SHOW REVIEW: Jandek, Houston, 3/10

Sunday night's show should have just been billed as "Maze of the Phantom, class of 2012 reunion". If you haven't listened to the 2012 Jandek studio album of the same name, this will mean very little to you. However, if you, like me, purchased a copy of "Maze. . .", you will be able to recollect the very specific type of music played. For those of you who need to play some catchup (or think you know Jandek), click on the link above for a chunk of the Maze.

Sterling gathered all of the musians that patricipated in this album, under one beautiful roof (St. Paul's Methodist Church, in downtown Houston), and led a series of ad hoc pieces that could all have easily been alternate takes for Maze, albiet with the added treat of the church's cavernous reverberation. It was not a recital of Maze, but rather another stab at spontaneous collaboration, using all the mostly the same intstruments and all the same musicians. The only true difference between the original album and this live reinterpretation, was the fact that the representative from Corwood was propped up by a grand piano, rather than synth keyboard. 

The music of each player was a visual and sonic treat. Percussion was provided by James Metcalf, who was stationed behind an unconventional drum kit composed of various bells, woodblocks and more. Isabelle Ganz provided heavenly operatic vocalizations mixed with some entertainingly unusual, not-so-operatic vocalizations. Eric Avinger played flute and an electric guitar filtered, through, among many other effects, a volume pedal (think of some delicate Steve Howe work here) and some modulation pedals. The billing listed Eric's slot as "space guitar", which sounds odd, but, while it's hard to explain, if you listened Sunday night, it would not seem appropriate to list his contributions as merely "guitar." May Deyer played cello and sporadic harp accompaniment was supplied by an unnamed woman, who was not announced on the bill.

It was a magical collaboration that, while, to the vanilla ear, probably bordered on bizarre at times, was surprisingly melodic and majestic. Sterling did not leap to the fore too often but he had his moments. His work on the piano was far more subdued and melodic than what most people are probably used to hearing when guitar-hero Jandek (as I like to describe this persona) shows up.

Even though I love to hear Sterling sing, chant, -do spoken word stuff- and wish he had chipped in a few pieces of wisdom, this show was mindblowing and will sound great once pressed by Corwood. Judging by the normal rate of Jandek's live album output, it will be available for purchase in about 2018.

Jandek quitely announces 6 pm Sunday gig

I only found out about this two days ago via an unceremonious email from Sugar Hill studios' Andy Bradely. But, really, finding out this way, as opposed to the usual Facebook notification or listing on Space City Rock, seems more appropriate, given the cryptic nature of the enigma that is Jandek.

Mr. Bradley kindly gave me the following information:

"JANDEK CONCERT
SUNDAY MARCH 10th 6PM
AT: ST. PAUL'S METHODIST CHURCH
CORNER OF MAIN STREET AND BINZ in the MUSEUM DISTRICT
FEATURING:
JANDEK-keyboard
Erich Avinger-Space guitar and bansuri flutes
Max Dyer-cello
Isabelle Ganz-vocals
Mary Radspinner-harp
James Metcalfe-percussion" 

When I asked how much it would be to attend, he wrote me, "ten bucks." I hope to see some of you there.

PS If anyone has any idea what a "space guitar" is, would you be so kind to send me an answer by email? It sounds intriguing.

Jandek - Atlanta Saturday

It is always an occasion when Houston's mysterious, bearded bard releases a new album. There's never any notice and absolutely no promotion. I only find out when my inbox is filled with a deluge of chain emails from the Jandek mailing list about first impressions and song meanings. People have a tendency to hit "reply all" in the fan club so it is literally impossible to ignore the emails when something like that occurs in the world of Jandek. 

Atlanta Saturday was recorded in Georgia in 2007 and is a surprisingly serene and harmonic addition to the Jandek discography. Instead of playing his electric guitar, as is customary, Sterling sits down at the piano. The representative is accompanied by bells, strings, and what sounds like an oboe. Much of the performance is a quiet but lively modern classical style, pregnant with such pomp and gravitas that even its seeming joviality is loaded with precarious emotion: a sound that brings Philip Glass to mind. Sterling and his vocals seem more invested in the performance than usual. What typically sounds aloof and neurotic about his voice instead this time sounds vulnerable, sincere, and ready to share some unnamed grief or burden. 

