‘hark from the tomb’ (the midnight disease)

today is the anniversary of the death of john aloysius fahey guitarist and curmudgeon (and possibly the biggest influence on horsemouth’s current musical trajectory).

in honour of this horsemouth has been listening to volume 5 of the fahey ouevre - the transfiguration of blind joe death. originally recorded for small boston distributors riverside this release was eventually repatriated to takoma records. it begins with the song beautiful linda gretchell (a joint piece with banjo player and guitarist l. mayne smith) this seems to use the same tune as a number of son house tracks excepted from his comeback session (incidentally recorded in the same year 1965) - was fahey at this session (his running buddy al ‘blind owl’ wilson certainly was)?

the album also  features a number of g open tuning guitar pieces - I am the ressurection (largely lifted from one-man-band jesse fuller’s hark from the tomb here in dgdggd), the death of the clayton peacock, how green was my valley, and perhaps most famously (for fahey fans) on the sunny side of the ocean (as sean points out this is probably the top side).


last night horsemouth watched do widzenia do jutra - our hero (looking a lot like lethal) falls in love with a french girl but it is gdansk in poland in the 60ies, he’s not going to make it out and she’s not going to stay, she agrees to stay saying that she will see him the next morning (but in the morning she is gone). he continues making theatre instead.

the author of the midnight disease (that of writing) has finally cracked and is sharing with us why she writes, (and also why george orwell, joan didion, milan kundera etc. write). (spoiler - to transfigure the dissatisfying material of our own lives into something outside of ourselves). this morning horsemouth was all fired up to write (but he’d forgotten the library was closed) - of this (the wednesday morning) and of the sunday horsemouth must make a veritable sabbath, he may contemplate things, he may even write them down (though technically this is not permitted) but he may not publish them to the wider world (as if the wider world were even listening).