[Jandek] Time delays and death thoughts

[graeme at halfcutpublications.com]

I think you could be right about the mid period stuff with collaborators. Even if it wasn't recorded before his first records, it seems like there was a long(ish) delay in releasing it, judging from the letter to Irwin Chusid in Dec 82 quoted in the collaborators part of this website.

In it, Jandek refers to Nancy, John etc in the past tense, which implies that he's no longer working (or even in contact with them). Referring to Nancy as a 'hillbilly type' also seems a bit derogatory - maybe they fell out?

But he also mentions having already recorded lots more electric stuff with Nancy singing and the other collaborators - and I'm sure none of this was released (or even close to being released) at the time he wrote that letter.

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>" I've always assumed that Lost Cause was the last album of vault-digging,
>and that since Twelfth Apostle, the albums are being released more or
>less as they are recorded.  The sharp stylistic division between everything
>up to Lost Cause and everything after leads me to believe that he didn't
>record anything for some years... This theory could be consistent with
>Jandek's transition from the machinist job (Trubee interview) to the office
>job (Vine interview); maybe he wasn't making music during those years
>(roughly circa
>1985-1995)? ...Oh and by the way has anyone else wondered if the early
>acoustic albums were actually recorded after the "mid-period" electric blues
>stuff? Those albums have such a strong circa-1970 vibe that I find it
>difficult to imagine them being recorded in a later time period.  I imagine
>it like this: the acoustic stuff is circa late seventies; after he started
>getting some response to those LP releases he started digging through older
>tapes looking for stuff to release, from when he was younger and running
>with the crowd that helped make the records.  This could help
>explain the rehearsal/jam-session, never-intended-for-release feel of a lot
>of the  Jandek/Nancy stuff; that stuff is also the kind of thing
>people tend to do when they're 25 and not when they're 40."
>
>I think that someone suggested that the mid period albums were recorded
>first before, but not this persuasively. This makes an awful lot of sense.
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