He plunks steadily and rather harmoiously on the piano until "Part 6" which devolves into a chaotic whirlwind of simultaneous, seemingly unrelated melodies coming from each instrument and ramming forcefully into each other. But somehow there is still a sense of sharing and collaboration. Around minute 8 of this longest and most interesting track, Sterling comes unhinged again and descends into the old, familiar, depression and turmoil, "I just got so tired of it all. I'd rather stare at the bland oasis, the barren track of silence ambles the pictures passing by." Final tracks, 7 and 8, leave the listener with more beautiful, safe, classical improvisation and Sterling crooning once again in a more subdued manner.

It's a great treat for die-hard fans like me and wouldn't be a horrific place for Jandek newbies to get their feet wet. Getting ones' self used to the subtleties and strange beauty of Jandek is like boiling a frog alive: it must be done gradually or the subject will inevitably jump out and away.

An open invitation to all my readers

Since late May, I've been working to get Houston's most famous outsider artist, Jandek, to play another Houston date this summer. Luckily, my friend Jonathan and I have been planning monthly music showcases and we already had one set up for July 12. On that date the representative from Corwood and an ensemble of two punk musicians will join together and make beautiful music

The event will be hosted at Mango's Cafe (403 Westheimer Road) and will be 7 dollars at the door. There will be no advance tickets. Lineup order is kind of up in the air with exception of the Jandek performance which will start at 8 o clock SHARP according to the representative. Come out and show your support for local Houston music and for the city's coolest enigma: Jandek!

RSVP to the Facebook event here.

Plunging into more Jandek after his Big Star Bar blowout

After moving to a new place with my own mailbox I decided to finally solicit the mysterious Corwood Industries for my first fix of actual Jandek CDs. I've been back into Houston's man in black ever since his explosive April 1st electronic gig at Houston's Big Star Bar. He filled the room with stabs of sinister feedback, occasionally talking out mystical, lyrics about love and hate. I have high quality recordings of the first two songs. I promise I'll eventually post these for your listening pleasure.

A little background for those of you who have no idea who I'm talking about, Jandek is a Houston born outsider musician known for his dissonant guitar playing and more recently, his foree into post-modern free-jazz collaborations. He started making albums in the early 80s and has churned out over 50 albums since then, all distributed through the clandestine, Jandek-only, Houston record label Corwood Industries.

In order to get your hands on official, new, Jandek merch of any kind you have to send away via snail mail to p.o. box 15375, Houston Texas, 77220. The actual discography with prices of each item is posted on the hyper-minimalist label website. Recently, I sent away for four albums and about a week later they came in this inconspicuous brown paper package:

The albums that I got were as follows:

Khartoum (2005)

This one is extremely inaccessible for beginners. I've acquired the bizarre taste of Jandek so it wasn't that weird to me but this album is remarkably hard to approach in the sense that it is pure Jandek vocals plus rattling, jangling acoustic stabs. It doesn't even sound like there was any post-production. The lyrics are emotional and frightening, especially on songs like "I shot myself" but this one is hard to listen to all in one sitting. On many albums, Jandek breaks up his patterns by going back and forth between electric and acoustic, lyrics and no lyrics, accompaniment and no accompaniment. That brings me to the next album I ordered.

Chair Beside a Window (1982)

This early album does do a good job of providing an eclectic picture of Jandek and the different things he can do with his arcane style of music. On songs like "You think you know how to score" Jandek pairs his guitar with harmonica. "European Jewel" is a jagged but surprisingly tonal and satisfying electric number that sounds like it could have been an alternate take from the immortal "Sister Ray" sessions. The sound engineer left the booth during the recording of this 17 minute song, telling Lou Reed, "I don't have to listen to this". I wonder what he would have said to Jandek. Anyway, there also appears the unusual "Nancy Sings" which consists of a beautifully voiced uncredited female vocalist singing over Janky's quiet acoustic noodling. Fantastic release.

