Aficionados of acoustic fingerpicked solo guitar are likely already clued-in to Tompkins Square’s Imaginational Anthem series; last year brought the seventh installment’s focus on a wide range of contemporary players and on September 16 its follow-up The Private Press is available on LP, CD, and digital. The latest survey offers an illuminating look at instrumental guitar’s DIY impulse from the ’60s to the ’90s, and its contents are both refreshing and revelatory.
In large part through its instrumental makeup, Imaginational Anthem Vol. 8 helps to bury a couple of infrequently intertwining stereotypes regarding private press recordings, specifically that they either offer excursions into outsider or similarly oddball-ish realms or are more plainly just amateurishly inferior responses to well-known record company financed models. Reading through a catalog dealing in original or reissue merchandise of this sort often turns up hyperbole of varying shades of nuance; the recurring phrase “holy grail” is a definite trigger to arouse suspicion.
Tompkins Square’s latest laudable effort has nada to do with the above, and as its 14 tracks unwind over four vinyl sides the collection instead provides considerable strength to an increasingly common supposition, explicitly that the wellspring of record history, in this instance spanning 1968-1995, still holds many unheard jewels. Simultaneously, The Private Press illustrates just how deep an impact the ’60s emergence of Guitar Soli actually had.
That’s because the influence of John Fahey and his contemporaries, if not all-encompassing, is quite tangible here. What ultimately makes this compilation such a treat is the lack of the aforementioned stylistic inferiority as the sequencing delivers a handful of unexpected turns including one right out of the gate via the succinct bluesy-raga tension of Perry Lederman’s “One Kind Favor.”
Taken from 1995’s This World Is Not My Home, it’s the set’s most recent selection, though it comes from a player whose eventful background connects to mid-’60s Berkeley, CA. Friend of Dylan, student of Ali Akbar Khan, and influence on Fahey, Jorma Koukonen, Jerry Garcia, and Michael Bloomfield, he in fact landed a few cuts on Arhoolie’s 1965 comp LP Out West – Berkeley; those and his posthumous CD (produced by writer Elijah Wald, it came out just after his passing) comprise his discography; “One Kind Favor” is an enticing sample of his abilities that appealingly kicks Vol. 8 into motion.
The second most recent entry, Kip Dobler’s “The Presence” from 1990, is deftly blossoming finger dexterity enhanced by resonance of recording rivaling anything funded by a major label; having crafted audio cables of storied quality for Cardas Audio, Dobler’s three albums are currently available through the company’s site. Given the beauty of his tunings, aural brilliance is a crucial factor as The Private Press is notably well-recorded throughout.
The set also wastes no time in deviating from the admittedly loose solo guitar statement of purpose; track two is “Snow Queen” by the Keithe Lowrie Duet, a gorgeous Takoma school picking clinic of ’79 vintage. The terrific notes (by compilers Michael Klausman and Brooks Rice and Tompkins Square’s Josh Rosenthal) boldly place John Lowrie and Ron Keithe in the same league as Bert Jansch & John Renbourn; that’s some major company, but after listening this writer’s not arguing; it’d be sweet news to learn of an upcoming reissue of this duo’s only album Avec Moi.
Speaking of John Renbourn, album participant Larry Conklin receives credit in the notes for partnering with the highly regarded English guitarist, but that was after a move to Europe. Conklin’s track “The Diamond Cutter” predates the migration, with its wonderfully Fahey-esque slide from the 1980 LP Jackdaw. Containing the guitarist in duet with violinist Jochen Blum, it’s another fine candidate for reissue.
The similarities to Fahey reliably add value, particularly the farther back one listens. Nowhere is the connection more evident than Gary Salzman’s “The Secret Forces of Nature”; cut in ’68 (financed by Country Joe & the Fish bass player Bill Bartol) and originally spanning both sides of a 7-inch (united here as one track), there’s an undeniable Fahey vibe mingled with a little raga and concluding with a bit of musique concrète that’s decidedly different from Fahey’s stabs at same on ’67’s Requia.
Overall, Salzman radiates a hippie-friendlier vibe than Fahey, who largely eschewed such elements in his work from the period. Even more psychedelic is Joe Bethancourt’s “Raga”; cut in Los Angeles in 1969 on a resonating Eastern-inclined electric guitar with unexpected interjections of manipulated tape, it lends this edition one of its nicest surprises.
“Obadiah,” a cut from 1975 by the Belgian-born Vancouver-based Michael Kleniec, is even more raga inspired but distinctly less psychedelic, featuring rhythmic accompaniment amid some of the record’s most powerful playing. From a year later Stan Samole’s “Prayer Blessing” derives from a concept album concerning the USA’s bicentennial and gravitates away from psych toward a warm, jazzy progressiveness.
Given that Samole had collaborated with trumpeter Don Cherry around the time of his album’s release, the success of his ambition isn’t a bit surprising. Nor is Rick Deitrick’s “Missy Christa” stemming from an LP titled Gentle Wilderness; cut in ’78, its assured calm underscores a self-taught sensibility without ever drifting into the insubstantial, and it contrasts pretty sharply with the clearly learned if not necessarily scholarly feel of Russell Potter’s “Blue Wind Boy.”
Recorded just a year after Deitrick’s entry and self-released on Fonytone Records (a reference to Joe Bussard’s Fonotone label, one of the early vessels of Fahey’s work), Potter’s crisp concision strikes these ears as a prototype for the artistry of Glenn Jones and Jack Rose. “Blue Wind Boy” provides The Private Press with a fine finale, though the 2LP’s smart non-chronological approach additionally reinforces Guitar Soli’s ’80s flowering.
1983 seems to have been a very productive year. There’s the pretty yet robust “Where The Pinery Narrows” from Lee Murdoch, the unique reverberations of “Wen Also Found” from Herb Moore (employing the guitarist’s homemade sound sculptures named “scrapophones”), and the self-explanatory pleasures of Nancy Tucker’s superb “That Spanish Thing.” Four years later came the faultless picking and beautiful harmonics of Tom Armstrong’s “White Pines.”
When a thematic reissue series exceeds a half-dozen volumes, it can be safely assumed it appeals almost entirely to diehard fans of the contents represented. Consisting of music that’s flown under the radar of all but the most diligent of collectors, Imaginational Anthem Vol. 8 is just the opposite; it could easily serve as an effective introduction to its seven predecessors, and I can think of no higher praise than that.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
