John Fahey - The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party

John Fahey - "The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party"
From the 1966 album:
Vol. 4 / The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party & Other Excursions

Recorded Nov/Dec 1965

(edited to fit in the time length allowed at youtube.)

It's supposed to be a birthay party, right?
This is a sometimes terrifying, desolate guitar excursion.

John Fahey in 1990 called this recording "a histrionic, disorganised outpouring
of blather".

He said elsewhere it expresses "futility, a hopelessness and general existential despair complicated by ontological absurdity".




.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• John
• Fahey
• San
• Bernardino
• Birthday
• Party
• Takoma
• Vol

[mrnoiz23]

@plattermatter111 It's amazing how many of us are on the same channel. :)

[plattermatter111]

IMHO his magnum opus alongside perhaps Fare Forward Voyagers and Jaya

Shiva Shankara from "Old Fashioned Love" . Homage to 60's psychadelia to be sure but the first 4:36 - on bone marrow level - is about the best acoustic guitar I've ever experienced ... the very great Kottke, Emmanuel and Paco aside. This left me slack-jawed 4+ decades ago and it still does.

[michaelbrigante]

@PlanB198 He used to play with the great Alan Wilson from Can'd Heat...I guess Alan plays on this track....

[PlanB198]

@beaconmike wow thats an awesome story...im 23 and just disocvering amazing guitar players like Kottke and Fahey....i cant believe what i use to think a good guitar player was or what the mainstream considers "legendary" guitar players...but where did u grow up? cause my mom said back then it was only am and they mostly played the hits of the time....like was fm just starting then and it was used for like college radio stations or something?? just curious

[drdbones]

Maybe some Californians will come up to pity..

[paterwillem]

thanks so much for uploading this!

[beaconmike]

When this song hit the FM airwaves, it was like a bomb hit. It was unlike anything any of us had heard before. This is in the mid-60's and things yes, they were a changing. This song had a cult following, and you could not find the album to purchase anywhere. This was THE song that made the airwaves and when they played it on FM radio at night, people would just sit for 19:00 minutes in awe at what they were hearing. This was one of the iconic songs for our generation.