NOT HUNTING FOR MEANING: a Jandek listening thread

other thoughts on this record...

I would like to see the Cease & Desist order from The Units (the band), how did they even learn about this LP existing?

soooo many of these early ones were sent to radio stations, a very canny move in retrospect

(college stations, specifically)

that is def where I first saw/heard one of the LPs in like 1987, after reading about them in either Option or Sound Choice

very interesting take on temporality of the releases... though i guess the cover art isn't chronological, either. i think i'll probably end up remarking on the photos and words more than the music.

I'm going to partner this with my once a week Heidegger, Gadamer and Hermeneutics research paper day. The permission these writers give to live in the most bizarre of world I think will partner nicely.

As a guitar tutor, Jandek truly feels likes the destruction of my industry and I am all here for it. I feel like I have heard these tunings and songs in the creation of some 6yo students in their first few lessons. Maybe I should start getting lessons from them.

Genuinely lovely lyrics on this album. "I poured a glass out in the rain".
Sounds like he is going to laugh in some of his lines though, which breaks the spell he's casting.

there's a LOT of incidental laughter in his catalog now that you mention it! good post, thanks! I love his lyrics as well.

True, very keen to run through these. Only listened to one Jandek album before this years and years ago so not familiar with what carries throughout the albums. Speaking of guitar, I am loving the complete irreverance he seems to have for it. Seems like a lot of your "let's get bizaro with the guitar" gang have these underlying heroistic ideas of completely redefining what guitar music might be. That vision seems to be communicated from the diversity with which "bizaro guitar" people interact with their personal bizaro guitar aesthetic. Jandek feels like he just doesn't care. Same tuning for every song. Same "low,high,low,differenthigh" note structure or "strum the same way the whole time". It feels like he really just wanted to get some poetry out there but realised that radio airwaves are a better way to get poetry out there than through trying to self-publish a book. I just get no hint of "I am trying to do something with this guitar playing", and guitar playing is the only other element than his voice in this album which really does feel like its trying to do something. Definitely respect the lack of revolutionary ambition in this completely novel album.

record really nicely married the bleak grey rainy weather outside. i listened to it three times in a row and now regular music feels like it's too much

bless you for this rip, sleeve

H.P, any chance we can get you to post apposite (or randomly selected) heidegger / gadamer quotes as companion texts?

Inside myself there is no question
Just the jangle of our brain
Three times four is twenty-seven
Only fragments still remain

it is actually an amazing experience listening to these songs while reading the lyrics lol

It feels like he really just wanted to get some poetry out there but realised that radio airwaves are a better way to get poetry out there than through trying to self-publish a book

otm

bless you for this rip, sleeve

otm x 2

yes I think "really just wanted to get some poetry out there" is a super good call

I like this Eddie Flowers thing:

Eddie Flowers. Quoted at The History of Rock Music, Vol. 4 (website). “The stark, painfully exposed, untuned-acoustic blues/folk that once made for such a richly uncomfortable listening experience now sounds focused and brilliant. it’s not that the music is any less dark, or the technique any more refined than it was 22 years ago; it’s just that the world has moved closer to Jandek’s reality. The anxious beauty of isolation and doubt.”

That "three times four is twenty-seven" line is the first time I could hear one of Jandek's interior giggle's become audible. Definitely reading the lyric sheet for the next album, or if might listen to ready for the house again with it.

quote for the week:

"if we tell what it is for, we are not simply designating something; but that which is designated is understood as that as which we are to take the thing in question". - B&T 149

And yeah, thank you Sleeve for the link.

Also maybe a pointless suggestion given that live releases are 30 albums and thus 30 weeks away, but assuming we get that far it has to be a committed bunch? Might be worth doing two a week from then-on and including the live albums?? Something that can be addressed when we get there, if this thread keeps enough steam to get to that point.

excellent! will be following & listening this. I agree with HP that 2 per week seems do-able.

Thanks Sleeve!

thread reminded me that 1) i saw jandek live in 2012!!!!! 2) it was great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgqwYfePMd4

wow jandek looks great

I should do this, I have everything up through I Threw You Away and spottily after that, I'll wait for the sun to go down and jam Ready for The House tonight

I listened to ready for the house 2 weeks ago so I'm up to date on the thread.

European jewel is Jandek's pop hit

https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/handle/10315/28169

that's a dissertation called

THEMATIC INTERCONNECTIVITY
AS AN INNATE MUSICAL QUALITY:
AN INVESTIGATION OF JANDEK’S “EUROPEAN JEWEL” GUITAR RIFFS

I can’t do both this and the Xenakis listening thread, I’m afraid, but cool initiative nonetheless.

i'm in. love those first two LPs

I too am in. I know the first four or five pretty well, after that just some here and there.

