NOT HUNTING FOR MEANING: a Jandek listening thread

xps

cool w/me too fwiw

it's also cool with me but i also wanted to add that i didn't notice "i knew you would leave" was 10 minutes long until i looked at the tracklisting just now. flies by

see also this weird note on the CD remaster via Seth Tisue:

...the new version is missing a few seconds of guitar playing after Jandek sings “Sometimes I know it not” but before he sings “As the air, no air is still”. (I’m not certain there aren’t other alterations.)

(re: "I Knew You Would Leave")

Put Six and Six on as I was going to bed last night, think I made it through the first three songs. Some cursory thoughts:
Jandek = Swans-like lyrics + song structure (one chord droning over singing of "the universe is everything" nonsense) with Bob Dylan vocals. There's the added element of the disonant guitar tunings, but I don't have the encylopedic knowledge to know what big artist characterises that to add to the Dylan+Swans formula.
Potential Taking Sides: Jandek Vocals vs. Bob Dylan Vocals.

His vocal style seems more subdued in this album compared to ready for the house. None of the swing that you find both rhymically and melodically on a song like "Naked in the Afternoon" on this album, at least the first three songs I listened to. In essence, it makes the album even less musical than the last. Ready in the afternoon really sounds like a boogie woogie in comparison to the hushed vocals over Takoma guitar pulses on Six and Six.

Liking this thread. Happier to go two a week but still happy to do one a week. leave it to Maelin's discretion?
;s

can't say how i know this for sure but six and six feels more focused than ready for the house; the songs are less like weird creeping plants invading every surface and each other and are more... song-like. h.p. you're sorta otm in your description but i find it *more* musical

the "take you to the sky" part in "forgive me" is devastating

Six and Six has the best album cover of the entire oeuvre, and it made people on the mailing list speculate for years how Our Man went to jail. (instead he probably just had a job as a CLEEERK. going to wooork)

just looks like an old photo booth picture to me.

Im not sure I could answer "best album cover" for jandek. just a fantastic collection of covers

If included in what you mean BradNelson by "song-like" is "sonically-more-pleasurable" or "less obtuse" then I definitely agree with you haha. Ambient and harsh-noise are sometimes of the same essence, just on opposite ends of a sliding scale. Six and six and ready for the house seem to be of the safe stuff, but one leans more to ambient and one more to noise.

All that said, I think the crackling pops from the link Sleave posted contribute heavily to my opinion and I might discard everything I just said if I had a different rip of six and six hah.

i've been a bit unwell, but i'll continue to update this thread each week with whatever record we're on. sticking to one/week for maximum mood...

thanks, man. I'll post links after you bump it until we're done with the 22 vinyl releases. looking forward to spending another week or so with Six And Six.

Lurking at the moment... Chair Beside A Window was the first album of his I heard and is still the first one I think of when I consider all of this.

I’ve been slowly trying to work my way through all of the DVDs in order... which has been tough, cuz so many of them really do sound the same. The good ones, though, wow! Might stop the chronology and skip straight to Rudyard’s

?

*taps foot*

*strums detuned guitar*

the other day my son was randomly strumming a detuned classical guitar and I found myself thinking "hm I know that song" before realising what my fucked-up brain was trying to do

i hope maelin is ok

in these scary times, was just thinking the same

bump for maelin cuz I saw them post on the Joanna Newsom thread :)

here's a link to a rip of my Later On LP

https://www.dropbox.com/s/k3khr94aer5qbsc/Jandek%20-%20Later%20On%20LP.zip?dl=0

wow, thank you kind friends. i've just been snowed under working on a record of my own, dealing with physical health stuff too (not virus). i want to embark on this so bad, though i think i underestimated the psychological intensity of prolonged jandek listening. i really do believe it's heavy, existential stuff likely born of solitude and alienation.

perhaps we can keep this up at a rate that's not so rigorous - maybe check in now and then for record after record. i mostly wanted to celebrate corwood and seek more depth in the catalogue. i'll be happy to listen and follow along if sleeve would like to continue posting an LP rip each week or so. thanks ilx for being a cool decentralized community ive been able to retreat to - for a decade now!

