I remember reading about this guy in the late 80s or early 90s in a great little piece in 'Spin' written by Byron Coley. I piqued a serious curiosity (like most Coley pieces), and when I tried to track down this guy's stuff at our local indie record store people would say 'it's unlistenable garbage, you're probably better off buying the records yourself from the bloke'. I never did, but remember seeing lots of his record in the library of a local alt-radio station..I heard a track 'I painted my teeth' and it scared me like that video tape outta 'the Ring' movie or something.
Anyway I remember in the mid-90s Jandek's stuff became alot more readilky available via CD format, and esp how similar his work was to alot of that Drag-City/Palace/lo-fi/acid-folk stuff that is pretty much the benchmark for what is 'indie' these days.
Personally Jandek seems to me to be like the Residents or something. This oddball crypto-outsider art type thing (though the Residents are more just a performance-art type thing). i just get the feeling that Jandek might be some sort of a hoax, or like the Loch Ness monster or even the AL-quaida/bin Laden of rock n' roll.
But I guess Jandek's enigma has gone gone on too long to be a hoax, and has mutated into a truly singular work of 'art'. His album cover artwork has become a visionary thing, espcially when you consider the use of 'found art' and 'obscure photography' in hoity-toity art circles, and even in modern-documentary film, and his retardo-demneto sound is pretty much the standard for what passes as 'indie' today (this fusion of acid-folk, eclectic non-music, Japanese scree, manic-depressive-minstelising and 'wire' magazine trainspotting/nose-picking 'intelligencia').
finally I reckon in todays uncertain times, where terrorism and 'obscure cryptic 'subversive' ideologies are the modern dogmas attacking out digitised world, 'Jandek's' chilling, crazed and lonely anti-tech lo-fi music seems to be telling prescient.
Anyway I remember in the mid-90s Jandek's stuff became alot more readilky available via CD format, and esp how similar his work was to alot of that Drag-City/Palace/lo-fi/acid-folk stuff that is pretty much the benchmark for what is 'indie' these days.
Personally Jandek seems to me to be like the Residents or something. This oddball crypto-outsider art type thing (though the Residents are more just a performance-art type thing). i just get the feeling that Jandek might be some sort of a hoax, or like the Loch Ness monster or even the AL-quaida/bin Laden of rock n' roll.
But I guess Jandek's enigma has gone gone on too long to be a hoax, and has mutated into a truly singular work of 'art'. His album cover artwork has become a visionary thing, espcially when you consider the use of 'found art' and 'obscure photography' in hoity-toity art circles, and even in modern-documentary film, and his retardo-demneto sound is pretty much the standard for what passes as 'indie' today (this fusion of acid-folk, eclectic non-music, Japanese scree, manic-depressive-minstelising and 'wire' magazine trainspotting/nose-picking 'intelligencia').
finally I reckon in todays uncertain times, where terrorism and 'obscure cryptic 'subversive' ideologies are the modern dogmas attacking out digitised world, 'Jandek's' chilling, crazed and lonely anti-tech lo-fi music seems to be telling prescient.