I thought id take a moment to share the liner notes for my new album as Grotto, Far From Any Road.
Uilliam Beale's first album as Grotto explores the endless tour in a far away land by way of breakcore, noise, free jazz and droning astral blues. A rotating cycle of trading stories as trading tapes of gigs long since played but yet to be replayed.
"Agus ardaigh mé go deo
Trasna an gaineamh chiúin
Agus beidh na réaltaí mar do shúile
Agus beidh an ghaoth mo lámha"
Dedicated to all desperados waiting for a train
To Susan, who while now beyond our realm, discussed many of the concepts on the record with me long before I even thought to write it
credits
releases ??????
Written & Recorded By Liam Beale aka Grotto
Mixed by Grotto
Mastered in Kraków by Zilvo
additional instrumentation/performance by Zilvo,Jack McCafferty,Beargrease, Lachlan Costigan & The Bog Screamers Of Free Derry
Artwork by Liam Beale
Written & Recorded in Naarm & Mparntwe
Gear Used -Ableton Live, Ibanez 1989 Iceman, Yamaha Acoustic, Harp, Sax, Double Bass, Violin, Hand Bells, Bells in a park, various hours sitting by train tracks in several countries,radio,voice, Hammer Dulcimer, Several Large Horns, Thunderverb 200, Rockerverb 100 MKII, Peavy Rage 158 and the list goes on.
I started thinking about the bones of FFAR very soon after finishing my last album as Public Housing, Millienum Love, which served as an ending to a quadtrillogy of records tentivily called cities + time. It was the first time in a while I’d leaned into full instrumental, classic studio style production, and while I loved the result and really enjoyed the sessions, I really wanted to step back and return to a more hybrid, hermit mode for the next record. Which is funny to think about, because FFAR explores themes that are pretty far from the classic hermit lifestyle, while life on the road may seem lonely, you are never truly alone. Drawing on themes from the Grateful Dead's endless tour, the train hopping hobos of the mid century, the idea of what is a home, the transient condition of raves and the esoteric spiritual unity obtained from the heavy weight of a loud gig - all cased in a warm covering of choppage breakcore drums, drones & soul samples.
Let’s talk a bit about Urban Sound Corp and the cats that cradle it.
Urban Sound Corp is a …… creative arts organisation ( a lot easier to explain to someone in the industry, rather then trying to explain a congregation of earthen musical druids who preach a cyber anarchist free blues rave praxis), that has existed in some form since around 2012. Founded by Zilvo, a Polish brass player who loves protecting Konik, unprofessional music & writing ambulance repair manuals, who hates social media, dairy, and photography ( because he’s worried that photography has substantially limited human imagination and that photos make it easier to be possessed) and myself ( currently artistically known as Grotto/Fishing Boat/Liam Beale ). This is really all the context you need to understand Urban Sound Corps two current characters.
Some notes on production
I can’t even pretend that a huge part of the production process was influenced by My Bloody Valentines recording of loveless. One of my aims while producing Far From Any Road was to achieve a 90/10 merge of getting it to sound as live as possible, be it leaving in recording hiss from field samples, including room recordings for almost ever track in the mixes or intentional boosting of 500hz to really hammer home the low midrange wall of hiss you can only get standing in a room with huge speakers blasting. I also made a concious decision to leave in any digital crackle from clipping and CPU limitations, in some cases recording it and mixing it back into the tracks.
Together with zilvo - we came up with the idea to re-record every track back out of the speakers into a selection of microphones then blend that in with the studio mixes. To try and draw in a kenetinic live sound Zilvo & myself worked out a microphone configuration to record the first Mixdowns out of the speakers. We did this several times per track, with the exception of Keyboxing, then created 40 or so layers at minimal volume and remixed them in with our final Mixdowns. We think it worked really well!
Another bleed overt from our love of MBV is how the album is mostly concentrated in mono, as to present a monolithic force hunching towards the listener. Stereo is mostly overrated.
We also didn’t use any compression, almost im pretty sure, at all. Dynamics 4 life!
