A Return After Spring Fever

Hello! It's been a while since I've taken to posting, mostly on account of standard spring fever activities. In the next few weeks, I hope to get back into my irregularly scheduled programming, and here I've decided to kick things off with 8 Random Things About Me, a prompt sent to me by my lovely co-worker and daytime confidant, Mr. Chris Pommier. In the next few weeks I may expand on any number of these 8 Random Things, and I also look forward to writing a bit about Sonic Youth.

Til then, here are some things you may or may not have known about me:

Berlin is my favorite city.

Perhaps it's because this is the first city I visited abroad, or perhaps it is because of the rich political, social and cultural histories of the city, but Berlin won my heart within minutes of my arrival, and that same passion remains today. My sister, who hosted my trip in January of 2006, was a master guide, teaching me nuggets of facts about everywhere we went, and even how we were getting there. She was even patient enough to teach me bits of German (a game I dubbed "Sesam Strasse," which continued on into my January 2007 visit to Linz, Austria), and trusting enough to let me out on my own one afternoon. I continue to enjoy reading recent German/Western/Eastern European history, I would love to learn German, and I would love to go back to Berlin for an extended visit.

I am a runner.

This particular fact is one that I continually try to dispute. Running is uncomfortable and I often only have time to train in the mornings (bringing back horrible memories of high school summer training), and I still dread it almost every day. I annually tell myself I'm quitting. Nevertheless, I love how I feel afterward and I am simply competitive at heart. If I don't run - whether I take a day off or a week off - my body lets me know when I need to get back on the road. Now that I'm outside of the parameters of school-based athletics, I'm able to listen to my body more. I can be lazy when I want to and go for longer runs when I feel like it, which is incredibly liberating.

I clean when I'm nervous.

I also clean when I see someone else cleaning. I can't work at a messy desk, and I can't live in a messy room. Of course, I've also come to realize over the years that "clean" is a standard that exists solely in the eye of the beholder. I know that my own version of cleanliness abides by quirks and rituals I often try to pass off as common sense, but those quirks tend to rear their ugly head most frequently when I'm agitated.

Forrest Gump is my favorite movie.

Simply one of the best movies ever made, in my opinion. And I've seen it enough to have a pretty good idea. By most recent calculations, I have seen it upwards of 50 times - definitely more than 60. As the movie is 2:20 long, this means that I have spent roughly 6 full days of my life watching this movie - nearly a solid week of Forrest Gump! I can talk along with the whole movie, start to finish.

I am a completist.

Though I haven't actively listened to Aerosmith, Ani Difranco, Ryan Adams or the Old 97's in months or in some cases years, I still feel compelled to keep my collection of their catalogs up-to-date. Partially, I think it's posteriety; I'm often annoyed at people who lambast an artist's output when they haven't heard any recent output. Even if I haven't either, having the disc on the shelf grants my remarks a certain credibility, no? That, and I just like seeing all the discs lined up in a row, just like at the store. Except complete, and without duplicates (in most cases).

I am an aspiring hobbyist and collector.

I collect vintage guitars (I have one: a 1967 Epiphone Cortez); I collect rare records (I have 6 or 7); I am a shortwave enthusiast (that, or I'm well-read on the subject, have a decent radio, and tune in occasionally). I love the idea of being a collector or a hobbyist, and like my Uncle Bob I have a tendency to invest a lot of time and effort into hobbies and collections that never grow much beyond their conceptions in my head. Nevertheless, I enjoy these periodic bursts of enthusiasm for something new, and I would like to think it increases my social currency at cocktail parties.

I am exceptionally cheap.

I bike to work, air-dry my clothing, rarely eat meat and use clothes until they are worn. I'm so flippin' happy environmentalism is chic these days.

I am a morning person.

Always have been, and hopefully always will. There's a certain peace and privacy about early morning that I just haven't experienced during the day, or even staying up late. If I sleep much past 7:30 I always feel like I've lost a chunk of my day. Should I - god forbid - sleep past 9:00, I may as well sleep through the rest of the day.

Falling Out of Love

As you know from my well-documented post on how I listen, I select a different playlist as my soundtrack every week. Last week, the playlist was all of my Ani Difranco music. As I have intimated before, Ani Difranco was the first artist whose music and fan community I become completely engrossed with. In high school, I very much believed that fluency with Ani's work was required to be the best lesbian, and the best citizen, I could be.

Wow. My first week of listening to almost nothing but Ani in about six or seven years, and I was floored at how heavy-handed everything seemed. Surely it wasn't so much like this in high school, was it? Songs that defined me seem so utterly shallow now that I don't even want to tell you which ones they were.

Most bands and artists that I've started listening to less either became progressively worse (Old 97's) or simply less interesting to me (Ryan Adams), but I've always been able to look upon their previous work fondly. While most 'break-ups' with previous band 'crushes' ended amicably, I'm quite nearly resentful toward Ani as I return to her music.

