Jandek on Corwood

A couple of nights ago, after a nerve-wracking date, I met Alan at the Swedish-American Hall to see Jandek. If you're not familiar, Jandek is the sole band on the Corwood Industries label, which is owned by the man who sings and plays guitar (among other things) in Jandek. If you write to his p.o. box and ask for a discograhy, you'll receive a typewritten sheet with a list of his albums (I think there are 51, to date), hand-signed by "a representative from Corwood Industries".

Since 1978, "the man from Corwood" has been sending his albums, free and unsolicited, to music stores and college radio stations all over the country. Many of his albums have on their covers these photographs of a mysterious, slack-faced man. Though there was plenty of speculation, it wasn't until 2004 that his fans learned the man in the photographs is, indeed, the man from Corwood himself, because in 2004, he made his very first public appearance.

The talent behind Jandek is (or was?) an extremely private man. So private, that though big media (like NPR) has requested interviews, he's only granted two of them, ever. Despite this, he's developed a fairly large fan base. Over the years he's managed to keep his own background and history a secret (almost — you'll read on Wikipedia that before he started making albums he wrote novels. Seven of them. Which he then burned.). So when I heard that Jandek was making a rare appearance here in my city, I just knew I had to go.

The Swedish-American Hall was packed that night, so I was glad Alan and I arrived early (and secured front-row seats!). While we waited for Jandek to make his appearance I looked around at the crowd; many of the men wore beards, and a good number of his fans of both genders wore something that had been knitted. Just in front of us, the stage was empty except for a sparkly pink drum kit and, in the background, a beautiful red velvet curtain. Next to the drum kit was a sheet music stand. We waited for about twenty minutes, and I wondered what to expect. Then the man emerged, as did his accompanists, a drummer and a bass player.

The man from Corwood dresses in black from hat to toe. Beneath the hat, his complexion is quite pale. Because he's so thin now, the man looks a bit like a scarecrow in his clothes. He has an odd, moaning voice, and he picks the strings of a guitar he's tuned to a strange scale of his own invention. I can't remember who said this (it might have been Scott Tisue), but I think it's accurate: Jandek sounds like the efforts of someone who has had only a description of music but has never heard an actual song. As I mentioned before, the man tunes his guitar to a scale familiar only to himself and at first (to me, anyway), the sound was unpleasant. But somewhere around the fourth song, I found myself enjoying the music, and actually wanting to tap my foot.¹

For the most part, the man performs facing his accompanists rather than the audience. Though it's tempting to explain this stance as reclusive, facing the other band members seemed necessary to the execution of his music, because I imagine that accompanying the man would require a shit-ton of concentration. Clearly, his accompanists were responding to the subtle cues he was giving them, both aural and visual.

I found myself wondering if the sounds I heard and the sounds the man heard were at all similar; what I mean is, did he hear a tuneful, harmonic noise, or did the notes he was strumming sound to him almost as they did to me? No, I'm not referring to the subtle differences discerned by a familiar, loving, or practiced ear. I mean something like this: what if I said, "Put your mouth where your foot should be and dance," and that's what all my listeners heard, but what I thought I'd said and heard myself saying was, "I give you a fragment of this broken rock." I didn't wonder this for too long, though, because the explanation just didn't seem plausible, even if I wanted it to be true.

But why did I want this to be true? Just today, a friend who'd watched the documentary film called Jandek on Corwood said that he feels there's a creepy element to the man's songs, or maybe he means to the man himself. I haven't seen this film, but I know that it's socially unacceptable for a person who could be sort of rock-star famous to not claim that fame. Further, in our society the creator is closely associated with the product, and as far as I can tell, the man from Corwood has treated Jandek, the product, as though it exists independent of the man who created it.

But, but, but why is that creepy? Maybe we want or need to hold the creator responsible for the product, to keep the reins taut, and in this way to prove that their work is explicable & therefore within someone's control. This wouldn't be the case if the thing created wasn't done with deliberation, so it wouldn't be true of, say, a song consisting of randomly-plucked strings on a guitar that had gone out of tune all on its own. But it was clear to me, the night of the concert, that the man wasn't playing random notes, nor was he free of method, though his music was so unfamiliar to my ears that at first, it sounded random. Ultimately, his deliberation was the disconcerting thing.

So more specifically, to alleviate our fears, maybe we need the man from Corwood to take responsibility for what he has made, because if the creator can't be held responsible, if art that is difficult to grasp is not held accountable. . . well, I don't know how to finish that sentence. Could it be that we think art that's tough to grasp is intrinsically evil? If so, what does that say about our fear of chaos and our inability to trust the universe?

I don't know, and I'm not here to pass judgment on anyone. I thoroughly enjoyed the show, and I'm so glad I got tickets!

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¹Though I didn't, because I was was afraid that others in the audience would think that out of pretension I was feigning enjoyment, which was quite irrational, because people were clearly tapping their feet in enjoyment and most certainly wouldn't have noticed me, let alone cared what I was doing.