Norms film/anime reccomendations
The needle
When the wind blows
Threads
Two eyes are not brothers
Cosmospolis
Paranoid Agent
Psychopass
Dora hedora
Ergo proxy
Serial experiment lain
Out Of The Pit (Poem)
OUT OF THE PIT
Across a thousand mile tundra
Snakes chew on my feet
The looming concrete apostle
Conspires to let my love leech
What will it take to be free of these people
So angry and devoid of compassion
Without a medieval mediation warrior spirit
So cemented
Into the ground in which the veins of their safe walls protrude
Live without their loves who lie in broken glass and weeds
Of temptation for a road so sworn
To divide protection away from those who choose it
Its your turn now solider
To get moving thru the sludge
Of all those you lost
Forever prowling forever driving
The money lenders from the temple steeped in this evil biz forever prowling
The same as you
There’s no keeping you chained at home
There’s boars to kill
Which you will make a a mess of
Unaware of not being an all seeing being unaware
Of the mess you will make when you walk into the town square
The angels are laughing at you
Disregard the suggestion that they want you for your soul
They just another whore of the driver to the gates of sanitisation
Is this your home
Your family
Your happiness
Is it just a rabbit hole, singing to you
Of the land beyond the barley and flowers and marriage
Trying to hide from you the love in a lovestriken world
That pretends to be loveless
The bird seeks the sun
From its cage of bones
The ruffle of its wings
Rings the walls like chimes
And maybe you’ll wake and decide to realise that there’s noting on the other side of the veil &
The sweet separation of time is everything you need to get up and go to work in the morning
Maybe the slow massage of rain
The hooded eye of the streetlight is better then hardcore sex and coffee and 500 different shapes that might be living or dead or changing colours or floating in an apartment of tar.
You creep ever closer to blowing up your world ever second, you get closer to the monolithic temptation of realising
That maybe those shapes where living
Framed by the perplexity of youth
Your old mans
Gone blind
He can’t ever see the devil to sell
His soul to anymore
And where have you gone?
The water keeps washing over you
And you still don’t embrace the mystery
Accept the flood
And the flower .
As the morning fog rises
Your eyes catch the reflection
Of a stained glass deer
Roaming the highways that snake your sidelines
The deer commits to nothing but the continued haul of time
It seems like neither physical or moral fetters exsict to the deer
It could turn around and kiss any member of the communion crowd
Without breaking a sweat
The sun is out now
And your soaked in sweat
Wet to the touch
Lubricated to slide off the outside world
A nervous breakthrough into the heat that changes you
beyond any right to,
it’s a stepping stone outside the bleached belt of high risers that pepper the city
Walking on nails is not so hard unless the nails take the form of a saint coated head to toe in cool, ice
that cuts into your toes never displacing the heat just revealing the bones below the charred skin.
Sweat might save you, but only if the bipolar irregularities of time and distance don’t cut the poles off at the heel first
a stab at a sort of temporary paradise that might last forever
depending on how much you sweat
Inside the shattered prism is nothing but a lost land pulled together with duck tape and carabiners
it’s shined glass exterior laid bare in 100 pieces across plain
Asking a question that can only push one further into its broken remains, inside the light flows
a prison of endless reflection that mirrors the past onto every new subject while still creating a future for itself as safe as its last.
It’s lived 1000s of lives in nothing but a moment of the turning of the wheel
Criss crossing the bastardised image of a hungry ghost eating it’s way back to freedom
It’s sharded brothers and sisters ringing themselves out
for bit of the reflection only to be religated to a long list of repairers cast into the void at the turn of a screw.
A positive miasma drifts slowly
Across the open cave people
Who revel in the thick dream unaligned from
The civilised glass gas technical ecstasy that drifts as a pollutant
Across the cities skyline
The straight line calls only those who wish to forfeit their remaining
Stock of spiritual water to the hogs
Of dull greed
A cacophonous ring of humming ghosts
Prance and play between wine flowing from the eyes and a naive shamanism
Born not from a disconnected ignorance of those from the mountain but from a forced perspective of social sanity
Imaginea group of young warriors
Holding torches
Towards a meeting inside and outside of time beyond
The bounds of property
At the boundaries of three rivers destined to stop being water bearers
And top become immersed in the ocean of fog
The Heavier the fog
The brighter the lantern
The beams passing those toward
The rivers collusion
Somewhere so far deep outside dreams
Really present
Not of the aching lands or primitive deadlines
But as pressing as the fires that score new life into the earth
The rivers teach you first thing
That there is no gully open
You flood the plains to make your own.
