Irish Setter (Fahey: One died, but one still lives) runs to seven and a quarter minutes of typical chiming Fahey while Commemorative Transfiguration and Communion at Magruder Park (Fahey: It never happened, so don't worry) is asix minute medley of a quite recognizable Shortnin' Bread" and a seventeenth century German hymn called All Creatures of Our God and King, which I wouldn’t recognize if it came up and bit me in the leg, but I’ll take the on line sources’ word for it. If, on the other hand, it’s the bit that provides the last thirty seconds or so, I suspect it exists under another name in the Anglican canon.
What has gone down up to this point is more than enough to justify a purchase and repeated listens, but the 2006 reissue, released to to coincide with the release of Vanguard’s Fahey tribute album (I Am the Resurrection) and remastered from the original master tapes, has bonus tracks that add another twenty-three minutes to the original forty-three.
Now, in most cases, when bonus tracks are tacked on there’s a significant differential from the album proper, usually because the extras are things that were either deemed not quite good enough or didn’t quite fit the flow of the rest of the album. Here, a self-explanatory nine minute selection of bits and pieces labelled The John Fahey Sampler, Themes and Variations, a pleasant track named Fare Forward Voyagers (also the title of a 1973 album I haven’t heard) and Steel Guitar Medley.
On that basis, since the original package is definitely among the best in an extensive catalogue, the additions make this an ideal place to start an investigation of one of the true pioneers of late twentieth century American music.