Requia
Studio album by
John Fahey
ReleasedNovember 1967
RecordedJanuary 24–25, 1967
StudioHollywood Sound Recorders, Hollywood, California
Genre
Length44:44
LabelVanguard
ProducerSam Charters
John Fahey chronology
Days Have Gone By
(1967)		 Requia
(1967)		 The Voice of the Turtle
(1968)

Requia (subtitled and other compositions for guitar solo) is the eighth album by American fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey. Released in November 1967, it was the first of Fahey's two releases on the Vanguard label.[4] It originally received hostile reviews from music critics,[5] particularly for its musique concrète experimentation.[6] It has since been recognised as precursor to new-age music, and has been re-released multiple times, including by Terra in 1985, Vanguard in 1997 and 1998 and Ace in 1998.

History

After six releases on his own label Takoma Records and one on Riverboat Records, Fahey signed a two-album contract with Vanguard Records, best known for its catalogue of recordings by a number of pivotal folk and blues artists from the 1960s. His manager at the time, Denny Bruce, recalled that "His deal was that he could record for Takoma 'experimental records,' but to try and make commercial recordings for Vanguard, with their approval of the budget."[7]

After beginning with three solo guitar pieces, the four-part "Requiem for Molly" begins with solo guitar interspersed and accompanied by white noise, excerpts of both string and brass orchestras, Adolf Hitler speeches, choral music, scratchy 78-rpm recordings and various other tape loops and sound effects. The melody found in Part 3 is "California Dreaming", a recent Top 40 hit for The Mamas & the Papas. A short hymn-like song, "Fight On Christians, Fight On", based on "Christians, Fight On, Your Time Ain't Long" by Bo Weavil Jackson, played on bottleneck guitar concludes the recording.[8]

Fahey stated "["Requiem for Molly, Pt. 1–4"] was my first attempt at musique concrète, but it's not very good and I don't really like that one. It was a good learning experience though."[6]

"Requiem for John Hurt" refers to influential country blues singer and guitarist Mississippi John Hurt. Fahey recalled "He was in his quiet way, a very great man, and I deeply mourn our loss of him. So, I wrote this requiem for him, about him, but I play it the way Charley Patton would have played it, had he ever thought of such a thing, which of course he never would have."[8]

In his original liner notes, Fahey wrote "Since 1948, after seeing the movie, The Thief of Bagdad, I composed cerebral symphonies every day. It was a pleasant pastime. But suddenly in 1953 I needed a full orchestra at my command—me playing every instrument in that impossible ensemble." He labeled the first two songs and "Requiem for Molly" as Requia and "When the Catfish Is in Bloom" and "Fight on Christians, Fight On" as Cantica.

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[9]
Daily News[10]
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music[11]
The Great Folk Discography5/10[12]
Reno Gazette-Journal[13]
Spin Alternative Record Guide7/10[14]

According to Edward Pouncey of The Wire, contempoary reception to Requia was mixed and often hostile, with many puzzled by the album's lengthy musique concrète centrepiece.[6]

In his AllMusic review, critic Brian Olewnick describes the distinct differences in the two parts of Requia, calling the four solo pieces "a series of blues-based pieces in line with music he had previously recorded" and the second section ("Requiem for Molly") as sounding "a bit dated, largely because his source material... sounds heavy-handed and trite in retrospect." Olewnick summarizes the release writing "Requia doesn't rank up with the absolute best of his releases, but contains enough fine and interesting work to recommend it to Fahey fans."[9]

In his book Beautiful Monsters, author Michael Long referred to Fahey as a pioneer and wrote "His personal aesthetic was easily translatable to the revisionist morbid aesthetic, most notably with respect to Requia, a collection containing the four-part "Requiem for Molly," Fahey's spatiotextural experiment in sampling, looping, and musique concrète."[15] Kris Needs of Record Collector has similarly cited "Requiem for Molly" as a "deranged mosaic of effects" that predated sampling with its mixture of musical interpolations and "snatches of jazz and blues singers, Nazi marching songs, wedding music, hymns, brass bands and fairground organ, as well as self-recorded seals."[5]

In a review of The Essential John Fahey in the July 3, 1974 Milwaukee Journal, Pierre-Rene Noth referred to "Requiem for Molly" as "[Fahey's] worst.. a horrid mix."[16] In his piece for The New York Times, Ben Ratliff called Requia "dense with eccentricity."[17] The album received new attention when re-released in 1985 by Terra Records, a pastoral folk jazz subsidiary label of Vanguard,[13] as part of a series of releases exploring the roots of new-age music.[10] Reviewing the reissue for the Reno Gazette-Journal, Paul Raeburn described Requia as a precursor to new-age, calling the mixture of folk and blues "as fresh and evocative" as the genre. However, he preferred the short tracks on side one to "Requiem for Molly", whose "ominous" sound effects he found distracting.[13] A reviewer for Daily News said that the album would impress those who dismiss new-age music as "Muzak for the '80s", describing Fahey as "quirky and quiet" but engaging.[10]