I guess I was hoping for something a little more Annie Hall and a little less "You're So Vain". A few of her songs still get me – Welcome To, Fire Door and Both Hands – but so many of the songs I thought were anthems lack nuance and any sense of what I feel to be authentic emotion. Even "Shroud," my favorite off of 2007's Repreive, is appealing to me purely from a musical sense; the lyrics are simply another testament to her own personal enlightenment.

I'm not saying that Ani is disingenuous, but her words seem so carefully chosen that even love songs are more sermon and less diary. The political songs say just the right thing to appropriate the right demographic, and the self-righteous songs are laced with just enough humiliation to create an aura of humility.

More so than anything else, I was filled with the realization that these songs have always been this melodramatic and self-absorbed, and if anything, I would wager that that's exactly what drew me to her. She was the one who was going to be herself, and fuck it if you didn't like it! Well, I was going to be myself, and fuck it if you didn't like it! Unfortunately, all of that outrage (like all teen angst) was hopelessly misdirected at understanding parents and a world that welcomed me for who I was.

And so too has Ani found an overwhelming acceptance, and in fact marketability, based on this anger and self-righteousness. A visit to righteousbabe.com shows us all of the Ani goods for sale these days. I haven’t visited in a while, but the last I checked, the baby clothes and the trucker hats were enough to keep me away for good. When did DIY become a branding initiative? She even went so far as to produce, package and sell her own ‘bootlegs.’

The anger that Ani's music births and represents seems directed more toward our awareness of our own privilege and apathy than the topic at hand. ‘Tis of Thee’ doesn’t make us angry because America doesn’t care about the race, poverty and drug wars, it makes us angry because we don’t care that America doesn’t care about race, poverty or drug wars. It’s just easier to think of it the first way, and remind yourself that the Ani Difranco t-shirt you own is a political statement and not the product of fanaticism.

So why is it that I feel so angry about falling out of love with Ani Difranco? I suppose it's because the Old 97’s and Ryan Adams never tried to get much past sex, drugs, rock and roll and love. Perhaps I resent Ani because she didn’t need to sell t-shirts or bootlegs to make her music heard; perhaps I resent Ani because the political messages she worked so hard to cultivate are no better written than the commercials they are trying to usurp. Or perhaps I’m just kind of embarrassed for realizing I’ve been had.

Ani Difranco - Angry Anymore

The Discount Bin

Within every independent record shop is a dark corner, bottom shelf or basket by the door filled with records so abysmal, so repugnant that they have been quarantined from the rest of the inventory. Perhaps as a prelude to my interest in outsider music, I have always been drawn to the discount bins. The discs are unorganized, chaotic, and the packaging seldom indicative of any genre; you really never knew what your fifty cents will buy you.

My modus operandi with the discount bins is to try to look for something that doesn't seem too terribly interested in coalescing with the mainstream. Anything that at all says 'boy band,' 'bar band' or 'diva' ought to be treated like small pox; if you think Celine Dion is bad, imagine her local-label derivative. If you're persistent in your hunt, though, you might find a true diamond in the rough - or at least rhinestone in the anthrax.

In 1995, Mercury Records placed a bet on Wammo, a beat-poet/alternative musician out of Austin, Texas. Well, Mercury lost that bet. Around 1999 I was scoping the discount bins of Second Hand Tunes in Oak Park, Illinois, and a promo of Wammo's debut release, Fat-Headed Stranger, caught my eye. It might have been the acoustic guitar on the back cover, or, it could have the ominously titled final track, "Charles Bukowski is Dead," clocking in at 0:09. Regardless, at least I could be sure it wasn't techno.

And techno it wasn't. The album is equal parts alternative-country and spoken word, and no doubt contributed to my current taste for each. "Batman" and "There is Too Much Light in This Bar" blend furious guitars with urgent spoken word, delivering the sort of coming of age poems I imagine one writes as a struggling poet in Austin. Excellent narratives that always end where they start, but take you the scenic route back through 7th grade.

One of the standout tracks, "Children of the Corn Nuts" mourns the death of grunge and the birth of the "alternative to alternative" with the refrain, "I was flannel when flannel wasn't cool." Speaking as an awkward child of the '90s, I could most definitely relate. For purely nostalgic purposes, this easy-on-the-ears country lament is definitely my second-favorite track on the album.

Wammo's standout track for me is "Salty," the gift that keeps on giving. While I was first attracted to it simply for its catchy tune and funny chorus, my introduction to the Pixies later that year leads me to believe that this song is nothing short of an epic tribute to Kim Deal - and who isn't more deserving of an epic tribute? From the wordplay to the background vocals lifted straight from "Here Comes Your Man," this song is how a tribute should be done.

An excerpt:

Kim, what's the deal?
I jumped into the mosh pit so that I could get a
closer look at you
So appealing,
With your flannel shirt-tail hanging down so long
(so long, so long)
So Kim, what's the deal?

Kim, what's the deal?
My mind floats like a pixie on the window silling
When I hear you sing
So appealing,
How did you get so high and get so low?
(so low, so low)
So Kim, what's the deal?

