From NCR13@aol.com Wed Jan 06 03:25:27 1999 From: NCR13@aol.com Message-ID: Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1999 22:24:07 EST To: jandek@cs.nwu.edu Subject: a Jandek article I scored this article from Pulse magazine (Tower Records' giveaway thing) back in July of '96 but had lost it in my cellar until today. It's called "You Want Alternative?" by Irwin Chusid, and deals with the usual questionably-insane artists: the Shaggs, Wesley Willis, Tiny Tim, and....Jandek! This may prove informative or totally erroneous, but it is pretty amusing. Here it is, unedited: "How to describe Jandek? Like most amateur rock crits, start by comparing him to the Beatles. Then strip away melody, catchy hooks, rhythm and harmony. Next toss out vocal and instrumental ability, along with any trace of human emotion other than pain. Aside from these deficiencies, he's EXACTLY like the Fab Four. Or maybe the Velvet Underground, AFTER taxes. "Jandek sounds like a muttering sleepwalker strumming an out-of-tune tennis racket. His "music" is dark and gloomy, past the point of no return. It won't make you sad; it will make you tense and uncomfortable. You'll love it or hate it---and for every one of the former, there are a million of the latter. Sample song titles: "Painted My Teeth", "Twelve Minutes Since February 32'nd" (sic), "Janitor's Dead". He sometimes plays harmonica, sounding like Neil Young having an asthma attack. Occasionally he's backed by a drummer who seems to have no familiarity with the instrument, but simply pounds away relentlessly with no ground beat. It's purgative. After five minutes of listening to Jandek, ANYTHING sounds good! "His real name is Sterling R. Smith, and he's based somewhere around Houston. (Please don't call the one in the Houston phone book--it's not him.) Since 1978, Smith has issued at least 25 full-length 12-inch vinyl albums--no 7-inch or 12-inch singles, no remixes, no cassettes, (until very recently) no CDs and no videos. His albums contain no liner notes and there's no press kit. He does not perform in public or grant interviews. His records rarely turn up in stores, even in second-hand shops. Someone is pouring a lot of money into a deep, dark hole. "I was onto Smith from his first release, READY FOR THE HOUSE, and we corresponded briefly in 1980-81. One of his notes implored: "Send me some addresses of record stores...that deal in my music and I'll ship them free boxes of my recordings. I need to move them." After several letters and a few enigmatic phone conversations, we lost contact. He has continued to release at least one album a year, all of which escape critical notice. Each, to quote journalist and fan Byron Coley, "blows around the country like an old dead leaf painted purple." Message-ID: <19990126172243.16898.qmail@cs.nwu.edu> Subject: More lyrics To: jandek@cs.nwu.edu From: Seth Tisue Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 11:22:42 -0600 Here are the lyrics to Interstellar Discussion (1984), Nine-Thirty (1985), and Blue Corpse (1987), courtesy of Ryan Hildebrand (thank you Ryan!). These albums contain some of Jandek's most lyrically intense material -- check out "This is a Death Dream", "Only Lover", "Rifle in the Closet" (?! weird), etc. Also of note is the Southern travelogue spread across several songs on Nine-Thirty ("You people sure are strange to a city boy from up north"?!). [lyrics omitted; see website]