Jandek Plays The Mendelssohn Theater In Ann Arbor

By Max Conroy 

On Saturday, May 17th Jandek played a free concert at the University of Michigan’s Lydia Mendelssohn Theater.  The show was sponsored by WCBN-FM (88.3 on your FM dial), the student-run station of the University, booked by Brendt Rioux, and featured James Cornish on trumpet, Christian Matjias on harpsichord, and Biba Bell on vocals and improv dance.  Apparently this was the first Jandek performance to feature live improv dancing.  Jandek played hollow body bass and sang.  This is what’s known.

This is what’s unknown:  the identity of Jandek, the aim of his endeavors, and virtually everything about the production and meaning behind his music.  Jandek has put out fifty-three albums in thirty years.  The records range from atonal bluesy folk to thirty minute vocal-only tracks and some feature other musicians most likely (even though he does overdub tracks).  The lyrical content of his songs are most definitely poetic in nature, possibly autobiographical, and definitely surreal, causing people to speculate as to whether or not this is a sort of diary of a person suffering from mental illness or records to be enjoyed as such, art for art’s sake. 

There are only a handful of people who have ever spoken to or communicated with Jandek; and in these instances, the person is known only as a “representative of Corwood Industries.”  Corwood Industries is Jandek’s record label and in his only recorded interview, by John Trubee for Spin in 1985, featured on YouTube and as an extra on the Jandek on Corwood DVD, he discloses that he is the “sole proprietor” of Corwood, which has maintained the same PO Box in Houston since 1978.  All of his records and DVDs are purchased directly from Corwood/Jandek, cheaply, and none are sold to record stores or libraries. Jandek also mentions in that interview that at the time he was working as a machinist and living in Houston, Texas.  The name on the copyright information for Jandek’s records in the Library of Congress is Sterling Richard Smith, born in Rhode Island in 1945 (he mentions Rhode Island in several songs).  He originally recorded one record under the name The Units and sent his record to radio stations and record stores, and was forced to change the name when a guy whom he sent the record to in San Francisco threatened to sue him as that was the name of his band.  As a result he wanted to find a name that no one could possibly have, so he ended up speaking to a fellow named Dekker in January and came up with Jandek. 

The more that I research Jandek, the more his history or what he’s illuminated for us seems to be the creation of a highly intelligent, very sane person, very similar to the way a novelist comes up with material culled from his past, subconscious, and ability to tell a convincing story.  Before his days as Jandek, he allegedly wrote seven novels, which he burned after being rejected by publishers.  He tells Trubee that, “I put out a product, and that’s it.  I don’t want to get too involved.”  This smells like bullshit to me, but very good bullshit.

My path to seeing Jandek in Ann Arbor, where I currently live, is appropriately bizarre.  Back in 2000 0r 2001, I bought a record collection, consisting of about 1200 records, from a good friend of mine who needed money and was sick of looking at them.  I, on the other hand, had been looking enviously at them for years and the collection contained many great records that I wanted and many more that I’d never heard of that were probably equally good based on my friend’s tastes.  In reorganizing them, I noticed a very strange looking record, the cover a full-size candid portrait of a skinny red-haired guy in a flannel shirt.  The photo looked like it was probably taken by a family member at a holiday gathering, belonging in a grandmother’s scrapbook.  There was no lettering on the cover, just the picture; the back of the record said Jandek Lost Cause and was obviously privately pressed.  It just seemed too weird to me at the time and I assumed that my friend saw a local band live back in the day and bought the record at the show, so I filed it away.

A few months ago, I noticed in Mojo another Jandek record cover, which tipped me off that this guy was something bigger than I originally thought.  I pulled the record out and listened to the first side, was weirded out and re-filed it.  About a month after that, I was visiting the friend who sold me the records and his friend was over and brought up Jandek in conversation and went over the mystery of Jandek for me.

The night before the show, a friend who I seldom see or talk to anymore due to the pressures of reality, called me because on his drive home from work he heard on NPR that Jandek was coming to Ann Arbor and he thought that I’d be interested in going even though he was unavailable.

Jandek waited twenty six years before playing his first live show, which was an unannounced show in Glasgow in 2004.  Since then he’s played a little over thirty shows all over the US and UK.  The format for each concert has been different from concert to concert: one night he’ll be alone with an acoustic guitar, one night he’ll play bass with a band, the next night he might play the electric guitar or organ alone or with a band.  As mentioned before, he played bass in Ann Arbor, with three other musicians; Cornish and Matjias local to the Ann Arbor area and Bell via New York.

I got to the show about two hours early, which in retrospect was absolutely unnecessary, but wasn’t sure if people were traveling far and wide to see the reclusive artist who was once acclaimed as one of the most influential artists of the 80’s by Spin.  The crowd that gathered in the lobby was as to be expected, young people still in high school, hipsters, and older people who probably listened to him in the 80’s.  We were let into the theater about twenty minutes before the event began; I picked up a free poster for the event on the way in and found a spot in the front row, stage left.

The curtain was briskly raised to an almost anti-climatic effect.  There were four people, one behind an old looking wood box, a harpsichord; another, a woman, seated; one standing in jeans and a sports coat, holding a trumpet; and Jandek seated to the extreme front right of the stage, in the shadows, dressed in all black, sitting down, holding a jet black bass.

The format of the performance didn’t change much at all throughout the entire evening.  Jandek would start the song off with a few drones on his bass, the harpsichord would then creep in, and Bell would either get up and belt out some haunting wails or walk to center stage and begin to dance as Cornish blew some mournful, muted trumpet or Jandek croaked out a few lines.  The content of the songs ranged from being able to emotionally relate to sewage to owning three neckties, which you change on the hour while watching the volume of your glass of gin decrease.  However, the overall performance, if you were able to not focus on any one of the more far out aspects too long, was mesmerizing, verging on narcotic.  The closest thing that I can relate it to is the music in a Roger Corman Edgar Allen Poe movie.  After about four songs, I went up to the balcony for a different perspective and to record some video.  All of Jandek’s live performances have been professionally recorded and three have been released by Corwood so far.  On my way up, I stopped to chat with others that had to take a break from the morbidity.  It was tough to stay once I made it out of the theater, but I’m glad I went back for the last few songs and to catch him wake up from the trance and slowly amble across the stage to resounding applause.

Jandek’s story, to me, is far more interesting than his records.  Jandek is art and his records and performances are vehicles for that art.  If you try and look for absolute meaning in what we think we know about him as a person or what he presents on his records, you are wasting your time.