A listenable Christmas album
Posted by David Hepworth on 10 December 2007 - 10:18am.
How to achieve at least one whole hour of peace and serenity this Christmas:
* wait until dusk on Christmas Eve
* light fire
* pour glass of something drinkable
* thank your lucky stars you've got John Fahey's 1982 recording Christmas Guitar to play
* Stare into fire, wondering at his spare, exact versions of everything from "Joy To The World" to "The Skaters Waltz"
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product placement
What's with all the plugs for Amazon, there can't be anyone visiting here that's not used said online shop?
It's twofold
First, if you're intrigued enough by David's description of Fahey's Christmas album to buy the CD, then it's only a click away - none of that messing around with search engines nonsense. Second, if you do follow the link and buy anything, Word's publishers earn a few pennies towards the cost of running the website.
I does put a different
I does put a different colour on your recommendations when we know you are getting up 10% fee (124.8 pennies!) for the link. I know you take ads in the magazine and the site and that this isn't a philanthropic endaevour ,you'll just have to be careful.
Amazon
I'm very much aware of this - it's a balancing act, and we have to make sure what we do is never intrusive, and that anything we link to is there because editorially we want to shout about it, not the other way round. The widgets we've put on a couple of entries are there more than anything else because we're interested to see how they perform: I can't imagine we'll use them regularly. And I wish Amazon did pay 10% - in reality it's nothing like that.
Pre 1982
My Ma had a John Fahey album of Christmas songs. It was lost many years ago but is still very fondly remembered...
It was an american release from around 1969/1970, I can't find any references to it in a discography.
Ohhhhhhhhhh
The New Possibility: Guitar Soli - that's the one.
It's lovely...
And for New Years Eve...
...here's John Fahey showing us how to play Auld Lang Syne.
Anybody interested in John Fahey should check out this guy at YouTube. He's posted 12 videos, 11 from Fahey and 1 from Slayer.
http://www.youtube.com/user/walterneff
The album's available from eMusic
So if you're on the old 90 songs for £15 monthly plan, the 20 tracks on the album will cost you a mere £3.33, rather than £12.49 for the CD from Amazon. Here you go: http://www.emusic.com/album/John-Fahey-A-New-Possibility-John-Fahey-s-Ch...
I didn't know that
Is this the original record that he re-did as the Christmas Album? I'll get that.
Not sure but...
...after some rapid googling yesterday, The New Possibility seems to be the first christmas album that he did, though without it being titled as such. My Ma was given it by an american cousin. It's now re-issued in America with other things included but available on import from Amazon (happy christmas mum!).
It looks like it was largely re-packaged for Guitar Christmas, though there are a couple of differences - TNP has 2 that don't appear on Guitar Christmas, which in turn has lots not on TNP. Where the same ones appear, the song lengths are the same so they are probably the same versions rather than re-recordings.
Then there was the 1975 Christmas with John Fahey Volume 2, which has completely other things on it.
I must thank you for bringing it back to my attention though, it's so reminiscent of my childhood and our cousin...
or cheaper still...
.. even less for those of us on the 90 tracks for £12.50 plan!
Old-Time eMusic
Knowing that the new limits and rates don't affect those who joined eMusic earlier, who keep their old limits and monthly fee, I wonder if the same applied to those foresighted visionaries (or lucky sods) who signed up for eMusic when it used to be unlimited monthly downloads for a fixed monthly fee? Curse my own lack of foresight there, if so...
Different, but not very
The tracklisting does have differences, but the notes suggest this is indeed the original record. It's deeply wonderful - the first time I've bought an eMusic booster pack, and worth every penny. Many thanks for the recommendation, David. Incidentally, eMusic has *loads* of John Fahey albums in its catalogue. I'll certainly be downloading some more next month - how on earth had I managed to not hear any Fahey before? Thanks once again!
Re-issue
Last Friday's Arts Review in the Independent (14th December) included a review of John Fahey's "The New Possibility", which implies that it is about to be re-issued. The review also says that this version includes "most of" 'Christmas with John Fahey vol II'.
Rated it *****.
Not Unlimited anymore
I've been with emusic since the unliited days - it certainly was great then, in fact I waa able to download so many albums that I'm still discovering ones that I never got round to listening to at the time - I recently went back through them and redownloaded all the ones still available at the more recent higher bit rate without paying any more.
Sadly, they announced with only a few days to spare that the payment scheme was to change and we all lost our unlimited download allocation and when I was still using a 56k modem and they'd just upped their bit rate, it was quite hard to go mad at the last minute.