LUDIC LOG

I just got a package of CDs in the mail from Jandek.

I've listened only to the latest ("I Threw You Away", the first Jandek album in three years to feature instrumentation), but it's quite good; a return to mid-period Jandek, when he was starting to test the limits of his own self-imposed and arbitrary boundaries. But, still, saying whether the record is good or bad...well, I don't want to say it doesn't matter. It always matters if the record is good or bad; it never misses to point to ask that question. A recent review of the new Peter Gabriel record (his first in 10 years, a far cry from the ridiculously prolific man from Corwood) said just that thing -- that asking if the record was worth the wait missed the point -- and it infuriated me. It's not that there's no purpose to be served by considering the quality of Jandek's albums, or that it's impossible to apply a critical approach to it; it's that the very language of the creation is so alien to the terms of musical criticism that it leaves you very much at sea as to how to judge it.

For those who don't know, Jandek is the alias of one man who (presumably) lives in Houston, TX and has been writing, performing, recording, releasing, selling and distributing his own music for almost 25 years. No one knows anything about him for sure; he has never given an interview or played a live show. He has no record company, manager, label, producer, or band. The only reason we know what he looks like is that he often puts pictures of someone (presumably himself) on the covers of his albums (which now number an amazing 32), and even that could be a ruse, a gag or a psychotic tic. He is as anticommercial as an artist can possibly be, selling all his music at ridiculously low prices (his entire catalog is available on vinyl and CD, which he presses himself, and given the way he sells them -- dirt-cheap, with shipments that contain far more records than the customer ordered -- it can only be assumed that they're a two-decade-long money-losing proposition) through mail-order only.

As for the music -- well, every non-mainstream band has been called "hard to describe" at one time or another, but this is usually a failing of the person doing the describing. However, it's never been more aptly used than with Jandek. Broadly, he plays (for the most part) horribly mutated acoustic folk-blues; but that gives the music a far more structured connotation than actually exists. Simply put, Jandek's music is alien to every aspect of traditional musical sensibility. Its only real comparison is the Shaggs -- music that sounds like it was created by an extraterrestrial with no idea what Earth music is actually supposed to sound like -- and yet even that comparison is flawed: where the Shaggs were mind-bendingly incompetent, Jandek is just not working in a context where competency matters. He can't (or doesn't want to) sing; the vocals range from a toneless, cavernous, subterranean muttering to a desperate, shrieking half-holler. He can't (or doesn't want to) play the guitar; he wields a frazzled, untuned acoustic that wanders frustratedly around stuttering progressions that utterly fail to progress. Ocassionaly a piano, a harmonica or a drum kit will make an appearance; they're played with the same depressive, meandering anti-skill as the electric and acoustic guitars. The recording quality ranges from lo-fi to no-fi; mic pops, feedback and Jandek hitting the microphone with his mouth are recurring motifs on all his records. The songs have no rhythm, no structure, no melody, no harmony, and no counterpoint. They are music only in loosest, most theoretical sense of "organized sound".

So: why do I like it so much? It's often completely unlistenable (such as his epic "solo voice" albums. His guitar, so badly (or un-) tuned that it sounds almost like a gamelan, so rarely wanders near anything resembling a chord or a melody that it seems like he's just batting at flies that are resting on the strings. The lyrics, while often well-written, darkly poetic and disturbing, are "sung" in a way that either renders them inaudible or makes the hearing of them painful. And listening to a single album all the way through is a torturous exercise in patience and endurance. But: I own almost a dozen of his albums. Someday I hope to have them all. While I can't say he's one of my favorite musicians (even I'm not that bold), I can say that I listen to his music quite a bit. It's haunting, eerie music that comes from the most personal space imaginable; there is no filter whatsoever between creator and audience. It is pure and raw in the sort of way that other musicians cant' begin to approach. Ocassionally, it's downright great, even when its greatness doesn't spring from anything that could be identified in, much less applied to, any other performer. Part of why I like it is its absolute originality: there just isn't anything else like Jandek anywhere in the world. But mostly, it's because it forces you out of the modes of critical assessment you get locked into with traditional music. It's so alien, so at odds with conventional musical structure, so completely removed from the terminology and theory normally used to critique music, that it makes you open up new venues of expression to describe it. And that's a skill that comes in handy when you go back to the world of "real" music.

An acquaintance of mine (no friend of irony) once described Jandek as the most unironic music in existence. He thought that Jandek was so pure and personal and self-directed that there was simply no way to apply cultural criticism to it. I don't agree with that; I think critical evaluation can be applied to any cultural object, no matter how unique or personal, because the artistic endeavor and the critical approach are both part of a human-constructed continuum of cultural expression. But I do think that Jandek is so extreme that he forces the listener into a mode of reception and response that is infinitely more challenging than he or she might be used to. And while you might think Jandek's music is bad -- I would guess that the vast, vast majority of people would -- there's nothing bad about the effect it has on you.

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