Subject: [Jandek] Another Glasgow Monday review/ Critical Rant

[Yuval Legendtofski]

I found another review Of Glasgow Sunday that might be of interest, this guy
seemed to say a fair bit about the music:

http://thegoldblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/being-there-with-jandek.html


---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Danen D. Jobe" <djobe at uark.edu>
> To: jandek at mylist.net
> Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 00:36:39 -0500
> Subject: [Jandek] Another Glasgow Monday review/ Critical Rant
> http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/3137
>
> Still trying to make sense of this one. The Erik Satie comparison seems to
> hold water (and is, really, complimentary), and I must say that this is
> Dusted's "best" Jandek review to date, in that the critic seemed to consider
> the music. Yet...
>
> could not get past the legend. It's funny how critics like this one are so
> in the shadow of Ye Ole Jandek that he is simply incapable of getting his
> point across.  They try to put this Jandek side by side with the artist
> behind the early albums and find a single path that leads from 0739 to 0785.
> On one hand, they bitch about "Khartoum" and the like, claiming them to be
> utterly unlistenable and yet complain when he creates something this
> "lovely" (even they have to give it that). It strikes me as funny, like the
> guy who reacted to the Chicago show by saying, "do people really like this
> stuff?" Were you there, man? It's like the guy in Chicago who yelled "where
> have you been" (funny enough - I wish the man would've responded) or the
> MANY who keep saying "why now?" Why not now? Why can't he just decide to do
> something different. The thing I think this reviewer misses is that it IS
> still about the music. But Jandek never subscribed to anybody's idea of what
> a musician was suppo
> sed to do and still doesn't. I don't know, I wish people could stop
> tripping about the "sudden change" and realize that the enigmatic "just the
> music, nothing more," primitive musician is a creation of the press. If
> Jandek were no more than that then I think the music would've stopped after
> "Lost Cause." But he's a musician, and the one thing that neither this
> critic nor most others I've read has done is take him at that level. He's
> writing songs, playing them, and creating a modern improvisationally based
> music that dances an edge most couldn't be comfortable with. If anything, I
> think his live appearances have bolstered the music beyond the man, not the
> other way around - does that make sense? You don't know what's going to
> happen next, or who with, or why. Some songs fall flat and others soar -
> such is the way with improvised music (as any jazz/improv listener knows).
> So judge the set by these standards, and not how it measures up to what he
> was doing two decades ago. I gu
> ess musical criticism's always been that way - Coltrane heard no end of it
> in the sixties nor Miles after Trane's death - a critical insistance of
> measuring up the new stuff with the old. Just let it be - sit back and
> enjoy. I don't know - I shouldn't be so reactionary. I suppose I feel like
> critics are missing the point for the most part.
>
> Maybe it's 'cause I think "Glasgow Monday" is the best damn thing released
> by anybody this year. It's hard for me to imagine hearing it and not being
> touched - unless, of course, you were looking for it to be something it
> isn't.
>
> Oh well. I think all this is pushing me towards hitting Indie in December.
> Anyone else going? It's a nice half-way mark between Toronto and Chicago
> (but could somebody tell me, please, WHY THERE???). Maybe Nilan Perrera will
> fly down and layer guitar sounds over John McEntire's drum. Or maybe he'll
> have race cars rev in the background to create a constant drone while he
> plays percussion on an oil can. What the hell, I think I have to know.
>
> I may just have enough of the credit card paid back by then to pull it
> off...
>
> Danen
>
>
>
>
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