thanks for the update! glad you are doing OK. I'll probably post one every 2-3 weeks, when I remember

with Later On, the real star of this show for me is "Jessica" which I find hushed, beautiful, and eerie - a clear precursor to "Nancy Sings"

been going through a jandek thing lately, kinda cherrypicking from around the catalog, kinda wistfully wishing we could pick this up again, if only so i could download the rest of sleeve's vinyl rips

btw i'm currently listening to rudyard's and it is the fucking greatest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSdYBCg48A8

join me

hi ivy, gimme a minute!

ps love that insane Rudyard's thing

so Chair Beside A Window has "Nancy Sings" on it, which I am sure threw all 100 or so Jandek fans of the era for a loop (the first of many curveballs, in retrospect)

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/x7ketukeaa7jtqmq8p67l/h?rlkey=syk4a0r55zfbwhdja886a5djz&dl=0

I can't actually remember anything else specific from this one, so I should relisten!

first one with drums too ("european jewel")

ooh good call

this one, Six And Six, and Ready For The House were reissued on vinyl by the Jackpot label, but they used the CD mixes

I always think "John Plays Drums" is the first drum track but once again Mr. Smith has misled me

been thinking about Jandek a lot lately, actually, very little listening tho lol… contemplating a cordwood industries order but am I really up for this

lol my artist tags on those files above say "Jandel", deepest apologies, fixing now

fixed

man this thing starts off strong, as always an invaluable resource to this early period is here: https://tisue.net/jandek/lyrics.html

We can’t deny there are spirits in this house
You shut the door, the wind closes two more
I laugh a dark laugh, you smile and think about it
You’ll come again I’m sure you can’t refuse

^ my fave jandek song

this is one of my favorites, actually. "down in a mirror" is a classic, "the times" and "love, love" verge on gorgeous, if only in jandek's particularly shadowed way. feels a lot lighter than either ready for the house or six & six and way more focused than later on (which i never commented on, and kind of plays like a b-side collection to the first few records, not necessarily in a bad way)

also the complete version of "european jewel" reveals that it is a velvet underground song that someone left on the stove for too long

I think "Poor Boy" is the most explicit blues nod yet, I believe I commented upthread on the cover connection between Six And Six and a Robert Johnson photo

and then followed up directly with harmonica on the next track, this has always been ghost blues but it took me a while to catch on

You’re livin’ free and livin’ high
You’re like some angel in the sky
You’re like some angel in the sky
You’re like some angel in the sky high high high

I was thinking bout this thread last week too! Think we only did two albums? Let's get back into it!

this is the 4th but the older dropbox links expired, will happily re-up for anyone, just holla at me here

Ready For The House, Six And Six and Chair Beside A Window are my favourite Jandek albums that I've heard (have heard about 15) so I think I am a pretty basic Jandek fan

after those I quite like the mid-late 80s stuff like Telegraph Melts, Follow Your Footsteps, Blue Corpse etc

I've got about 40 albums and saw him 3 times but still feel pretty basic at times.

I think in addition to those the psych/melodic phase that follows the Nancy breakup albums are pretty good (You Walk Alone through to Lost Cause, maybe) and the Noughties phase definitely has its moments (I Threw You Away, The Humility Of Pain, The Gone Wait).

The very latest (Vision of Jewels, Dec 23) has an astonishingly high RYM score so I should probably check it out.

wasn’t my intention but i’ve been listening to a lot of chamber jandek (where do you go from here, maze of the phantom, atlanta saturday/outcast of civilization) and it is some of the most beautiful music ever made

chamber jandek

!!!

i so want to believe this is chamber groups playing in jandek tuning, but i'm sure that's not what it is

no it's better, truly gorgeous orchestral pieces

I don't see how anything could be better, but ok, it's on my to-do list for the day

chamber groups playing in jandek tuning

the mountain step comes close to this

I have actually only heard "where do you go from here" (the gorgeous one) and the NINE DISC Songs Of Morgan which is nine hour-long nocturnes for solo piano. My 84-year-old mom loved the box set when I put it on during a visit, she bought her own copy directly from Corwood!