psychosis of a deep, dark night.