JANDEK...JANDEK...JANDEK

kurt cobain once sagely imparted that "jandek makes music that is completely unpretentious, but only pretentious people listen to him." cobain's remark is seemingly fatuous, but actually rather incisive. jandek's mere name is inextricably woven to "obscurity" and the barest notion of "difficult music." quite a few profess to having heard and enjoyed his music, though that statement could reasonably be tempered with suspicion.

about two years ago i was disgustingly fortunate to see jandek actually perform with a drummer and trumpeter in ann arbor, michigan. the show was being sponsored by the university and was - to the best of my recollection - free of charge (i'll still have the poster that i pillaged from the coffee shop down the street advertising this exceedingly rare occasion). without even attempting to enumerate the audience that showed up, i could safely gauge about 3/4 of the small theater was brimming with people (most of whom had adopted the whole world-weary with windblown hair, excess of scarf and thick black glasses look). jandek arrived onstage and began to play...well, jandek music. after less than 20 minutes, half of the place was emptied. in another 15 minutes, about 40 to 50 people remained amidst the pocked fissures of vacant seats. jandek played for approximately an hour and a half, verging on two hours. none of the compositions were even remotely familiar, but even then i'm not sure if anything that was played was on any of his recorded albums (given that i've heard roughly 10 of his 60 available records). i'm fairly confident that it was all an extemporaneous, improvisatory performance, especially given the look of sheer confusion and uncertainty that periodically swept across the gently tanned face of the trumpeter. jandek sat hunched over a guitar, propped up on a stool to the right side of the stage, intermittently mumbling or emitting bizarre squeals and glossolalia. in all honesty, it was one of the top 5 concerts i've yet attended, and though i had only a cursory grasp of his discography, i knew precisely what to expect. the point is that anyone who has listened to more than 2 or 3 jandek records would indubitably expect the same, so given this idea why would so many people attend a concert that would entice them to leave after so short a period of time?

i have my personal affections for jandek's music on the basis of what his sound evokes, and the way in which it marks me. his music reminds me of a line that burroughs wrote about america, that it is "evil before the settlers. the evil is there waiting." old black music, particularly skip james and leadbelly, managed to capture this subcutaneous, indefinable evil, this mysterious and shadow-laden america. skip james especially, evoked sentiments and atmospheres, a part of the living world that is dark and deeply stowed away. i liken jandek to both james and leadbelly for these reasons (though leadbelly certainly had his more amiable moments), in that he reflects what greil marcus called "the old, weird america." the basement tapes of bob dylan elicit a similar response, and all of the aforementioned works and artists have all reached to the center of the american earth. jandek's music is more atonal, absent of structure and meandering than any of those artists, but the territory that he mines is indescribably similar. i'll probably upload the entirety of dylan's basement tapes in a few posts, given how taken i am with them. for now, however, if you haven't heard jandek, please give him some consideration and approach his music with a bit of flexibility.






download "ready for the house" from sendspace:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/8m9itv