[Jandek] damn you guys are harsh

[Maurice Rickard]

At 10:22 AM -0800 11/27/04, Justin Bailey wrote:
>The atonality of Jandek is very different from that of
>"Metal Machine Music".

I totally agree so far.  Yes, they are very different.

>it's impossible for anyone to
>like the latter unless hanging out in a construction
>yard is their idea of a mind-blowing musical
>experience.

This is an exaggeration.  MMM hasn't really grabbed me, but it 
arguably fits within the realm of drone/ambient noise, and there are 
many of those things I do authentically like.  (La Monte Young's 
_Second Dream_, Lucier's _Music on a Long Thin Wire_, Tomas Koner's 
work, etc.)  And honestly, some construction sounds can be 
interesting.  As Cage put it, if it a sound, you can listen to it. 
Are you arguing that mind-blowing musical experiences only happen 
within the song form?

>Reed's were
>cynical attempts to see how much hipsters like you
>could swallow (and apparently, it's quite a lot). As
>Reed himself said: "Anyone who gets to side four is
>dumber than I am."

I think at this point we know not to believe anything Reed says. 
This is the guy who did _The Raven_, presumably because he thinks 
it's good on some level, but I'd surely rather hear MMM than _The 
Raven_.

>Jandek, on the other hand, takes
>his stuff seriously and hopes for the same in his
>listener.

Where do "I Want to Know Why" and "One Minute" fit into this?  Or 
might both these artists be a bit more complex than the dichotomy 
you've constructed?

>Lou Reed just put out that album because he
>knew a bunch of hipsters like you would get it

Wow.  You really seem to have something against "hipsters" like 
konajinx, apparently because they appreciate Jandek's work in ways 
you find unacceptable.

As much as one might like to enforce only certain readings of 
Jandek's ouvre, though (such as "only pay attention to the music 
itself!"), the full structure of a listener's appreciation is a 
slippery thing, and surely can involve a love of the Jandek mystique, 
as well as being attracted to the "outsider" quality of the work.  If 
someone's attracted to Jandek's work initially because it's "weird" 
or offputting to his or her friends, or "funny," they can still 
develop an appreciation of the music as music, while maintaining an 
appreciation that includes those other things.  People are complex, 
and that's ok.
-- 

Maurice Rickard
http://mauricerickard.com/   |   http://onezeromusic.com/