John Fahey - Vol. 4 The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party LP NEW reissue John Fahey - Vol. 4 The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party LP NEW reissue

John Fahey - Vol. 4 The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party and Other Excursions LP

NEW. SEALED.

4 Men with Beards reissue

This hodgepodge of tracks from 1962-66 was among the last of 's early Takoma albums to make it onto CD (which it did in 2000). Perhaps that's because  himself has a low estimation of the record. Nevertheless, it stands as his most, well, far-out work, and one of his most innovative. Edited together from several pieces, the 19-minute "The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party" anticipated elements of psychedelia with its nervy improvisations and odd guitar tunings. The six briefer pieces that comprised the rest of the record also broke ground with their unsettling moods and dissonances: "Knott's Berry Farm Molly" suddenly moving from a characteristically placid instrumental to backwards tapes that  assembled on a tape recorder, and the lo-fi "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" putting some aggressive picking against a mysterious church organ. The beautiful "900 Miles" also had unexpected instrumental accompaniment, by  on flute, while future member  played "veena" (sitar) on "Sail Away Ladies." Despite 's curmudgeonly dismissal of the record several decades later, it's an important, if uneven, effort that ultimately endures as one of the highlights of his discography.