[Jandek] Davis Friday

[Brandon May]

The disaster amnesiac blog is right on. This is more general stuff not mentioned on the blog. The Veteran's Memorial Hall is a great venue, more of an academic theatre with stadium seating than a club where everyone has to stand up, packed together like sardines.  It's somewhat fitting that they played this venue because it is located in the suburbs of Davis next to a middle or high school and suburban houses surrounding the rest of it.  There was even another event going on in another part of the building with senior citizens, probably veterans.  It looks like it didn't sell out, 2/3s of the seats were filled, probably around 150-200 people there.  They played around 10 songs, give or take, for almost 2 hours!!  The 1st and last song were instrumental.  All of the rest of the songs featured Jandek singing except for maybe 1 or 2.  Jandek played keys(korg triton and yamaha) the whole time.  The percussionist mixed it up with a small drum kit, a bongo or djembe, and various other percussion instruments.  The bass player played upright electric bass, at times with a bow and other times without.  He had an electric bass behind him too.  I thought he was going to switch out the upright bass for the other bass but he never did.  The guitar player played an electric banjo(!!) on the 1st and last songs, making things very cyclical soundwise.  The rest of the time he alternated his electric guitars, I swear it seemed like every song he changed guitars.  
I would say the theme of the night was "Now You're Gone".   This line was repeated in at least 2 or 3 and maybe even 4 songs.   All of his lyrics/poetry consisted of someone very important leaving and then being left with yourself.  Some of his lyrics were hard to make out at times because of random noise the other players would make, but they told a story of one person leaving another person, and the other person not knowing what to do or who to be since this person left.  One song had Jandek singing Who can I be?  I guess I got to be myself. There's no one else to be.  Another had him realize that this person would always be there even though they left.  Now you are here forever.  "I've captured your essence."  The rest of the time he just didn't know what to do.  The guitar playing alternated between bluesy to rock riffs to brutal noise.  The next to last song , he threw his guitar on the ground, breaking part of it off, but still making noise from it.  Kurt Cobain would be proud!  And oh my god, the percussion!  Some songs it was just the drum kit or the bongo/djembe, and others had it all.  I honestly hope Corwood puts this one out soon because the lyrics were so great but I couldn't make out a bunch of them and was too in awe of the playing to remember much else.  10 out of 10.  Another Corwood classic!

 		 	   		  
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