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Prognosis: Jandek

For those who don’t know, Jandek is a reclusive musician from Texas who has put out about 40 albums over the last 25 years, all recordings of subtle variations on his very unique and personal brand of damaged lo-fi blues folk, for lack of a better term. Occasionally scary and/or disturbing, but often compelling, a majority of his albums are filled with his moaning over what seems to be improvised stabbings at a de-tuned acoustic guitar. People don’t really know anything about him, due to the lack of available information and his refusal to make direct contact with fans regarding his music over the course of his career.

At long last, Jandek has revealed himself to us. 200-odd lucky Jandek fans, including myself, were witness to his first performance ever in New York City last ngiht, September 6, 2005. This is only his 4th or 5th live performance if I’m counting correctly. After a prolonged waiting period, we were let into the theatre. After about 10 minutes the lights dimmed and the room grew silent instantly. After a brief introduction by Barry Esson, who booked the show, and much palpable tension, Jandek lurked onto the stage with his band. I don’t know the names of the guys who played, but there was a drummer, guitarist, upright bassist, [possibly Nick Hennies, Chris Cogburn and Juan Garcia named in Wikipedia as being in the band at the 8/28 show in Austin, TX. ed.] and then Jandek all the way on the right with… two keyboards?! To my surprise, he played no guitar over the course of his 90-minute set.

The music they created took on a curiously jazzy experimental form, sounding like a vast amorphous blob of soft noise. Jandek’s atonal electirc piano sounds were almost gentle while the standing guitarist plucked away with his thumb long echoing notes. The rhythm section generally pounded away in a deep, dark, throbbing dirge, the whole group moping along until suddenly a surge of notes from Jandek’s keyboards would kick them all into a wave of more aggressive noisemaking. This was the repeated theme, musically, throughout the night. About halfway through the set, the guitarist(who resembled a greasier Bono in black leather, hair, and sunglasses from my vantage point) suddenly stopped playing and just sat there for the rest of the set, holding his hands to his head when the music got particularly loud. I’m not sure if this was planned or not, though honestly it looked like the guy was on a bad trip or something. It was a suitably disconcerting backdrop for Jandek’s unique lyrics.

From a book sitting on his keyboard, Jandek would read in his wild moan-sing voice when the music inspired him thus. The lyrics of the show were all new, as far as my knowledge, though every now and then a line would seem to reference earlier Jandek songs. There was a definite theme to all of the words used, centering around the idea that “there’s nothing to do”, with frequent mentions of failure. Jandek started the second blob of music by stating rather bluntly “seems like I’ve been depressed my whole life” and went on to tell a story of a summer day when he was 11 years old. Young Jandek is outside and cant find anything to do. He goes inside and complains to his mother “there’s nothing to do”, to which mom replies “oh just go outside, you’ll find something to do”, after which Jandek “went outside and did things”. The lyrics went off on this point from then on for the majority of the show, about Jandek’s belief that there is in fact nothing to do, and that we as humans manufacture situations so we will have things to do. “Self-stimulation is the deathbed, Liiiiiife is on the other side” I felt like at any moment he might start directly addressing the audience, or that he might go on to say that the performance itself was pointless. At times it seemed like he was trying to tell us that he appreciated the attention but that it didn’t matter. In general, it was an awkward experience, but too unique to not be appreciated, and his words will have me thinking for awhile, as usual. In effect, this lyrical approach led to the performance as a whole holding up to all my expectations by exposing the falseness of those very expectations.

In the days leading up to the performance, I was anxious that perhaps the music would not hold up to the myth… but now, having seen it, I realize that at its best, Jandek’s music takes me out of my skin and into a scary little world that most people would rather not visit. This performance absolutely provided that intense ultra-personal feeling. As a fan, I was stunned.

Reviewed for Coffeerooms by G.Mazz - Talk about it here