I've been waiting for someone to mention Womblife (Table of the Elements,
1997), my favorite late-period Fahey. It's beautiful, it's scary, it's
cathartic, and ultimately it's hopeful.
Strong musical statements (seemingly) falter and drown under waves of Jim
O'Rourke squee, re-emerging over and over again, including Fahey's beloved
gamelan music on "Planaria." I say seemingly because it's easy for me to
visualize this as a description of what life must have been like for several
late-80s years when alcohol and Epstein-Barr were running the show. (My wife
and I once stayed at a B&B owned by a woman with Epstein-Barr... she had an
assistant who did all the physical stuff, but in the meantime her office
consisted of a pallet in her living room, with her phone and laptop nearby.
She couldn't raise her head. She managed to raise her arm to shake hands
with us, and that was that day's physical success story.) If things were
ever this bad for Fahey, then there were days when this guy, who'd made his
living all his adult life by playing the guitar, couldn't make a fist.
Listening to any Fahey from the 1990s to his death involves (it seems to me)
his answer to the question, "Now that I've been dragged through broken glass
for several years and come out on the other side alive, what shall I play?"
What I like about Womblife is that after the horror and misery of the first
four tracks, the closing statement is a fairly cheerful song, "Juana" --
definitely Fahey, but much slower and feeling his way through it, like he
was relearning to play the guitar.
Did Fahey say much about this album? Was the final product more his
conception, or O'Rourke's? It's a great, great record, either way.
William Crump
