[Jandek] Glasgow Friday: Instal 2005

[Paul Condon]

Greetings from the Instal festival! Here's some info on Jandek's set last
night.
Same lineup as before. Jandek was again playing the fretless semi-acoustic
he used in Brooklyn. Richard played a McCartney-style violin bass (I don't
think he played this in Gateshead).
Initially the lyrics sounded familiar to me, and I assumed that they were
some of those he had used for one of the US shows, but having checked the
transcriptions this doesn't seem to be the case. The first song made several
references to "walking blues" (an obvious Robert Johnson reference) and
walking around a "rainy city". Another song mentioned receiving a phone
message from a woman (presumably) and listening to it "about 10 times", and
calling her five times the following day and getting no reply. Elsewhere he
sang of wanting to live in the "rainy city" with her. This was preceded with
"I appreciate the work you do for me, it makes me want to live" which I
thought might be a tribute to Barry Esson until the lyrics took a more
romantic slant... And one song began with him wishing to be made "a moron"
so he could ignore his "wasted life".
The best piece of the night in my opinion was a particularly hard rockin'
number with a refrain that sounded like "Oh, those kokomos"... Alex played a
driving, almost straight 4/4 beat on this one, but would disrupt the pattern
every few bars, while Richard repeatedly played a glissando from one note
for much of it.
The lyrics were pretty sparse throughout. Alex dominated the proceedings,
playing particularly hard. The interplay between him and Jandek was
particularly apparent, while Richard kind of underpinned the two of them.
The bass playing was also a bit more involved (but hardly busy) than last
year's Instal set and the Gateshead set. Personally I would have liked the
guitar to be a bit louder in the mix, but I suspect the dominance of the
drums at times was deliberate, as it's somewhat similar to the sound of the
early electric albums.
The set was about 75-80 minutes long. It was business as usual to some
extent, very similar to the previous Glasgow and Gateshead shows. Apparently
there will be two short sets on Sunday that will be "different" (it is
rumoured) and may sate our desire for surprises...
 Also, Tokyo's Up-Tight were AMAZING last night... true disciples of Les
Rallizes Denudes and early Fushitsusha.
 Another timely Jandek-related Trip or Squeek strip in The Wire this month
too - quite funny.
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