On Thursday The Australian published my profile of Warren Fahey, a pioneer of the independent music scene in Australia during the '70s and '80s through his Larrikin record label and distribution company and Folkways record shop, not to mention a folk balladeer and collector of songs making him an Australian equivalent to America's great song Alan Lomax and Britain's A.L. Lloyd.Fahey was named this year's recipient of the Australia Council's Don Banks Award, which has previously gone only to classical composers such as Peter Sculthorpe and jazzers like Bernie McGann.
Extract:
"From his Folkways record shop in Sydney's Paddington, for years Fahey had been importing, distributing and selling music from across the world: Australian, especially indigenous, African, Latin, Asian and European, reggae, gospel, blues; anything the major labels and stores put in the too-hard basket. This was long before the phrase "world music" was dreamed up as a handy marketing tool by British record labels.
"The shop - in which this writer had a brief but pleasurable time serving behind the counter - was an endless source of delight, littered with potential discoveries. The effect flowed on to music lovers in other cities via Fahey's importing and distribution efforts, which also covered jazz and classical.
"Of its famously outre slogan, Real Music in a Sea of Shit, he remarks: "I never got one complaint in all that time, which I found astounding," though he recalls a nun once asking for her purchase to be slipped into a plain paper bag..."
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