John Farley

"He was mesmerizing...his lyrics were thought
provoking and unpredictable...delivered with an
irresistible honesty and depth that is the stuff
of great theater."

The Fairfield Weekly Reader
(The closest Fairfield, IA has to a Village Voice or a Boston Phoenix)

John and John’s song Video Game Wizard are featured in the popular movie The King of Kong, which ran in theaters nationally in 2007. The King of Kong, which dramatizes the battle for the top spot between two video game “wizards,” was released on DVD in January 2008.

A LITTLE BACKGROUND

John Farley is an ex-hippie, ex-Vietnam antiwar movement political radical. He has been, for almost 40 years now, one of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's warriors for peace. About the time he began practicing Transcendental Meditation, he picked up a guitar, learned a few chords, and now, thank God, knows a few more. And he began writing.
In the EcoVillage section of Fairfield, IA, John lives in a home designed according to the principles of Sthapatya Veda (Vedic architecture), eats organic food, performs yogic flying in the golden domes of Maharishi University of Management, still reads Mad Magazine, and slugs it out as a full-time singer/songwriter/guitar teacher and world peace warrior.

THE MESSAGE

Now, at 62 years, John has a message for the world. The first part of the message is: "We no longer have to live with all the war, terrorism, bloodshed, hatred, bigotry, greed, hypocrisy, poverty, and general misery that have afflicted our planet for thousands of years." The second part of the message is: "Technologies of consciousness available in our world are now recovering the reality of life and thereby fulfilling the birthright of every human being to live a life blissful in nature and cosmic in scope." Technologies of consciousness, like Transcendental Meditation (TM), connect individual intelligence to cosmic intelligence, which conducts the orderly evolution of our ever-expanding, galactic universe without a problem. The group practice of TM and its advanced techniques, like yogic flying, have the leverage to engage cosmic intelligence more powerfully, hastening the transition from darkness and ignorance of the reality of life to the full illumination of a truly enlightened age.
At this time, in 2008, the full range of these technologies of consciousness and other Vedic technologies (for education, agriculture, health, etc.) are being made available in 3,000 Peace Palaces in the largest cities around the world, including 2,400 Peace Palaces in the US. This global campaign by the Global Country of World Peace, which Maharishi founded four years ago to play a parental role to guide all countries of the world to invincibility, will bring full enlightenment within the range of every human being on Earth.

THE MUSIC

John calls himself a "phase transition folk artist" because the art he imparts in his TIMES' BRIDGE Series of CDs describes our present, unique period in time that's booting out the old while embracing the initial stages of a much higher-order reality. In bringing out the message, John takes on George W. and his gang, a generally mindless press, politicians in general, the military, unscrupulous corporate executives and their corporations (Enron and Monsanto for example), and generally any other distasteful colorations marring the space-time landscape. Through all of this, the message rings loud and clear - we can change our world and we can do it very quickly. In his song, Where Are You Now?, John urgently calls upon the peacemakers of the world, past and present, to gather together:

"Instead of marching, we'll all sit,
And fill the world with consciousness."

The alternative John brings out in his version of A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall called Clouds Are Gathering:

"And in the final ticks of your last moment,
The picture gets quite clear.
You're goin' out, not from what you did,
But from what you didn't do while you were here."

John's songs that describe this unique time of phase transition and comment on both the global and US political and social landscape are the songs of his TIMES' BRIDGE series of CDs. Because of the critical need for the knowledge that will bring some sanity, harmony to our world, John naturally emphasizes these songs of phase transition. However, out of another side of John, on his JOHNNY LILA series of CDs, come songs of love lost, crazy days, mysterious brunettes, music shop keepers, breakin' out, moments missed, junior high dances, buying a cookie, a Fed Ex lady, late-night popcorn picture shows, women on display, and a jazzman's riff, among many other images
His most recent CD, PIECE OF ME mixes images of love and tenderness, splinterin’ ties, a candy man who knew John’s dreams, photos from a sweeter time, picture frames, a breeze-blown candle flame, love lifting you up taking you