Release Date: 24 June, 1997
Audio CD
Tracks
- Beautiful Linda Getchell
- Orinda-Moraga
- I Am the Resurrection
- On the Sunny Side of the Ocean
- Tell Her to Come Back Home
- My Station Will Be Changed After Awhile
- 101 Is a Hard Road to Travel
- How Green Was My Valley
- Bicycle Built for Two
- Death of the Clayton Peacock
- Brenda's Blues
- Old Southern Medley
- Come Back Baby
- Poor Boy
- Saint Patrick's Hymn
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Rating 5.0
Great acoustic guitarWithout realising the spine of my albumn had disintegrated, the ancient disc slipped through my thumbs to the floor. The faintest thwack, but, alas, two tiny fragments remained on the floor, ruining the perfection of a thirty year plus piece of Fahey. And damn it, it was my favourite Fahey! Not that I have the exhaustive repository of a true fan or the professional guitar knowledge. And not that I find anything but willful obsfucation in his need for masking as Blind Joe and the feigned erudition of liner notes that go nowhere. But if the jokes helped him stabilize sufficiently to make these delicate and eloquent compositions, then bless him. I also have some things with a dixie-sounding ensemble on 'River & Religion' and
'Old Fashioned Love' with its incomparable and transporting version of,'A Persian Market'. And the surprisingly sprightly'Christmas Albumn'. But this one is very atmospheric stuff and a rich complement to those two early, rurally inspired and similarily resilient Band albums. Looks like I'll have to upgrade to CD.Distinctly John FaheyIn nearly every review of John Fahey, the remark is made that he spawned the career of the famous, inimitable Leo Kottke. While I do not intend to disparage Kottke, and listen to "6 and 12 String Guitar" quite frequently, John Fahey should be listened to because he is John Fahey, and "The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death" should be listened to because, quite simply, it is the best finger-picking guitar record I have ever heard.
Comparing Fahey to Kottke is, for fans of jazz, like comparing Thelonious Monk to McCoy Tiner, or, for fans of rock, imagine someone comparing Jimi Hendrix to Kurt Cobain. Sure, the first two played piano in a distinctive, personal, and prolific style, and the second two were both amazing guitarists. But skill and style are quite different, and although both Kottke and Fahey are finger-picker guitarists of similar skill, the emotions and styles they convey are quite different.
That being said, "Transfiguration" is an incredible album unlike any other I have ever heard. Fahey plays guitar with a brooding deliberateness that other guitars can only approximate. Kottke comes close on tracks like "Busted Bicycle," but that only scratches the surface of things that Fahey accomplishes on this record. I can listen to it for a week straight and not need to hear anything else; the range of emotion that it conveys is that wide. Whereas Kottke is fun to listen to, or Hendrix is emotional and Monk is unique, Fahey is pretty much everything.
I highly endorse this album and wish I had heard it sooner.Blind Joe DeathI had this as a vinyl LP (remember them?) at college in the late sixties. It evokes the Southern States like nothing else I have ever heard, and the memory has remained with me for 35 years. It had the same effect on everyone who heard it. The LP has long gone, but the memories remain. Thank heaven I've now got it on CD, for all time. My thanks to the late John Fahey. |
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