[Jandek] Jandek and Wagner

[matt love]

"Jandek's reclusivenesss in the 1980s and 1990s created an excess of
content around his dozens of records, making them sound better than
they actually are."

Nick Cain

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

Edgar Wilson Nye (generally misattributed to Mark Twain)

Cain also says: "The group meander in and out of focus, drrifting
between passages of lucid interplay and of aimless and often tedious
jamming, hinting sporadically at meaning and emotional resonance, but
most sounding unconvinced they have anything of worth to communicate."

Hey, it works for the Grateful Dead...

On Dec 1, 2007 9:30 AM, Lars Spurious <lars.spurious at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hungover on a Saturday afternoon, I have been going through old copies of The Wire looking for Jandek reviews. There are surprisingly few (anyone know where the others are?). Here's one of the CD of Austin Sunday. Compare the review to the recollections of one of the performers, Nick Hennies here:
>
> http://www.guthriedesign.com/news/detail.cfm?article=11517
>
> It'd be great to have a complete archive of Jandek reviews and features ...
>
> Since Jandek ended his self-imposed, decades-long isolation with a Glasgow performance in October 2004, he's maintained a positively hectic gig schedule: from no public appearances in 25 years to 20 gigs in two. The first three, each in a trio with Richard Youngs and Alex Neilson, have all been released on CD. Austin Sunday was the fourth, recorded in Jandek's home state if not his hometown, with the pick-up group of Juan Garcia (bass), Nick Hennies (drums).
>
> Their accompaniment is more deferential than that of Youngs and Neilson. Consequently, Jandek's guitar playing is softer and less spiky, his vocals calmer and his lyrics, as archly sardonic as ever, are half-sung and half-recited in a voice that threatens to curl into a warble or sneer at moments of import. The idiom, a loosely extemporised, detuned blues, is the same, though more melodic and less tempestuous, its momentum less haphazard.
>
> Jandek's reclusivenesss in the 1980s and 1990s created an excess of content around his dozens of records, making them sound better than they actually are. Similarly, the processes of Jandek reloacting his persona into a public forum, and of so definitively solo an artist attempting to recreate through collaborative improvisation a music at once intensely private and overdocumented (the 49th Jandek album has just been released), are both more interesting than the resulting music.
>
> Both processes are best observed live. After the fact, the music loses much of its impact. The group meander in and out of focus, drrifting between passages of lucid interplay and of aimless and often tedious jamming, hinting sporadically at meaning and emotional resonance, but most sounding unconvinced they have anything of worth to communicate.
>
> Nick Cain
> Wire March 2007
>
>
>
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