[Jandek] let's shake a hornet's nest

[Kneel]

"I tell ya... Calvin Johnson might have ruined music for an entire generation fifteen (or so) years ago, but this time 'round, it's the digitization of Jandek and Jackson C. Frank that's done it."

from Tony Rettman's liner notes to the (very good) new King Darves record.

i have 2 or 3 friends that are trying to make records "inspired by jandek," and while that's great i'm starting to feel like jandek's name has earned this weird sort of cult cred capital that let's people play the same slight-of-hand tricks that, say, Pavement did back in the day; you know, "it's supposed to sound shitty/atonal/repelling." why try? it's easy to sound (superficially) like jandek, plus you can play both ends against the middle-- i'm hip enough to know jandek, i can dribble into this stream of artistic continuity, but i can also play it as an inside joke. jandek's emotional nudity (brilliant as often as banal, haunting as often as completely unlistenable, poetic as often as tedious) is still HIS. jandek, by no fault of his own, is starting to inspire the opposite of what most people praise in his music, the starkness and honesty. there are a lot of obfuscators paying "tribute."

kurt cobain said that while jandek isn't pretentious only pretentious people listen to jandek. i disagree, but i think the sentiment may apply to people citing jandek as an influence on their myspace page.

d'ya think?

--KNEEL
http://www.myspace.com/fryd_wyrm_mynd