How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life: Stories by John Fahey

John Fahey is feared and revered around the world as a guitar player and composer. His inventions for acoustic and electric strings are the stuff of legend. Since he began recording in Maryland in the late 1950's, Mr. Fahey's access to the unknown tongue has been made manifest on over 30 albums, and his presence has unsettled audiences from here to Tasmania. He has served as a spiritual model for guitarists as disparate as Leo Kottke and Thurston Moore. He has been called a musical visionary by everyone from The New York Times to Ptolemaic Terrascope. John Fahey is a giant of 20th Century American Music. This is well known. It is perhaps less well-known that Fahey's pen has the same world-gobbling ferocity as his guitar. His early records included savagely hilarious liner notes, and other sightings of his clamorous writerly discourse have surfaced over the years. Now, finally, here is a collection that makes an explosive selection of his work available for general public consumption. What else can we possibly say, except, "Grab your ankles, dear readers. It's kingdom time!" — Byron Coley, 1999