John Fahey - CBGB, New York City, December 7, 1996

John Fahey - CBGB, New York City, December 7, 1996John Fahey at CBGB! That sort of sounds like something some hack like me would write about an up-and-coming new artist in a review no one reads. “It’s like if John Fahey opened for Television in 1974 with Don Cherry sitting in!” And then you’d listen and likely be disappointed. But no, John Fahey did in fact play CBGB in the mid-1990s right when he was emerging from his wilderness years and beginning to explore the underground. (In fact, Thurston Moore was ferrying him around at the time.) And since Ayal Senior, the subject of yesterday’s post, collaborated with Fahey in those strange latter days, let’s listen to what Blind Joe Death got up to on the Bowery in late ‘96. This tape is a recent upload from the Jeff Lazar Audio Collection, which has been delivering the goods week after week since launching this past summer. Fahey kicks things off with a knotty, FX-laden piece that sounds like he’s de-tuning and re-tuning his guitar…