John Fahey - Guitar Excursions Into The Unknown - UK Tour 1999
Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, UK, September 30, 1999
John Fahey - Electric Guitar
Daniel Shervington - Organ (disc 2 tracks 1 and 2)
Unknown drunken harridan - trainwreck vocals (disc 1 track 4)
Setlist unknown.
Transferred from minidisc by Howard (santadog99). I think this is a new show - never shared before now.
Lineage - Minidisc master - CoolEdit96 via M-Audio 2496 (audio transfer, not optical) - WAV - FLAC level 8
Sound Quality - very good - no hiss, but quiet. Some audience noise, but not too obtrusive (except Disc1track4, see below). I did no audio processing at all other than removing about 30 seconds of noise from the beginning of disc 1 and 5 seconds of noise from the beginning of disc 2. I was tempted to normalise the whole thing, but I thought it better to seed it as it was.
Warning! Do not download this if you are expecting classic acoustic John Fahey. This is from his last tour of the UK - the "Guitar Excursions Into The Unknown" tour. Listen to his CDs of the period to get a flavour of what to expect. However, this is still very musical compared to other shows from this tour that I've heard. The tracks with the organist on disc 2 are quite beautiful.
Photos of this very concert taken by Danny Letham can be seen at:
http://www.johnfahey.com/Tablatures.htm
I recently purchased on Ebay two minidiscs marked "John Fahey Leeds 1999". There was only one other bid, the cost was peanuts. I asked the seller more about them. Here are edited snippets of the emails I've had from him:
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"Hi Howard, can't remember exact date of concert but it was 1999. John Fahey was scheduled to play some gigs in Britain which were cancelled at the last minute for reasons unknown, so I contacted THE John Fahey website they then gave me a phone number over here, when I called John Fahey himself answered the phone!! He told me the tour had collapsed and was doing gigs as and when he could find one. the next evening he booked a room at the Brudenell social club in a very rough part of leeds! My friend and i drove over the next day and only a handful of people were present. On the discs you will here a woman heckler who was trying to get him to play some pop songs, he offered her the microphone which unfortunately she took!!! More pictures of this gig are on John Faheys website click on the section for guitar players."
"Yes I recorded them myself. These are the original recordings, not copies. There was only a few people there probably not even 30!"
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Danny Letham, who attended this show and took the photos on the JohnFahey.com website provided this info in the Yahoo FaheyGuitarPlayers group (reposted and edited here without his permission):
"The Brudenell Concert took place on September 30, 1999. John played to an audience of 27 that night, of whom about 15 paid for tickets and of whom a similar number were sober. Indeed much of the performance was inaudible above the bellowing of the local hardened boozers and of the cash register. There was another gig elsewhere in Leeds the following day that I was unable to attend but I understand from **** *****, who presumably is the source of your MD (no he wasn't - santadog99), that it was better attended and indeed that John responded quite to the rather better audience. I believe he may additionally have played at local high school during the daytime of 1st October: certainly there was talk of that on the first night. One very high point of that first night was a duet featuring a young final-year student from York called Daniel Shervington - an audience member - who played the house organ, an old fashioned thing - pre- Hammond. Similar to the "will the circle" in feel and completely improv'ed.
Daniel said he didn't know any of John's records, he had just come along as company with an older relative as I recall - but it was gorgeous - scary, spooky even. I wanted to release that on LivHouse #002 along with the London QE Hall concert but of course that never happened. Wonder where Daniel is now?
I get the impression the Brudenell is the place that the Termite Club uses for the smaller of two gigs when double-booked. It is quite the most ghastly place I have ever attended. Brits in this group of a certain age, think "Wheeltappers and Shunters" - this joint could have been the inspiration."
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A moderator on the Yahoo group says (reposted and edited here without her permission):
"This is pretty exciting. I remember John talking about that show when he came back from his trip. That organist fellow really impressed John - he remarked about it more than once and he seemed to hold the duet as one of the musical highlights of the entire excursion into the unknown."