[Jandek] Jandek fans music taste

BlackMonk BlackMonk at email.msn.com
Sun Oct 15 07:15:22 PDT 2006


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Yuval Legendtofski" <legendtofski at gmail.com>
To: <jandek at mylist.net>
Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2006 8:34 AM
Subject: [Jandek] Jandek fans music taste


> Just going along with my 'availability of everything' in regards  to
> culture, reading today's avaerage Jandek fan's taste, it just goes to show
> how watered down and 'accepted' this 'outsider' music really is. 10-15 
> years
> ago, you would shoot beer out of yr nose in laughter if a Jandek fan put
> down Sigur Ros, Juliana Hatfield and Bloq Party as music they listened to.

Now, that IS pretentious. People tend to like all types of music, commerical 
and obscure, meaningful and trivial, fun and serious. The only people who 
have a criterion other than "do I enjoy this" for the music they choose to 
listen to (aside from those who listen to music for professional reasons) 
are those who use music as a lifestyle accessory, choosing music not as 
music, but as something to enhance whatever image of themselves they want to 
project.

Is there some sort of contract a Jandek fan is supposed to sign, pledging to 
only listen to outsider music, and to shun everything without sufficient 
"credibility?"



> Before Kurt and Co co-opted the whole Jandek persona, Jandek fans were
> generally extreme obscurist art-music fans, that would listen to the most
> way-out 'never to be co-opted' pure art-expression music known. Try the
> Godz, Velvet Underground Bootlegs,  obscure Yoko Ono solo albums and 
> prolly
> ragtime 78's

I listen to all those except the ragtime 45s on a regular basis, and if 
those are the most "way-out, 'never to be co-opted' pure art-expression 
music" you know, you've got a lot to learn.

The Godz would have laughed at that description of their music, by the way. 
They described their first records as an attempt to capture the sound of a 
bunch of people playing in someone's living room for fun. (and one of them 
told me that there were a couple of songs on the second album that could 
have been pop singles if handled right.)

And in point of fact, the most "out there" Yoko Ono solo albums other than 
the three collaborations with John, Plastic Ono Band and Fly, were probably 
the best-known ones, not the most obscure.






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