The fires death ritual hangs long across the highway
As the lights create their own trails to nowhere in my broken eyes
The souls of a million dragons slowly embrace you as the waterfall approaches
Hanging so still
At the edge of dawn
It beckons you, young warrior
To sit and listen to the dragons
Ghostly calls ruminating thru the entangled, vine like cyberspace looming over
The rims of your eyes
You’ve got to run to on hiding
They tell you
To make way for the body you hold dear
Passing again that hot light that streams forward
Its a harmful indulgence
Hide your money away
For its degrees require no payment
Don’t be angry, for the highest order burns across your skin
Are nothing but a reminder of the love of life
Bells and chimes will sing for you
While my glasses empty to a windy expanse
Cut out of your earth
Maybe you settle the bill tomorrow
Maybe you come back later
Or maybe the curiosities of debt will get the better of you
And you’ll return one day inshrined in armour
Stepping across puddles
Just to see if they remember
And take the swing.
Delirium!
Your covered in muds
Its impossible that these walls belong to you
Even for the night
The rooms are full of people
Nobody parting curtains
But its impossible
Just as you speak alone
Washed over by the leaking roof
You cut yourself in half
As to make sure you save something
At least something from yourself
And your yourself
Out of kindness I suppose
From the peak you see the hunters stalling
Straying from their path
As vines entangle their hearts
You wish you could tell them about the sky
But it seems that are already in worship
Yet they arrived with no fruits of feast
But alone with the ashes of alter fires covering their bodies
Carried in cups full of flames
Unwashed by the rains
I would also like to include the liner notes to John Fahey’s 1964 release Blind Joe Death, enjoy.
Blind Joe Death
1964 Liner Notes
When John and his friend and mentor Blind Joe first recorded for Takoma in 1959, neither of them was a stranger to folk recordings. Blind Joe had appreared on LC and Br, respected labels both, and with John had graced the halls and vaults of Fonotone. I regret going to press without the full discographical information on this subject, but I have been given to understand that certain Fonotone recordings are in the hands of the Folk phalanx of UCLA, and no doubt someone's thesis will decide to the satisfaction of the future which of the many Fahey & Death pseudonyms were used by this pioneering company.
The folk market being what it was in 1959, our Board of Directors decided to limit the first edition to 100 copies. These were quickly sold during the following years, fully justifying our shrewd Directors. Two copies were broken, but the owners of the other 98 made John and Joe - as Phil Spiro put it in Broadside of Boston - "living legends."
In 1963, John recorded his second LP, saddened that Death was not there to share in a triumph that was as much his as anyone's. The extent of that triumph may be seen in the fact that our Directors, without hesitation, issued (in part) the following statement in a June press conference:
"It is a measure not only of the tremendous gain in maturity, stature, and international reputation of Mr. Fahey, but of the vital and expanding folk market in this nation and across the seas, that we have, without president, decided to issue an initial pressing of 300 copies of DEATH CHANTS, BREAK DOWNS, & MILITARY WALTZES."
Once again John's record proved the Directos correct. In less than eight months the entire pressing was sold, and orders have been piling up since.
John's emergence into the public eye was in part responsible for this. He has played to standing audiences in the Washington, D.C. Unicorn; in the Jabberwock, the Blind Lemon, and the Cabale in Berkeley; and continuing this tour of the West Coast, he played a demand concert in San Diego and then he and Bill Barth were alone given the signal honor of an engraved hand-embossed in gold leaf invitation to play at the 1964 UCLA folk festival where they paralyzed the audience in the New Folks Concert.
Not only is John a "living legend" as a musician, he is the man to whom the folk music world owes, as Tom Hoskins said, "an unrepavable debt." In 1963 John, in collaboration with the Postal Authorities of the U.S. Government, rediscovered one of the most important blues singers of all time: Bukka White; and in 1964 he topped that by discovering the most important living blues singer, Skip James. It was on this trip that John, and his companion during the last few months of his life, Bill Barth, co-discoverer of Skip James, made their last public appearance, playing the ever popular Bitter Lemon in Memphis.
