Strange (Weird) Holidays: John Fahey

purchase [The New Possibilitiy]

I'm not at all sure what constitutes a "Weird/Strange" holiday (holiday most likely = Xmas for this post). My sense of weird/strange, my understanding of holiday could likely be strange to you: I live in a Moslem-predominate environment, where Xmas means little, but the New Year is celebrated more or less the same (big turkey dinner ... gifts all around) We've also got all sorts of other holidays here, like the one where we slaughter sheep.

Regardless of the holiday, there are some givens: we hope to be together with the family (as best as possible); there are often gifts- and at this time of year we aim for green, red and white lights on a tree... Most anything that goes against these given traditions probably constitutes strange or weird.

It was on <The Dance of Death and Other Plantation Favorites> that I first heard the man and his guitar. The year would have been about '73, although the album by then was close to a decade old. It being the 70s, it must have been the droning, repetitious curiously off-note style that captured me.
I confess it has been several decades since I though much about the man and his music, but a pre-holiday post I ran across the other day noted a Christmas album called <The New Possibility> that he did way back in 1968. It is filled with your classic Xmas tunes - in the Fahey style.

As the reviewer/primary source I came across notes: you can almost hum along to his versions. They are certainly recognizable, even if they arent quite right. There's always a note or beat that shouldnt be there, but works just fine all the same. In the Fahey style.

 

 

Strange (Weird) Holidays: Light That Menorah

Phofo: Light That Menorah
[Here’s Phofo’s website where you can hire him to write music for your TV show, film or commercial]

We’ve occasionally dipped our toes into the shallow pool that is Hanukkah music here at SMM, in part, because as I noted last year, it hasn’t really inspired much good music. Confronting our new theme of Strange or Weird Holiday music, though, I found a contender, “Light That Menorah,” by Phofo, which fits the theme, even if it still isn’t a great holiday song.

In fact, other than the title, it is kind of difficult to tell that it is a Hanukkah song at all. It starts out as an electronic instrumental tune that sort of chugs along, until about a minute or so in, when some distorted vocals, buried in the mix, may be saying “light that menorah.” Or maybe not. At almost 2 minutes in, we get a bit of klezmer sounding music, and some more of the distorted vocals. A snatch more klezmer follows. It then rocks for a little while and then sort of peters out, like a dreidel before it stops spinning. It is, to my ears, more than a little weird.

But certainly interesting. There’s no “album cover” to use as the featured picture for this post, so, instead, in keeping with our theme, I used a picture of a Strange and Weird Menorah.

The song is credited to Phofo, and using my strong Google skills, I determined that Phofo is a composer who has written the score for Disney's Club Penguin, Sushi Pack (a Saturday morning cartoon on CBS), the animated feature film, Los Campeones de La Lucha Libre and Shep & Tiffany Watch TV (which was on Bravo). He is also a producer, has written for McSweeney’s and was a music consultant to PRI's This American Life.

But who is Phofo? That took a bit more work on the Google Machine. Turns out, he is a lawyer named Adam Weitz. Some of you may know that I, J. David, am also a lawyer, and that I blog as a creative outlet. Weitz also has a creative sidelight to his lawyer work, but he gets paid for it (presumably).

And that makes me jealous.