John Fahey
September 9, 1973 · Record Plant Sausalito
John Fahey played solo acoustic guitar at the Record Plant for fifty-eight minutes on September 9, 1973, and Tom Donahue put the set on KSAN with no band and no rock-radio framing around it. Fahey was already an influential, idiosyncratic figure in American primitive guitar, blending blues, folk, and classical technique into a style with little precedent on rock radio. The broadcast is a rare instance of the KSAN Record Plant series stepping outside its usual rock and blues lineup to give an uninterrupted solo set, and stands as one of the quieter, more unusual entries in the series.
- Type
- Live Broadcast
- Date Recorded
- September 9, 1973
- Date Broadcast
- September 9, 1973
KSAN-FM broadcast, Record Plant Sausalito, Sept 9 1973. John Fahey solo, American primitive guitar, lengthy medleys. DISCOVERED via census 2026-05-30; not on Raechel's schedule notebook list. CENSUS 2026-05-31: Verified. Type: FM Broadcast, solo acoustic guitar, ~58:20. Content comprises most of Fahey's 'Fare Forward Voyagers' LP plus earlier material incl. 'Dance of the Inhabitants of the Palace of King Philip XIV of Spain' (from 1964's Death Chants); centerpiece medley 'Thus Krishna on the Battlefield / Fare Forward Voyagers' (~28:49). Aquarium Drunkard's Tyler Wilcox rates it among Fahey's best live material. RELEASE: issued on CD as 'Record Plant, Sausalito CA, September 9th 1973' (Keyhole KH9039CD, 2015; 8-page booklet w/ photos + reprinted Sept-1979 NME article) and on LP/MP3 as 'Live In Sausalito 1973' (semi-legit, blocked from sale on Discogs). PROVENANCE NOTE: CD sourced from FLAC torrent of home-taped broadcast (mono); original KSAN-FM stereo master reportedly survives in KSAN archive. No date conflict. AUDIO SOURCE UPDATE 2026-07-25: Tom Proctor uploaded the circulating John Fahey Record Plant recording to Internet Archive. Primary audio source: https://archive.org/details/john.-fahey.-record-plant.-1973-09-09-01. This supersedes the 2026-06-27 note stating that no approved audio URL was available. ACQUISITION: Physical CD available via Discogs marketplace (https://www.discogs.com/master/912365). Also check eBay, Gemm, Dusty Groove. Semi-legit LP/MP3 edition blocked from Discogs sale. ARTICLE: see Articles table (Researching).
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