Shortly after John's disappearance in 1964, I was contacted by a Boston financier wishing to purchase a number of copies of John's first album. Encouraged by this, I tried to obtain the masters which had been in the possession of a "major." Evidently they had been destroyed. I then began the search for John, location him with some difficulty in Boise, Idaho, living in a converted bread truck which was parked on a hill outside of town. He was searching for Bertha Idaho, and thought that the studio had probably misspelled her name when the records were issued, as was the case with King Soloman Texas. John was troubled. Upon being asked why, he cast an irrevocably dissolute glance upon the bright city, and replied "No bread." John was flown to Berkeley in the Piedmont/Takoma private prop-jet and that very after noon he recorded for the unheard-of fee of $5000 (a considerable amount in the folk world - probably 100 times what Big Joe Williams gets, or half as much as Baez or Dylan). John again vanished and to get notes for this album I had to contact C.C. Petranick, in his tuba-patchery in Waco, Texas. Fortunately John and Barth had spent several evenings in Waco talking with the kindly old man, who was able to write down many previously unheard-of facts just prior to his recent death. Judging a tuba contest between two German marching bands, he was crushed to death when they collided. Our thanks to his widow for sending us the notes.
It will probably be helpful when you read these notes or listen to the music upon his record to keep in mind that Jean-Paul-Sartre said, thinking of the lessons he learned at the feet of big, bearded Edmund Husserl: "In English translation every given object posits a universe." Wallace Stevens showed the same thing poetically in his big one "The Jar" and the folks themselves have realized by frivolously casting aside onto logical fixity (e.g. "when is a door not? When it's in a poem by Wallace Stevens." -Stith-Thompson 36.005) that every object is essentially ambiguous. John's music, indeed his life, is a personal testament to the meaning of the intensely per sonal, bitter-sweet, biting, soul-stirring but above all human existence he led. We are all, in a sense alive, and it is because of this that John Fahey and Blind Joe Death have found an audience in the humble Lower East Side and the mansions of Venice. They live in the hearts of those that knew them and the minds of those that heard them.
- ED Denson
Dear Mr. Denson:
You ask for notes: the sun is shining but it's raining in my heart. Here is an ms found in Chester's desk the day after Deutsche Gesellschaft Gramophon Picnic and Parade.
Please excuse the coffe stains.
Fahey/Blind Joe Death Vol. 1
It was an ambivalent undetermined sort of day; the sun was shining and the mist was slowly falling, now up, now down. There in the midst of time, an ambivalent, indetermi- nate young man stepped irresolutely out of his unassuming young house and blinked his eyes in the soft wavering sun light.
"I feel unresolved," he said unresolvedly. "Perhaps someday I will find Blind Joe Death again and be able to finish up my thesis in ethnomusicology," he said chthonically.
So saying he wavered on in an aufheben sort of way toward the B and O Railroad tracks to try to discover Blind Joe Death the old blues guitar player, and perhaps also himself. Coming to the Chinese laundry next to the viaduct under the railway station he entered in and opened his mouth and inquired of the old boarded-up Cinnamon who ran the shop:
"Pardon me, have you seen an old Negro street musician by the name of Blind Joe Death?"
"Take your filthy fucking feminine component and suck out of here, muvva," the old mandarin replied in his quaint sing-song Cantonese dialectic.
"Ah," said the young man a little more resolutely, "the bourgeoisie reject me." Thus assured, he walked down the street under the viaduct, his aufheben quivering in the mist under the abandoned railroad station. Suddenly he stumbled over something which was more or less indetermi nate because of the fog. It was an old Negro sidewalk painter who made his living painting the portraits of the down trodden volk of Takoma Park on the sidewalks of that once great city.
"Pardon me," he said, "Have you seen an old Negro street musician by the name of Blind Joe Death?" his aufheben heaving.
"I don't pay any attention to color," said the old man sav agely. "I judge every man as an individual and not by any superficial standard such as race, color or creed. Why don't you fuck yourself with a file?"