I lovehow RFTH’s first couple of songs almost have no discernable beginning or end. Like a 20 min song chopped up into random song-lengths, he just drones on. Needless to say I love it, it stops me in my tracks and demands attention. And i dont even know the lyrics that well!

i guess you
like it
that way cuz huh
you're a FLOP

so what do we think the classic Jandek "mic drop" sound is? you can hear one of the first (of many) occurrences here at the end of "What Can I Say, What Can I Sing" - it sounds like him kicking something, or a microphone dropping to the floor or being hit, or some kind of primitive reverb pedal, or hitting "stop" on an old clunky tape recorder... or??

I'm too lazy to sort through the Jandek Google group for this stuff and am mostly just sticking with Seth's website and the excellent Perfect Sound Forever writeup for background on these (https://www.furious.com/perfect/jandek/jandekreviews.html)

(this sound always happens at the end of a song, btw)

so in general I subscribe to the theory that these first 6 LPs represent "fully mature" Jandek, probably recorded in the 76-78 era if I had to guess.

also I'm gonna revise this date range to 1977-1981, when the 2nd LP was released. I do still think some of the later LP material was recorded earlier in the 70's.

btw if u are bored, the search results on ILX posts for "jandek" are hilarious

Sleeve, you are extremely kind sharing that link. I’ve made use of it but have only listened to the first couple of tracks because Jandek is not my typical Friday night music.

I would love him to do a live concert of poetry over Underworld style jams (which would be my Friday night music). It’s not unthinkable since we have already seen him overpowered by funk.

jandecks

<3 Brad

Ready for the House
I always like how 'definitive' Naked in the Afternoon is. He knew *knows* what he is doing. It proves Jandek is a great lyricist, even haters should admire his skills in that department. It contains the sitar-like microtuning bizarro guitar sound which attracts the afficiniados (including me). If you hate that sound, you better Get Out. Rest of the album is more of the same of course, the noise reduction makes it even more eerie (on the cd version). Early phase Jandek, I imagine it went something like this. Jandek wrote lyrics during the dayjob(s), picked out one boozin' night, detuned his guitar, hit record and started singing his map of lyrics. It's basically one jam divided in multiple songs.

the wild thing, though, iirc, is that the guitar *is* actually tuned very specifically through the first six records. I think a different tuning doesn't show up until "Interstellar Discussion" so it's not so much "detuned his guitar" as "properly detuned his guitar"

Sure but does the tuning change between songs or only between albums?

iirc it stays exactly the same for at least the first six, I'd need to do some digging there but iirc it is mentioned in those Perfect Sound Forever reviews

sleeve, can you find the jandek guitar tab archive for me pls?

lol idk, gimme a while

via Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/LetsTalkMusic/comments/743lxv/does_jandek_know_how_to_play_the_guitar/
From the wikipedia page:

Jandek unknowingly gave two unauthorized phone interviews in his entire career, the first conducted by fellow outsider artist John Trubee, for the aforementioned Spin article in 1985. In it, he admitted to having had musical training earlier in life, and refuted an OP magazine reviewer praising "May he never tune his guitar!" by stating that he did indeed tune his guitar, albeit usually to open tunings of his own devising.

tab for 'I'm Ready' here:
https://tisue.net/jandek/mail/mylist/2008-August/005019.html

that's all that comes up in a cursory Google search, though

<3<3<3

my Six And Six LP rip for discussion, keeping to the "two a week" concept

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yhsb05hzfv5nur6/JNDK%200740.zip?dl=0

apparently my copy was Irwin Chusid's first, he later upgraded.

again, the mastering etc is very different than the CD version or the later Jackpot LP reissue.

PFS sez

MASTERPIECE un-remastered, (minor) MASTERPIECE remastered. (NOTE: You can only purchase the new 'remastered' version these days, bugger).

this thing is obviously a masterpiece within the Jandek aesthetic, some of his best lyrics and a "lithium-soaked" (my fave review quote) delivery. Somewhere buried in either ILX, Tisue's website, or the Google Group is a story from someone whose aunt (mom?) dated Jandek in Rhode Island in the early 70s, placing "Point Judith" in the overall Jandek context geographically.

I assume everyone knows about the Robert Johnson cover tribute/connection?

https://www.furious.com/perfect/jandek/graphics/jandek005.jpg

https://www.furious.com/perfect/jandek/graphics/jandek007.jpg

The tuning is different on "European jewel". The rest of rfth is all open strings in the same tuning

ah thank you! yes, anyone who can parse the tunings going forward, I'd love to hear more. is this one the same as RFTH?

