Jandek

You're just as well off casting runes or rolling a 12-sided die to choose one as having one recommended to you. In my experience, anyhow.

really?!

You Walk Alone is a really good one if you like the blues. It sounds like Royal Trux.

Anyway, I'd try one of those before I'd get the recent, all-vocal, ones.

Also, if you haven't, take a look at this, a really well done site with little capsules about the records.

If you're gonna get one of his spoken albums, try This Narrow Road. The way the dictaphone (or whatever he's using to record) cuts in and out has a great effect.

If I remember correctly, the first half dozen or so albums are very similar in sound. So, as others have recommended, get Ready for the House and then skip ahead to the next period (drums! Nancy!).

I like The Living End and White Box Requiem. Also, most of the albums from the collaborative period (with Nancy et al) have some great songs. I don't really get into the first three or four albums quite so much, and the spoken word records are hard going (but very very interesting if you set them to your own music)..

Worthwhile URL: http:// www.jandekoncorwood.com and http://tisue.net/jandek

Ready For The House is absolutely soul-crushing, terrifying stuff. I'd definitely recommend it, but be prepared to be completely creeped out by it -- it's a seriously claustrophobic piece of work. As for the most recent stuff, I haven't heard the latest non-spoken-word CD, but the one before it, I Threw You Away, is pretty wild, full of moaning and howling. I'd say it's worth getting.

Oddly, I have yet to really be grabbed by Blue Corpse, which seems to be a favorite of many Jandek fans. I remember liking Telegraph Melts, though.

Alas and alack.

It's turned into something more involved and interesting than I expected, and is definitely no longer trying to be an exact portrait like the earliest chapters try and be. Somewhere between fanfic and psychological study, eventually. Or so I hope.

I'll have to set aside some time to read your stuff, Ned...

1)

Damn man, I've been yelling on Twitter about wanting to do a Jandekcast for several years now. Sometimes I've been conceiving it seriously - or as something completely different while the Jandek album in question plays in the background.

Basically, the Jandekcast should be to podcasts what Jandek is to all other music. Or something.

Would be interesting doing track by track analysis with some of those albums,with snippets

Would definitely subscribe to the jandekcast patreon. Especially if elvis telecom made guest appearances.

At risk of liver damage, if our voices could make a Jandekcast work and worthy of the Rep - I'm in.

you need a separate podcast just for the LP covers. will never not be in awe of the countless non-chronological portraits captured of the rep throughout his life.

i think i could spend forever thinking about jandek.

I would 100% kickstart a moderately expensive coffee table/art book with good 12x12 reproductions of the original album covers

So one time the Rep from Corwood played a gig in Mankato, MN and his band featured some friends of mine so post-gig we end up at a little house party & the Rep himself was there, in all black, big hat, etc. And so obv no one is talking to him & it is all very awkward and weird, like this is a REALLY small place.

And we were kind of told by the host of the party that we probably shouldn't talk to him but one of my friends who I rode down with was like "we gotta talk to Jandek, but I don't know what to say" and my friend is not like a shy person at all but we were all a bit starstruck.

I decide, dude is from Texas, I know how to talk to someone from Texas, so I go up to him

"Hey, uh good show man"
Rep From Corward, totally stone faced: "..."
"Yeah...so, hey if I went to Houston where is the best place to get BBQ?"

At this point his eyes light up, he gets this little grin and sez: "huh, well I make the best BBQ in Texas" and from that point on I cannot get Jandek to shut up, we talk whiskey, hats, wild javelinas, BBQ, but anytime we even get close to music or anything he gets really quiet.

It was a weird night man, HBD weirdo

haha fucking brilliant. i feel like he's a normal bloke who doesn't want the spirits his house have given him. hank hill and the rep have a lot in common.

lmao that's an amazing story

perhaps it's just me but I really cooled on Jandek after that two-part interview in The Wire - like, I know he didn't actually say much but it was still kinda too much information

much preferred having a speculative relationship with the Jandek project

having said that the one time I saw him live (Melbourne, with David Keenan and Heather Leigh) was extraordinary

Was disappointed by the show I saw — he had an amazing band (Loren Mazzacane Connors, Matt Hecker, and Chris Corsano) but played synth and recited poetry all night instead of going improv noise-jam like you normally would if you had those three behind you. LMC got a couple of good solos off, though.

xp I'm pretty sure 90% of that interview was total BS

Saw three shows in the space of a week and were all very different from memory. Two Youngs/Neilsons bookended a Mick Flowers/Chris Corsano show which was probably the noisiest? Third show was most structured and had some definite angular/post punk tunes you could probably have hummed the tune to. One even had a dance routine of sorts, or at least defined arm waving.