Manhattan Tuesday (2005)

This is a double live album recorded around the time of Jandek's re-emergence in the early 2000s. Jandek plays a Korg synth and gives cosmic sermons backed up by drums and electric guitar. This one is very atmospheric and a little less dissonant. It wouldn't be a bad beginning point for the very vanilla listener. Don't get me wrong, it's out-there in the sense that everything Jandek does is out-there, but it's still fairly accessible. No real song titles other than Part 1, 2, 3, etc. Very stream of consciousness.

Where do you go from here (2011)

Many of the critics who reviewed this one have dubbed it his "jazz record". There's lots of grand piano on this album played in a jazzy down tempo. Like "Manhattan. . ." there are no real track names but on the ninth track Jandek does some surprisingly normal and competent singing about the topic matter of the album's name. Spastic but musical drumming fills the backgrounds of these songs. Track two has a nice electric guitar jam. A very accessible and enjoyable album.

More reviews to come as I order more albums from Corwood. I strongly urge you all to do the same.

Houston, please don't paint your teeth

As Ramon so kindly reminded you all in this week's preview, Big Star Bar will be visited by a representative from Corwood Industries this Sunday afternoon. I am speaking of none other than the least accessible musician in all of Houston music history, the arcane, abstruse, artist himself: Jandek.

I felt compelled to write this little piece because I've run into an unbelievable amount of people my own age who have no idea who Jandek is. This includes people who are into way weirder music than I am, like power noise and pedal noise stuff. Stuff you couldn't pay me to pretend to care about.

There was a time when this would have been a bigger deal, more specifically before his 2004 Glasgow gig, which Ramon also touched on. Before this small, unheralded, show there is essentially no record of the man playing live despite the fact that his career started in 78 and he had, by 2004, released over thirty albums. It wasn't until 2009 that Jandek played his hometown of Houston for the first time at Rudyards. Just a few months ago he played the Menil as well.

However, some of the best live music Jandek has played for Houston so far was not on any stage or at any festival. Last year, he was kind enough to play a fully original two song acoustic set broadcast live over KTRU shortly before the station's FM signal went dead. The songs had a chilling, eldritch, delivery but also one of great emotional depth and pathos. Jandek was a perfect last live performance to honor the innovation and eclecticism that KTRU has shown Houston over the past few decades.

Besides his highly unconventional contributions to music, Jandek himself is an interesting subject for investigation. Most of what we know about him is founded upon rumors and hearsay (and Wikipedia). According to an entry in Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music, "He'd written seven novels, but after they'd been rejected by New York publishers, he'd burned all the manuscripts."

Odd, impossible to confirm anecdotes like these are typically all we can learn about Jandek because of his curious unwillingness to talk about his personal life at any meaningful length. Even during the rare occasions Jandek has made himself accessible to the press he remains impossibly distant and vague; not hostile by any means but distant for sure. This clip from the documentary "Jandek on Corwood" shows Jandek's characteristic evasiveness. It's almost comical. When asked about where he met a particular group of session musicians he responds with what feels like the longest pause in all of human history. The camera pans, the interviewer fidgets, some b-roll is shown, and then Jandek finally replies that it wouldn't be right to say. Under the Youtube video, commenters swear that the man on the other end of the line couldn't possibly be Jandek. They say he put someone up to it. One even says he met Jandek and that he sounds nothing like this. Every time someone tries to answer more questions about the man, the plot always seems to thicken.

If you're looking to actually purchase his music, it gets even more mysterious. One cannot simply drive over to Cactus and load up on Jandek. No. That would be too easy. The only way to have access to his full catalog is by mail. There isn't even an order form, just an address and a list of very reasonably priced albums and DVDs.

Whether this anonymity is merely an artistic choice or a real distaste for public life I can't say, but either way I've decided to not detract from it by omitting what consensus says is his real name. It's out there, you can find it but I'll leave that to you. If it's important to him, I won't bother him with more exposure of that kind.

Regardless of what you think of Jandek's work, he's an important part of Houston's rich musical heritage and Sunday's event should prove interesting to anyone with a taste for outsider music. The performance will be an early one at 4 p.m. so don't plan on showing up late. Eclectic Houston, multi-instrumentalist Benjamin Wesley will be involved somehow but the details are hazy. Expect great things.