Tuning is covered extensively here

https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/handle/10315/28169

― Politically homely (jim in vancouver), Thursday, November 12, 2020 11:05 AM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh shit I thought that was just abt the different European Jewel versions, thank you

Continued use of the “European Jewel” riff material lasts until the album One Foot in the North (1991).

this is totally fascinating, and sounds about right

big block of text about tuning in the first albums from that link:

Ready for the House introduces two of Smith’s main tuning inclinations. The first is characterized by what are considered conventionally dissonant intervallic relationships between pitches of the open strings. Guitar tuning for Ready for the House—rather than keeping only the outer strings tuned to Es, for example—features 4 Es, each detuned somewhat from the other but still recognizable as E variants.130 The first and second strings (both are likely first string E strings) are tuned approximately a quarter-tone apart. The remaining two Es (see Appendix A) are likewise tuned in an unconventional manner. The non-E strings are tuned to A2+ and B-flat 3-. A tritone-like relationship occurs between the sharpened A and the Es, which sound flat. The remaining B-flat makes for another tritone-like dissonance between it and the E variants. Further dissonance still is formed by the A/B-flat combination, which in effect creates a detuned, narrow minor ninth interval.

In the case of Ready for the House, all tracks but the last, “European Jewel,” are played on the guitar’s open strings. In most instances, dissonances that would result from the detuning are not as strongly perceived—or nor as jarring—as they would be if pitches were to be played harmonically (simultaneously) and at a stronger volume.131 Dissonance is, in some ways, mitigated by Smith’s mode of playing. Often notes are plucked or brushed lightly. They are also frequently played in near temporal isolation from one another. Overlapping between pitches often only occurs during the decay portion of the first pitch’s sonic envelope in the case of notes played individually. Regarding the second stream of tunings employed by Jandek, this begins with the debut’s concluding track, “European Jewel.” In this case, a tuning whereby the open strings form what is close to the notes of a major quality triad is used. Open strings major tuning is commonly implemented in blues music. Jandek’s tunings are, however, not standard in terms of the intervallic relationships which occur at the microtonal level (see Chapter Four). That said, when compared to the rest of the album, the tuning deviations heard on “European Jewel” seem minimal (see Appendix A), thereby providing contrast between the last track of the albums and all other tracks.

Smith likely uses two first string Es on the first three releases. One is positioned where it would be found ordinarily, as the highest sounding of the strings, the first string. The other is strung in the usual place of the second string. Chair Beside a Window (1982) takes this alteration a step further. On the recording the high Es are tripled. According to Corwood, processes involved for string choice were both practical and intuitive: whatever strings were available were
those that were used. This process of string selection differed from later releases where “matched” strings were used. Presumably, what Corwood meant by “matched” strings (this was not explained in full) were those which were intended to be strung according to their conventional placement (high E in the first string position, etc.) While on the first several albums the guitar is detuned in a similar manner, more conventional tuning—and indeed stringing of the instrument—is made with the fifth release, Living in a Moon So Blue (1982). Though “matched” strings became the norm for later releases, Smith continued to not adhere to conventional tuning systems for the vast majority of his solo studio releases.

<3

the mountain step comes close to this

well that one instantly put a big, stoopid grin on my face

oh shit whoops wizards hour was 2009... why did i misread it as 2012 lol

well i guess i have to continue hoping he'll one day release that vaudeville park show so i can relive that memory

Great story about your mom sleeve. Songs of Morgan is going to be my study playlist for today

I keep repeating, it takes a beating
To grow up naked in the afternoon

Ivy, they put that group together just to do the Vaudeville Park shows, but it was filmed for an episode of ESP TV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja_inwDsmNo

And yeah awesome story sleeve :)

Maze Of The Phantom was an outlier at first, even for Jandek, but I've grown to like it a lot. I'll always stan for the electric bass albums - The Gone Wait, Shadow Of Leaves.

Super-stoked to have tickets see the Rep & co. next week!

omg thank you for that video deflatormouse

You're welcome. I've collaborated with ESP TV on a couple of events, they are super nice & meticulous archivists of analog media. i'm sure they have a recording of the whole show(s), less sure it's been digitized. i could ask.

Living In A Moon So Blue (1982)

I love the cover of this one, returning to the debut's baffling real-world images after three self-portraits. The album is a collection of 16 miniatures that I recall nothing about off the top of my head. Kinda goes along with the cover I guess. Gonna give it a spin when this Tom Petty album is over.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/rkyp209zbzmqomx2wmwb7/h?rlkey=jw4p0elunppgb7n1locfwtosb&dl=0

Bludgeon (1/8)
Please do not push any buttons
On this machine
On what machine
Wet paint
Keep Out

no comments on this one? it does seem like a bit of a retread of earlier ideas...