Jandek

written Sunday afternoon:

Jandek is performing in Toronto tonight. I am going to see, because this is unheard of. For twenty-six years, no one knew who Jandek was, or where he was from, or what he was about, but the albums kept appearing, attributed to a post office box in Houston.

Still no one knows anything about Jandek. But now he is making some performances.

The music is almost unlistenable. It is extremely eerie, and can put you into a trance. The guitar is not in any sort of known tuning, and the voice is a soft scrawl, sounding defeated and ruined. It sounds like nothing else at all. It is dissonance. I am guessing that every song is off the cuff, nothing determined beforehand, which basically means that everything is improvised, maybe just a small batch of cryptic words.

To be honest, i do not enjoy listening to Jandek very much. It is even too dark and detached for me. But as an impossibly analytical fan of both music and enigmas, this is something that i must see. Jandek is the most famous active outsider musician. Outsider musicians are often mentally disturbed and have no training, no connections, sometimes no aptitude.



--

written now:

Wow, that was terrible.

There was definitely the feeling of anticipation from the crowd. This is a guy who has built of a sizable cult following and constructed a huge impenetrable shroud of mystery around himself and everything that he does. The entire theatre was silent for 4 minutes prior to Jandek coming out. You could hear the footsteps of the band walking to the stage. That's how quiet it was.

But then it was just bad.

It was Jandek and three other guys, and they improvised with guitar, upright bass, percussion, and Jandek on keyboards. And if it had just been the other three guys, it would've been alright as far as improvisations so.

But Jandek's keyboard playing was so inane, pointless, just up and down the white keys, over and over and over again, and the synth voice was GOD FUCKING AWFUL. It reminded me of a twenty-dollar Casio i owned at the age of eleven. Even John Tesh would have thought twice about using that particular synth voice. So goddamn cheesy, relentlessly cheesy, unforgivingly cheesy.

And then there were the semi-improvised lyrics. Which were just Bad. Like unthoughtful and not nearly cryptic enough stream-of-consciousness meanderings. Jandek was talking the words more than the dissonant singing that he is known for. It was almost entirely lame, a lot of talkings about being a disillusioned old man in the working world, being upset, being in a sick bed, a lot about rain...

It is hard to describe, but suffice it to say, there were a lot of those moments where you are blushing out of embarrassment because of someone Else being a haughty pretentious jackass, and also feeling that you would laugh a lot if no one would notice, but everyone would and so instead you are horrified.

For me, this whole depthless and shapeless enigma was ruined a little into the second song. Such misguided pretense. I guess that when being extremely pretentious, good choice in instruments and a lack of vocals are pretty much mandatory. I would have left midway through, but i wasn't sure if Jandek had garnered enough power through desolation to be able to strike people down with his eyes, which incidentally never glanced at the audience, so i guess i shouldn't have been worried. Never once was the audience acknowledged, which was to be expected, i guess.

Anyway. Afterwords i just craved loud rock songs in 4/4 time, with thunderous drums and lyrics that alluded to Robert Plant having sexual intercourse with underage girls, and of course with mindnumbing riffages and extended guitar solos.

Sorry, Jandek. I am disillusioned with you.