[Jandek] Jandek In Ann Arbor

[Jon Keller]

Just got back from the show in Ann Arbor, and it was great! This was  
my second Jandek show, the first being in Grinnell, Iowa. The  
representative played another 2 hour long set that started at 8.  
Jandek was playing a fretless bass, located stage left. Behind him was  
James Cornish on trumpet, A Dancer/singer in the center, and Christian  
Matjias on harpsichord on stage right. Jandek's first song was very  
sad with the opening lyrics "I'm just a piece of trash, not even worth  
a penny."  The 3 instruments really went together well. I was curious  
to see how the harpsichord would sound in Jandek's music, and it  
sounded really good, it turned out to be quite haunting, and yet still  
beautiful. The young, female dancer stayed seated for most of the  
song, then she slowed got up and slowly danced across the stage. I did  
notice when he was singing his 5th or 6th song, He sung a line that  
mentioned "the Telegraph Melts". I looked up the lyrics to that album,  
and i'm pretty sure he didn't actually play any of those songs, but i  
hadn't heard him reference any of his previous songs during a live  
show before, so i thought that was interesting. I did notice a lot of  
his songs did have verses and choruses to them. The one part of the  
show that was depressing is that after every song, more and more  
people would leave. After one song, i saw at least 30 people leave at  
once. Which was sort of depressing. Anyways, overall it was a great  
show. And there were 3 camera's close to the stage recording  
everything, so hopefully there will be a DVD in a year or two. When  
the representative played his last song and stood up to leave the  
stage, he got a standing ovation, which was great. I hope he plays  
around the midwest more.