[Jandek] Worthless Recluse

[William Danylo]

I'll second the praise for Worthless Recluse.  This album was actually my
first exposure to Jandek during my collegepoet days...

It works on so many levels.  It's interesting to read on the page and his
spoken cadence and natural rhythm is something that most Capital P Poets
don't pull off as elegantly.    With many higher profile poets, hearing
another person giving a Reading is often superior to hearing the author
themselves reading their own work, and this is definitely not the case with
Jandek.

Worthless Recluse is a great piece.  I love the lines about begging God for
the Secret and the stark admission that he's reached a point where he wants
to make money (!!!).    There's obviously no way to know for sure how much
of anything is autobiography, but his work has often felt too personal to
just be fiction...

I posted this to the group a month or so back, but in case anyone missed it:

http://www.akrasia.com/worthlessreclusemixup.zip

This is a quick mashup I put together with vocals from Recluse over some
funky Beastie Boys instrumentals... Puts a little bounce under the words...

I also took it a step further....

http://hammerslag.bandcamp.com/

Using the same M.O. and the power of technology.... Captain Hammerslag & the
Tunnel 57's.

Pretty much synced the acapella tracks over assorted recordings of my
buddies and myself jamming and things just kinda.....fit.

These are available only for streaming for the time being as I'm not sure
what exactly to Do with these....  I do like some of them a great deal and
they retain the Jandekian essence while also incorporating hooks and musical
themes not found in most of the Canon....

If anyone likes or hates these, please do share your feedback....

I've been considering sending these directly to the man himself but that's a
daunting proposition....  Who knows if he'd be honored, be offended, sue the
crap out of me, release it officially, do nothing at all....

Dunno.

But they were fun to create and I hope someone may enjoy them as much as I
do.


Congrats to whomever snagged the auction!



On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 12:58 PM, Alex Koenig <
rabid_anti_dentite at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>  Considering the boards have been getting some attention for the last week
> or so I figured I'd bring this up and steer the conversation to what has so
> far been a little talked about Corwood album.
>
> Worthless Recluse has really been growing on me as of late. I know the
> spoken word discs are by no means the most popular numbers of the corwood
> catalog, but I find them a good deal more palatable than some of the recent
> digital albums, (which seem to put the lyrics front and center, and mood and
> atmosphere are more or less secondary or at least terribly consistent,
> although Not Hunting for Meaning is a nice exception in my opinion)
>
> Put My Dream on this Planet was the first spoken word disc I heard and with
> its two 20 minute plus tracks and pretty abstract lyrics, I considered it an
> extremely brave record to make, even for Jandek. Worthless Recluse in
> comparison is a little more digestible with most tracks being only a few
> minutes, with most having a consistent focus. The album's title track at 17
> plus minutes is ironically one of my favorites, probably out of all three of
> the albums, as it seems to be one of the few Jandek tracks that's ever
> struck me as definitely somewhat autobiographical. Maybe I'm not looking
> close of enough, since the details I'm thinking of are pretty basic with the
> line "cold northern cities"  seeming to correspond with the rep's known time
> spent in New York, and the line "Do you really live there?" with reference
> to the subject's house, reminding me of the man who releases the Corwood
> albums relative affluence and how he may at times feel at odds with it. The
> guy after all does have a pretty nice house.
>
> Of course there could after all be nothing to this, as always whenever we
> try to read something autobiographically when we know fairly little about
> the person, or anyone really. But I feel like there might be at least
> something to this idea, any thoughts?
>
> While going through Worthless Recluse as well as the other spoken word
> discs it really did make me agree with Aaron Goldberg's reviews and say it's
> a real shame these albums haven't gained any real traction with spoken word
> communities, his delivery is quite unlike any reader I've heard before.
>
> And as a side question, (this was probably discussed when the albums were
> first released, but I'll ask anyway) Put My Dream on this Planet's track
> titled "It's Your House contains the line "Ready for the House" has this
> made us wonder whether that recording and possibly all of the spoken word
> discs predate all other recordings or in the very least predate corwood's
> release history? The audio quality seems to be some of the most basic, so
> it's always made me wonder.
>
> _______________________________________________
> jandek mailing list
> jandek at mylist.net
> http://mylist.net/listinfo/jandek
>
>


-- 
www.akrasia.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mylist.net/archives/jandek/attachments/20101012/c7d9633f/attachment.htm