Jandek

So as you may or may not have heard recently, after 28 years of recording albums (42 of them, at last count) in relative solitude, the man called Jandek has finally decided to tour a little, playing to rapturous crowds of insiders, cultists, avant-guardians, and rubberneckers. Over that time, he’s proved out the old dictum that secrecy begets conspiracy; his no-information, no-tour, no-liner-notes style has engendered lots of conjecture. But it gets in the way of any appreciation of his music, so let’s dispense with the mythology already, as the information is out there. Corwood Industries, his self-run label, is housed in the same building (scroll down to the section “Kurt Cobain’s Thoughts”) as Sterling Smith Corp., a securities brokerage. Et cetera. So, in all likelihood, the man known as Jandek is 59-year-old Houston-based securities broker Sterling Smith. Snappy dresser, probably reasonably well-off, vaguely melancholic disposition. In other words, he’s just a guy. You’ve probably met a dozen guys just like him. The big mystery, as usual, is that there is no mystery.

Which of course means that there is a much larger mystery, a more difficult mystery, a redundant mystery. Jandek obsessives search through lines like “Big time in the city when you wear those boots / I keep repeating / It takes a beating / To wear those boots in the afternoon… I got a letter / I think it’s a vision,” from the first song—”Naked In the Afternoon”—on his first album—1978’s “Ready For the House”—for meanings that are probably there, but the specifics are likely indecipherable to anyone who isn’t Jandek himself. But still, they look, piling through symbologies—the dates, places, mundane details of dress and speech, as well as the occasional reprise or redux of an older song, that pile up throughout his oeuvre—looking for the key. The entire album is accompanied by two, maybe three guitar chords, tuned someplace to the left of sense, but repeated, possibly forever, until they’re frozen in aspic.

Not being a natural obsessive myself, I had to take my time. I was given the opportunity to give the entire massive collection an ear or two—the sheer size, scope, and intensity of vision, over such a long period of time, through changes in instrumentation, collaborators, and technical ability, is staggering in and of itself—and it took me a little over two weeks to pile through it all. I don’t necessarily recommend doing that. Jandek tends to work over an idea, um, pretty thoroughly, which means that four or five albums in a row might be nearly identical, and increasingly difficult to slog through. But in each of these, shall we say, eras there is at least one true gem, as caked in grime and bleary-eyed as may be. It took him three records to plug in his guitar and add a drummer and a bass player for “European Jewel,” from 1982’s Chair Beside a Window and the results almost resemble some inward-bound mutation on the psych-blues of 13th Floor Elevators, all jagged edges and drunken-caveman stomp. 1984’s Interstellar Discussion flirts with maybe the weirdest sort of space-rock you’re likely to hear, as Mr. Smith practically yells (the closest he comes, anyway) “Just because your mother took your daughter from you / Oh no!” on “I Ain’t Got None,” as drums (possibly Jandek himself, possibly a collaborator—no one is credited on any of these records) clatter around, and everything is so over-mic’ed that it begins to spill over from alienated loneliness to alienated rage.

One of the magical things about progressing through his work over a period of time is watching as he begins to trust his more conventional instincts. The strumming on “Babe I Love You” from 1992’sLost Cause is downright folky, as he wistfully croons lines like “Christ is near / If you fear / He knows you / Babe, I love you.” And now we’re contending with Jandek the performer, taking his mythos and ability for a walk, alternately strumming and slashing at this guitar, modulating his voice and instrument for maximum crowd impact. As you can plainly hear on “Real Wild” from Glasgow Sunday, the document of his first-ever live show this past April, he picked that up pretty quick. There’s always been a question of whether or not he knows what he’s doing, if he’s a musician or a savant, as if it matters. The man called Jandek found a route to a music that is his and his alone, and in there is a certain kind of poetry.

Seth Tisue’s A Guide To Jandek is a great resource for all things Jandek, and was invaluable to the writing of this article.