Dear friends
Covid-19 is dangerously impacting the social-economic category of musicians. No concerts, poor political and social consideration, uncertain earnings. As a consequence, an ever-growing number of musicians, especially those from the experimental area, are trying to promote their music on BandCamp in digital format only. It is increasingly difficult for me to follow and review this incredible flow of music. I therefore decided to open this section on my blog Neuguitars where I propose music in digital format that I consider particularly interesting and worthy of attention. I hope you like it. Let’s support musicians. They need it.
Andrea Aguzzi
The collection consists of 115 tracks on five CDs. The mostly unreleased material was recorded for Joe Bussard’s Fonotone label. The original reel-to-reel tapes used for 78-rpm records were remastered and a large amount of documentary data is included in an 88-page hardcover book. The project was completed by Glenn Jones, Dean Blackwood and Lance Ledbetter.
The tracks were recorded and released by Bussard, often using pseudonyms such as The Mississippi Stompers and Blind Thomas. Fahey was against releasing the material, stating “A lot of those recordings were made before I could play guitar.
Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You (The Fonotone Years 1958-1965) by John Fahey, Dust to Digital, 2011 on #neuguitars #blog
“Actually, Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You is not just for Fahey zealots. It’s for anyone interested in the story of American music, from its Appalachian string bands and mean-moaning Delta blues singers to the hymns sung from its church pews and the country-rock anthems soon enough crafted by its hippies. But Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You is not only the story of the musician John Fahey, it’s also the story of the songs that have become crucial to his country, a place that Fahey explored from one end (he was raised in Maryland) to the other (he lived in Hawaii at one point and died in Oregon). Somewhat comparable to the sprawling ethnomusicological work of Alan Lomax, Harry Smith, Art Rosenbaum, Nick Perls, and others like them, Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You is a rich overview of America’s musical bedrock– only here, it’s told through the hard-won, fast-paced development of a guitarist who, in turn, changed the way future players could consider their instrument. A must-have collection of lore, music, and history, it’s a unified, brilliant, and often very challenging archive. “
NeuGuitars 