"Ah," said the young man a little more resolutely, "the artists reject me." Now, yet surer of himself, he proceeded back through the viaduct toward the magic place where Carroll Avenue is majestically transubstantiated into Laurell Avenue. Stopping to inspect his aufheben, bruised when he tripped over the street artist, he saw a familiar form approaching from the mystic corner, Domenick Zurubian, his boyhood friend and idol! He stood stiffly waiting by the glass front of Youngblood's hardware store not daring to hope that Domenick Zurubian would rec ognize him; it was as well so, since Domenick Zurubian ignored him with a vaguely hostile glance, and began to pass by.
"Wait" he called to stop him, the words tore from his aufheben almost against his will. "Here is your pencil."
A light began to glow in Domenick Zurubian's oblique eyes (yes, those fascinating angled eyes, in the form of a horizon tal seven). "Don't I know you from somewhere?" "Yes, yes, the fourth form in the Takoma Military Academy!" "Well, damn if I can remember who you are," said Zurubian, with out embarrassment. "There were a couple of ambivalent indeterminate young men in that class." Zurubian left him by the glass front of Youngblood's hardware store with a lame excuse, and a smile, softly and resolutely, crisping his lip.
"Yes, then: I am an ambivalent indeterminate young man." His voice was a warm human bourgeois whisper, as he resolutely dissolved into the fog with the sound of drying wild flowers. "The wolves," he said, looking out the door before the stranger came in, "are gone now."
Resolutely he mounted the steps to the railroad tracks. There he found several old Negroes sitting on the tracks guzzling wine.
"Ah" he said to himself, "if they reject me too, it does not matter. I am now resolute."
"Pardon me" he said, "have any of you seen Blind Joe Death recently?"
"Yea verily" one of them replied. "I saw him two-three days ago meandering up towards pol' man Fahey's Cypress-tree and Galapagos Tortoise farm. You might find him up there. Then again you might not."
"Thank you very much," the young man replied, his aufheben severely pacified as he proceeded up the railroad tracks. As he was walking a train came screech ing down the tracks and ran over two or three of the Negroes.
"Ah," said the young man dissolutely, "The poor downtrodden volk of Takoma Park. They have no place to drink their wine in peace but the railroad tracks. Behold they are like the lilies of the field for they neither work nor travail, but they get run over by trains. Perhaps someday things will be different." Approaching a grove of cypress trees alongside the railroad tracks, which transubstantiated itself hodologically into a field of hay, where many large tortoises were grazing, the young man said to himself still resolutely, "Perhaps this is the farm of which the former citizen has spoken."
Emerging into the sun, he began to cross the gentle rolling hill of new mown hay when suddenly from out of nowhere a herd of wild dogs attacked him and tore his clothing and his limbs. Their teeth bit into his flesh. Screaming and bleeding he ran towards a farm house which he made out on a distant slope. Arriving there breathless he ran up the steps onto the porch. Throwing open the door he ran into the dwelling and slammed the door shut behind him. An old farmer who was seated in an oversized wicker basket jumped up at this and demanded of the resolute young man resolutely:
"What is this doggerel? Who do you think you are, running into my dwelling here in the midst of time?"
"Sir," he said, "I am beseiged by a herd of wild dogs. They have ripped and torn my clothes and I am bleeding profusely."
"I can see that you are bleeding and that your clothes are torn, but come look out the window. There are no dogs out there, and there never have been, not on my farm. What you saw was only some pages of old newspapers blowing in the wind. Come and see," said the old farmer. The young man turned towards the window and looking out of it he saw that there were indeed no dogs, now. Only old newspapers being tossed about on the sunny slopes of new moan hay. Strange though, they had the appearance as they blew to and fro of those very dogs which had just now attacked him.
"But," said the young man, "if that is true what did attack me and what drew all this blood?"
"I do not know," said the old man. "Perhaps in your haste you tripped and fell."
"Perhaps," said the young man. "The wolves," he said, looking out the window, "are gone now." As he turned to leave he asked the old farmer: "By the way, is this ol' man Fahey's Cypress-tree and Galapogos Tortoise farm?"
"Not any longer," said the old man. "I bought it from him many years ago, and it is now mine. Fahey moved to California or Caledonia or China or some place like that."
