Jandek @ ICA - Boston, 8 June 2007, "The House of Despair"
What Jandek does is art, but it feels starkly immature for a 50 year old man. At some point in art there is craftsmanship (or in this case, musicianship) keeping the audience engaged by letting us know there were choices made. If not, it is chaos, and we are left staring at the sun listening to radio static. "The House of Despair" was not chaos, but it's close enough that an unknowing ear may have thought Jandek picked up the bass guitar for the first time twelve hours ago.
I discussed this with fellow Jandek concert goers, and we all realized about 10 minutes in that we were going to see essentially one song for two hours: a jumble of free jazz drums, complete with bells, a dozen types of sticks, and violin bows on cymbals; avant-garde sax and meandering processed lyricon; a trumpet muted five ways often being sucked instead of blown, while scraped with sheet metal or steel wool; and finally Jandek himself, a fountain of anti-harmony, tweaking pallid bass tones, concerned much more about how high on the fretless the fingers on his right hand strummed than the actually notes he created with his left.
It was without melody, scale, and key, and it was almost devoid of pace entirely. The lyrics were weak and nasal often repeating "she knocked on my door", "house of despair", "she doesn't know I know", etc. Some audience members slept until a stop for applause, which happened nine or ten times, but only as pauses, not for changes in the sound (except for the drummer). People were bored; some left an hour in. And were it not for the spectacle of Jandek pushing the envelope of music in a truly artistic space, it would have been a failure that even a ten year old could have matched.
We all know Picasso had stated that he dearly wanted to and tried to paint like an innocent child, but does that mean he drew stick figures?
(D+)
A+.
Improvised, Creative, Experimental, Avant-Garde, Outsider (or WTF you want to call it) music, at least in my humble opinion, is about texture, emotion, and even more importantly, <b>REACTION</b> (especially if there is more than one musician).
When the music is less or completely un-rehearsed and there are no moorings or landmarks like key, melody, harmony, or whatever, performers need to be even more bound to one another than if they did have such traditional musical building blocks to hold on to.
If the musicians aren't in tune with one another, one or more players will really stick out in a bad way.
Upon an evening of similar "challenging music" in NYC, my sister and Jackie expressed many of the above sentiments in reaction to the Cecil Taylor set they had just witnessed. 'My pets make more pleasant sounds, a child could do this, etc.'
I understand and appreciate that a vast majority of people who fervently enjoy and appreciate music have trouble with all the atonal type of stuff.
After doing a radio show laden with this genre for over ten years, I have a few observations:
1.
In my experience, Like meditation and mindfulness, to fully experience this type of stuff your mind has to be completely silent and absorbent to everything in the present (I'm thinking specifically of Thich Nhat Hanh here for some reason), sometimes when I go to a performance such as this, I sit and try to "get" or "receive" what is going on around me and just cant get into it, focus on it, or comfortably integrate the sounds I'm experiencing.
It's almost as if Im a radio tuner that is endlessly going around in "Seek" mode without finding a channel. I think about who I'm meeting for dinner afterward or about leaving before the encore or what Im doing at work the next week. If I am not well-rested (which is like always with a nitro-fueled three year old) I may fall asleep. All of this is ok. I have found sometimes in the middle of lets say Peter Brotzmann, or Cecil Taylor, or Art Ensemble of Chicago any and/or all of the above have washed over me.
However, for me, it is always worth waiting around because my mind does almost always eventually lock in to the present and the reactions and emotions of the performers and its just as exhilirating as any yoga or meditation session.
2. A little bit goes a long way.
My show was only an hour a week for a reason. The music has and will probably always have a limited audience, but even as a big fan of this type of music, I am not always in the right frame of mind for it.
3.People generally react negativly to things that are unfamiliar to them.
You'd get some really rabid phonecalls from folks asking you 'what the hell is wrong with the station, is it broken?', or, 'If ______ recorded a bowel movement would you go out and buy that and talk about how wonderful that is, too?'
I am painfully aware of the emperor's new clothes argument, but ultimately I like to support creative people who are unafraid to fail and experiment with everything that they've got. Thank God there are Jandeks in this world.
What would happen if we locked Conor in a room with a pair of testosterone-filled speakers and a six disc changer loaded up with <i>Ascension</i>, <i>Machine Gun</i>, <i>Torture Garden</i>, <i>Free Jazz</i>, <i>Metal Machine Music</i>, and <i>Blue Corpse</i>? :)
That being said, after reading your explanation above I am much better able to "get" your love of the genre, if not the genre itself. Thanks for taking the time.
And to answer your question, MF DU:
I don't know, as I don't know the things you've listed. Yet, if they're anything like "The House of Despair", I would wonder why someone recorded them. And the more I listened, the more I'd wonder, wishing for the choatic sounds of moving water, wind, or traffic.
-jandekian/texas
<img src="http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Third_Party_Photo/2007/06/08/1181323013_5329.jpg">
Before Friday's show, the <a href="http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2007/06/08/who_is_jandek/">glob</a> ran a two page feature on the Corwood representative.
The Jandek list Epoisses alluded to was hilarious -
I just read some of that listserv and one of the guys posted proved my point exactly - he had been up since 5:45 am and had been in the sun before the show.
I kept falling asleep awhile ago at a Chris Ware show @ the Brattle and it was simply because I had been burning the candle at both ends.
I used to increduously wonder how anybody watching a movie could fall asleep mid-movie when in a theater - this was before kids.
Also, here is a write-up from the <a href="http://theedge.bostonherald.com/musicNews/view.bg?articleid=1005657">Herald</a>.
!!!
<i>
You are a strange musician.
You are a mystery to the world.
The people flock to wonder about you.
You are a good person.
Jaaannnndek
Jaaaannndek
Jaaaannndek
Jaaaaanndek
In 1988 you released an album called "Blue
Corpse"
People don't know who you are.
You release an album a year.
You want to be left alone.
Jaaaaanndek
Jaaaaanndek
Jaaaaanndek
Jaaaaanndek
Your record label is called Corwood.
You played a concert in Ireland that whupped a llama's
ass.
You drank beer with a reporter and saw "The Matrix."
You have red hair.
Jaaannnndek
Jaaannnndek
Jaaannnndek
Jaaannnndek
Rock on Houston. Rock on Chicago.
Wheaties, breakfast of champions.</i>