In 2017, Uncut ranked Requia at number 89 in their list of "The 101 Weirdest Albums of All Time";[18] contributor John Robinson wrote that Fahey's "singular oddness" derived in part from his humour, and commented that the album blends his distinctive meditative guitar soli with tape collage experimentation via "Requieum for Molly", in which Fahey's guitar is "mixed deep into a shifting music concrete soundworld of sucking reverb, white noise and – just in time for the summer of love – Adolf Hitler."[18] In 2022, Uncut ranked the album at number 396 in their list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of the 1960s".[19]

Reissues

  • Requia was reissued on CD in 1997 by Vanguard.
  • All the songs, minus the four-part "Requiem for Molly" are included in the Vanguard CD reissue of The Essential John Fahey.
  • Requia was reissued on CD in 1998 in the United Kingdom by Ace Records.
  • All the songs, minus the parts 1 and 2 of "Requiem for Molly" are included in the Vanguard release The Best of the Vanguard Years.
  • Requia was reissued on a vinyl LP in 2007 by Vanguard.

Track listing

All songs by John Fahey.

  1. "Requiem for John Hurt" – 5:10
  2. "Requiem for Russell Blaine Cooper" – 8:56
  3. "When the Catfish Is in Bloom" – 7:42
  4. "Requiem for Molly, Pt. 1" – 7:40
  5. "Requiem for Molly, Pt. 2" – 7:46
  6. "Requiem for Molly, Pt. 3" – 2:33
  7. "Requiem for Molly, Pt. 4" – 3:00
  8. "Fight On Christians, Fight On" – 1:57

Personnel

See also

References

  1. ↑ Larkin, Colin (2007). "John Fahey". The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (Concise ed.). London: Omnibus Press. p. 1,039. ISBN 9780857125958. Retrieved October 8, 2022. Fahey signed with Vanguard Records in 1967, although he only recorded two albums for the company, including the musique concrete album Requia and Other Compositions for Guitar Solo.
  2. ↑ Pouncey, Edward (August 1998). "John Fahey: Blood on the Frets". The Wire. Retrieved October 8, 2022. Vanguard producer and archivist Samuel Charters shared Fahey's love of the blues ... Somewhat perversely, Fahey gave the folk/roots label a musique concrete album, called Requia And Other Compositions For Guitar Solo.
  3. ↑ Sprague, David (February 23, 2001). "Guitarist John Fahey Dead". Rolling Stone. Retrieved October 9, 2022. After eschewing the rustic trappings of his earliest music for a series of highly experimental recordings — including the musique concrete eye-opener Requia and Other Compositions for Guitar Solo — Fahey began trying on and discarding various musical garments.
  4. ↑ Guerrieri, Claudio (2013). The John Fahey Handbook, Vol. 1. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-9853028-0-1.
  5. 1 2 Needs, Kris (October 2007). "The Legend of John Fahey & Blind Joe Death". Record Collector. Retrieved October 8, 2022.
  6. 1 2 3 Pouncey, Edwin (August 1998). "Blood on the Frets". The Wire (174). Retrieved March 15, 2010.
  7. ↑ Unterberger, Richie. "Of Rivers and Religion 2001 reissue liner notes > Review". Retrieved March 26, 2009.
  8. 1 2 The Fahey Files notes on the songs.
  9. 1 2 Olewnick, Brian. "Requia > Review". AllMusic. Retrieved March 26, 2009.
  10. 1 2 3 "Pop Music". Daily News: 22–23. October 13, 1985. Retrieved November 8, 2022.
  11. ↑ Larkin, Colin (2011). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (5th concise ed.). Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-85712-595-8.
  12. ↑ Strong, Martin Charles (2010). The great folk discography. Volume 1, Pioneers & early legends. ISBN 9781846971419.
  13. 1 2 3 Raeburn, Paul (December 8, 1985). "On the Record". Reno Gazette-Journal: 76. Retrieved November 8, 2022.
  14. ↑ Weisbard, Eric; Marks, Craig, eds. (1995). "John Fahey". Spin Alternative Record Guide (1st ed.). New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-679-75574-8.
  15. ↑ Long, Michael (2008). Beautiful Monsters: Imagining the Classic in Musical Media. University of California Press. p. 132. ISBN 978-0-520-22897-9.
  16. ↑ Noth, Pierre-Rene (July 1974). "Review: The Essential John Fahey". Milwaukee Journal.
  17. ↑ Ratliff, Ben (1997). "A 60's Original With a New Life on the Fringe". The New York Times. Retrieved January 5, 2010.
  18. 1 2 "101 Weirdest Albums of All Time". Uncut (238): 70. March 2017.
  19. ↑ "The Greatest 500 Albums of the 1960s". Uncut Ultimate Music Guide. October 27, 2022.
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