"Well," replied the young man, "perhaps you could tell me if you have seen an old Negro street musician named Blind Joe Death."
"Blind Joe?" he replied enigmatically, "He used to work for me in the cypress groves. But he left a few days ago. Said he was going to make records for somebody or other. Didn't even know he was a musician. Funny isn't it. Hope he does all right. He was a nice old guy."
Returning to his unassuming house, the young man now irresolute, attempted to open the door. It wouldn't open.
"Ah," he said, "perhaps it has happened again." He went to the back of his house and attempted to open a rear window. As the window gradually opened he was besieged with sheaves of falling grist.
"Ah," he said, "they have filled my dwelling with grist again while I was gone." This was a quite common occurrence in the indeterminate young man's life and the recurrence of it had left its mark on his aufheben.
"How long must I be in the prey of evil grist mongers?" he sighed to himself gently as his words floated in the evening breeze.
"Once again I shall have to call the used grist store, and ask them to come out and take this stuff off my hands. Tonight I shall have to sleep in the damp evening breeze. And still I have not found Blind Joe Death. I am indeed an unfulfilled indeterminate ambivalent young man." Later that evening he expired of an advanced case of previ ously undetected Heisenbergian Indeterminancy. Later and somewhat elliptically I met myself coming through the back door.
"The Wolves," he said looking out through the window before the stranger came in, "are gone now."
1. Discography of Blind Joe Death prior to the Takoma Sessions: Blind Joe Death (guitar) and Lemuel Forkworth (vocal-I), State Penitentiary, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1934. 268-B-1 When I Lie Down Last Night - 1
LC
269-B In Trouble LC
Blind Joe Death (guitar) and Kid Bailey (vocal and guitar), Peabody Hotel, Memphis, c. Oct. 15, 1929. M-209/10 Mississippi Bottom Blues
Br 7114
M-211 Rowdy Blues ...
2. Discographical Musicological information re: Takoma 1, Blind Joe Death and John Fahey. Recorded at St. Michael's and All Angels' Church, Adelphi, Maryland, by Pat Sullivan, c. April 1959, and -1-recorded at the secret Berkeley studios of our benefactor.
St. Louis Blues (W.C. Handy) played by Blind Joe Death. Learned by Death in Memphis from W.C. Handy in whose band Death at one time played, previous to the great northern migration and the great crossing over.
Poor Boy a Lone Ways from Home (sic) learned by Death from an old Columbia record by Barbecue Bob (CO. 14246-D) which the Death household at one time possessed.
Uncloudy Day learned by Death in his youth at a primitive Baptist church in the Etruscan River Valley Delta Basin Region of Tunica County, Mississippi.
In Christ There Is No East nor West a hymn which was sung, in its world historical aspect, by Captain Marvel and the Mole Men during their heroic attempt to destroy the theological stranglehold of the 1920's.
Transcendental Waterfall originally intended to be a ballet which was to re-create in dance form an exciting and thrilling adventure Fahey once had, to be (so he told me) entitled and executed to wit:
THE LATEST ADVENTURES OF JOHN FAHEY AND BILL BARTH, THE HARUSPEX: JOHN FAHEY AND BILL BARTH MEET EVIL DEVIL WOMAN
or
JOHN FAHEY AND BILL BARTH VISIT WACHEPRAGUE MARYLAND
Many years ago in the orient while John Fahey was learn ing the ancient martial art of Samurai sword fighting, Bill Barth was traveling through ancient Rustic Etrustica and there beside the waters of the Green River he met an ancient Haruspex named TIRESEUS whom he befriended and who taught him the ancient divinatory art of seeing into the future by observing lightning, natural prodigies, and by viewing the entrails of sacrificial victims-Haruspicy. Both, later when the advent of the downfall of the Adelphi Rolling Gristmill and the first foundation became apparent, decided to dedicate their lives to law and order enforcement. They had been relatively successful in their endeavors until several recent foils by EVIL DEVIL WOMAN.
