Have you ever heard of Jandek? Perhaps you are acquainted with Corwood Industries, or maybe his first band The Units. If not, do not be alarmed. It’s too late to be into Jandek and have that be a cool thing. Why? Because now everyone and their sister knows all about Mr. Jandek. Now that he goes on imperialistic world tours, answers fan mail with sincere replies and regularly plays with full-backing bands, the man behind the legend has stepped out from the listener-constructed image of a hidden recluse into the Modest Mouse or Cat Power-like stardom that functions inversely proportional to street credentials and artistic integrity. We are minutes from seeing this clown on mtvU. He’s probably even on your Last.fm queue and getting ready to play the Pitchfork Music Festival this summer.
After I saw Jandek in Austin, I told my friend about it and she said, “God, Jandek’s turned into such a whore.” She was not employing sarcasm or situational, verbal or dramatic irony – she didn’t even roll her eyes. We can explore the following reasons to see clearly just why Jandek has indeed become a whore:
1. He has now played 34 live concerts.
2. His first concert took seven months of secret negotiations with Corwood Industries to confirm. The only catch was that they could not use his name in any publicity.
3. Loren Conners, Richard Youngs and Alan Licht have all been part of his live supergroups.
4. Jandek has been releasing albums since 1978.
5. One reporter has actually met him.
Now, now, I know what you’re thinking. No one even knows his real name. This American hermetic realist cannot sell out. How can that phrase even be used in the same sentence as Jandek? It’s like talking evolution to Jesus freaks – the two do not live in the same world. Jandek’s music, in an essentialized manner, is a man singing while strumming on an untuned guitar. The truth of the matter is that he does tune his guitar. He tunes it to whatever he thinks sounds good. And his lyrics are not improvised, but fully realized songs that evolve like a negative space in a photograph. His lyrics provide details that provoke the listener’s imagination and fester questions left to the listener to answer.
Jandek’s music places the listener in the center of his world; with a highly developed sense of morality, he makes us project as much onto his songs as we do his identity. Musically, he is as devoted to the laws of physics as his lyrics are to the laws of morality. His songs embody a familiarity with entropy. They seem to be falling apart in some cyclical order. In fact, few recordings have the ability to isolate the listener in such a manner. Even fewer songwriters know how to use detail and realism to give a sense of longing, loneliness and despair.
We relate to the man we construct in our heads. I see him sitting in a room in the outskirts of Houston at three in the morning recording on a broken four-track. I see a bottle of whiskey on the cot in the corner of the room and a lamp on the ground. Each listener encounters a different singer and different songs. The recordings are diverse enough to give each listener an intensely personal and unique connection with Jandek.
When I saw him in Austin, it was a near-religious experience. He performed in a church at sunset, as he stood with his back to his audience wearing all black and a white cowboy hat. When I saw him, he only played harmonica, while his backing band had lap-steel guitar, banjo, violin, piano and drums. Noisy freakouts interrupted harmonious drones, and Jandek never turned around. He never acknowledged the presence of an audience. It’s just too bad he’s a sellout.
Brian Cassidy is an English senior and a music director for KCPR, San Luis Obispo, 91.3 FM. He’s also completely full of it.