Actually the thing I remember most is the Representative carrying around what seemed to be his musical wordly goods - lyrics sheets, song notes, strings - in a supermarket carrier bag that he held overly tightly.

I'm pretty sure 90% of that interview was total BS

BS as in it was deliberately trying to twist the tail of Wire-reading chins-strokers? Or BS as in made up?

Either way it was kind of a drag

completely made up, imo

he had an amazing band (Loren Mazzacane Connors, Matt Hecker, and Chris Corsano) but played synth and recited poetry all night instead of going improv noise-jam like you normally would if you had those three behind you.

this is the jandek way. he's not going to ride the wave, he's going to try to fuck it up and be alienating wherever possible. and recite poetry.

about to start marathon listening to entire corwood discography, one LP a week. groovy! who's in? ...anybody? ...

I'm in for a while, first 22 at least

I would be very down for a Jandek listening thread/discussion

I'm in

Jandek...the book.

Jandek New BOOK Release:

0127 The Rays Of Light That Did Not Illumine https://t.co/s2obsK93TT pic.twitter.com/SLwvEDCEIR

— Sheila Smith (@veganloca) May 17, 2021

I'm assuming poetry...but hoping for confessional autobiography.

Then it turns out it's just nothing but accounting figures.

"1990, good year."

Hoping for horror stories, expecting lyrics

hoping for political cartoons

given the title and shape I'm guessing LP cover photobook

friend of mine got it

20 page prose poem

only $10 on the website!

what does it mean when Jandek just sounds REALLY right to you? like, the planets are aligned and any album or live recording of his is just...right in your mental wheelhouse. all the chords and notes and riffs sound like the perfect way to play something. the singing and lyrics the perfect way to express life on earth.

it isn't always like this. by a long shot. should i call a doctor? or just roll with it while it lasts?

i mean this glasgow sunday live album right now is just hitting the spot in a big way. but i've been listening all morning and it just sounds righter and righter.

Just roll with it. That aphorism about everything finding an audience eventually is legitimate.

Too bad yr not in Los Angeles, Jandek is playing the Lodge Room tonight and there's still tickets available

sometimes when I’m listening to John Oswald’s Plexure I’m just like “I don’t need to listen to anything else again. can all music be like this?”

yeah in my experience listening to Jandek is this journey from "I'm too upright to not have to be thinking about the whole deal" to "I'm listening to music, but I'm also thinking about Jandek" to "I've internalized all the stuff about Corwood and his anonymity and his emergence and that's all background now and I'm just listening and it feels like music that is very alive, very human, very individual."

Telling my kids this was Primus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLwiYpSTFE

that is such a magical clip

Grab yrself a can o' Cor woo-da

I know I heard this late at night on KROQ in 1981

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgAdBibDVwE

call me crazy but jandek and his wife seem annoying af and im glad i didnt pay to see that haha

first of all - i am totally happy for him and them
but wow, given what Jandek represented way-back-when
(i was at that first glasgow gig)
it is hard to wrap my wee brain around the idea that he's in a long-term relationship with (married to?) someone who likes to post snaps of them both on instagram! such an inversion of the earlier anonymity. it's kinda nice.

https://www.instagram.com/veganloca/?hl=en

my brother took my nephews to that rudyards gig. they must have been 10 & 13 or so
apparently the encore started up exactly where the main set emded

wow i had no idea about mrs. jandek! so weird. she is a really big Smiths fan. what a world we live in.

call me crazy but jandek and his wife seem annoying af and im glad i didnt pay to see that haha

all the best Jandek stuff is pretty annoying! but it's for getting annoyed by in the privacy of your home

Don't paint your teeth

too late

It's wild looking back that all the speculation at the time was that Sterling was ill and close to death which was why he started playing shows, when now with hindsight it looks far more likely it was his wife's idea.

he had definitely been ill, at least according to my nurse wife who saw him play in like 2007-2008 and was struck by it

i.e. why not both?

sometimes a good relationship can change someone's life

every time i eat a cantaloupe i hear jandek singing "cantaloupes are SOOOOOO good to eat"