It was in the old days before the flood during the first foundation. Civilization had been besieged for many years by EVIL DEVIL WOMAN and the EVIL GREEN HORDES FROM THE EAST. The question which all the guardians of right eousness and justice were asking was how long might man prevail against these bitter enemies of society. Could the demise of the first foundation be near at hand? When would the Transcendental Waterfall prophecy be fulfilled? In his secret mountain hideout Fahey was reading a newspaper article describing a recent robbery of a great quanity of being from a nearby band, committed by EVIL DEVIL WOMAN.
"Hark," said Fahey, "those crooks can't get away with their heinous plot to steal being from the world and transpose it somewhere else. Who do they they are anyway? Why should anyone have a monopoly on being?" Reading a little farther Fahey jumped up and said again addressing his faithful Jewish servant Barth, "Barth, Barth, twang your magic Haruspicy divining machine and see what our chances are." Barth faithfully and hebraically turned on the secret machine and looked into the view-scope.
"Boss," he said, "things don't look so bad as I thought. We'll get those crooks but good by the beard of Yahweh." (Music: 3rd movement beginning Gliere 3rd Symphony). Later, stand ing by the Atlantic Ocean somewhere near the ancient deserted city of Wacheprague, Fahey on his great Clydesdale horse, Kairos, said to his faithful Jewish servant Barth,
"Here they come Barth. We got here in the midst of time."
"Yes, Boss," said Barth. From out of the ocean slowly emerged gigantic GREEN BRONTOSAURUS. On its back sat majestically EVIL DEVIL WOMAN and CROKODILE MAN and GOS-HAWK MAN, and GRUFF THE MAGIC WAGON. There in their evility were ELEPHANT WOMAN and SHE WOLF and all the other EVIL DENSONS OF THE UNDERWORLD. "Great Glark," said Barth.
"Holy Gleeps," said Fahey.
"Boss, Boss, they've got ENIGMATIZING EPHEMERIZING CHIMERIZING EGLIOCLASTICAL RECALCITRATING MACHINE. Boss, Boss what'll we do?" screamed Barth.
"Relax Barth," said Fahey, "you don't understand big business. I'll do a number 725 kata all around 'em and that'll sure put those crooks in bitter Lemon Straits." At that Fahey with MAGIC SAMURAI SWORD ZEN BONG danced fiery magical circles all around EVIL DENSONS OF THE UNDERWORLD AND EVIL GREEN WHOARS FROM THE EAST, thrice. The evil ones were soon routed. EVIL DEVIL WOMAN fell into the sea clinging to SHE WOLF. ENIGMATIZING EPHEMERIZING CHIMERIZING EGLIOCLASTICAL RECALCITRATING MACHINE'S tubes exploded. EVIL DEVIL WOMAN and CROKODILE MAN and all the other evil ones were turned into brine.
"Zen bong gong fong," said ZEN BONG MAGIC SAMURAI SWORD.
"Yes," said Fahey, "it's all over now. We've made the world safe for Kledonomancy."
Barth: "Yes, now we can go home."
Fahey: "No, not yet. One more thing needs to be done. Barth, you must this day here in the midst of grime tell us of the future. Practice now that art you learned in ancient Etrustica. Read the entrials of the Brine here in the midst of slime and tell by extispicium what the future holds in store for law and order enforcement officers."
Barth: "Holy Scott Boss. It will be good for us but woe unto those crooks. For them the future will be terrible and hodological."
Desperate Man Blues follows roughly the theme of John Hardy and Sibelius' 7th Symphony.
Sun Gonna Shine in My Back Door Someday Blues originally written by Fahey in a fit of optimism which he later regretted. Said Fahey, "I used to make my money by railroading and steam, now I make my money driving a wagon and team."
On Doing an Evil Deed Blues originally composed by Fahey in remorse and guilt at having committed an evil deed.
Sligo River Blues this is an attempt to reconstruct an old song from three lines imperfectly remembered by an old peasant woman in the village of Balysodare, Sligo, who often sings them to herself. "Every hand is lunatic that travels on the Moon."
John Fahey went insane in 1964 and died shortly there after. He spoke to me in his last minutes on his dying bed and said: "Take down my old guitar and smash it against the wall so I can die easy." I did so and he passed away with a chthonic smile on his face.
-CHESTER PETRANICK