I'm glad you're a breeder, 'cause I'm a breeder too
But we don't have to breed, let's just have a drink
or twenty-two
It's so salty Kimmy

[enter brilliant interlude re: SXSW, perhaps?]

So while some of my discount bin purchases have made their way to the garbage and others sit unloved (and near intolerable) on my CD racks at home, Wammo is god's promise to me that not all who wander are lost.

Oh, and the final track?

"Charles Bukowski is dead. Finally, there is enough beer for the rest of us."

*****

* Chantel Kreviazuk anyone? Didn't think so.

Outsourcing

Tonight I provide my few and friendly readers with a link to a colleague's blog. Chris Pommier - poet, writer, thinker extraordinaire - has invited me to write for his blog whenever I damned well feel like it. Since I would like to keep this blog related to obsessions and fanaticism, I have decided to use his blog as my 'off topic' venue.

My debut post will appear here just as soon as he approves it, but I think you should head over there now to read up a bit first. To see what I think about Abbie Hoffman, the Boy Scouts and contemporary inactivism, get your link on!

More to come soon here at The Electric End.

What's So Fine About Art?

Welcome to Valentine's Day, the holiday on which restaurants are terribly crowded, and Ben & Jerry's, Haagen Daaz, and other pint-o-serving ice cream dealers make a killing.

But I'm not here to write about romanticism or loneliness, because I really have no use for either at present. Instead, I present to you a Clever Song - because I'm always in the market for clever.

The Old 97's were the first - and not last - group whose music I was introduced to based solely on a review. Rolling Stone's 2001 review of the group's fifth album, Satellite Rides, used the words "cowpunk," "bar band," and "insatiable melody," all qualities I was looking for in an obsession at the time. Add to that a suitable example of Rhett Miller's "deft way with one-liners" - "Do you wanna meet up at the Picwood Bowl?/ we could knock nine down and leave one in the hole" - and you had yourself a clever band.

When I went to purchase the album, I was delighted to find a bonus EP as well. In addition to the requisite b-side, there was a radio broadcast including songs from prior releases. * The band kicked off the set with "Barrier Reef," which to this day remains one of my favorite Clever Songs. I don't even know where to start - drunk, sloppy, and so damned true. I've included the lyrics below for your enjoyment, and wish you a better evening than Rhett's outing to the Empty Bottle. **

Barrier Reef - Too Far to Care (1997, Elektra)

The Empty Bottle was half empty, tide was low, and I was thirsty.
Saw her sitting at the bar, you know how some girls are,
Always making eyes, well she wasn't making eyes.

So I sidled up beside her, settled down and shouted, "Hi there."
"My name's Stewart Ransom Miller, I'm a serial lady-killer."
She said, "I'm already dead," that's exactly what she said.

So we tripped the lights fantastic, we was both made of elastic.
Midnight came and midnight went, and I though I was the President.
She said, "Do you have a car," and I said, "Do I have a car?"

What's so great about the Barrier Reef?
What's so fine about art?
What's so good about a Good Times Van,
When you're working on a broken,
Working on a broken,
Working on a broken man?

My heart wasn't in it, not for one single minute.
I went through the motions with her. Her on top, and me on liquor.
Didn't do no good, well I didn't think it would.

What's so great about the Barrier Reef?
What's so fine about art?
What's so good about a Good Times Van,
When you're working on a broken,
Working on a broken,
Working on a broken man?

When you're working on a broken,
Working on a broken,
Working on a broken man.

When you're working on a broken,
Working on a broken,
Working on a broken man.

* Yes, I am aware that I recently lambasted the Needlessly Included Live Track, but I grant the Old 97's an exemption for including a whole broadcast, featuring songs from prior releases. That, and they're pretty damned good live.

** Known also the venue in Chicago where I saw my first Jandek concert.

Jandek Hits Jackpot

According to Pitchfork, Jackpot Records is gearing up for a series of reissues, among them Jandek's debut LP, Ready for the House.

In contrast with their compact-disc cousins - expanded, polished and remastered in such a way as to make every album seem like the defining moment of an artist's career - vinyl reissues are simply a repressing of a record that has gone out of print. All that really changes with the vinyl reissue is the label - but isn't that everything? Reissues (not to be confused with repressings, another run on the same label), then, are nothing more than a reproduction of an original work.

The CD reissue, so long it bears the steroidal infusion of bonus materials, is an entirely separate product from the original. You can have both - heck, you can even have the album on vinyl - and possess distinctly separate products. Likewise, a vinyl reissue of a vinyl record is a distinctly separate product from the original pressing.

I'd like to think I'm not a Jandek elitist - for starters, I don't even know how I would define being a Jandek elitist. Nonetheless, there is definitely an aire of inauthenticity about Corwood reissued via Jackpot Records. Undoubtedly, one of the most definitive characterists of Jandek is the idea that Jandek is tied to Corwood, and Corwood to Jandek.

A reissue of a record this rare (often going for more than $300 on eBay, if you're lucky to find one), is like a poster of a painting. Pardon my hyperbole, but though it will look the same and sound the same, it still won't be the 'real' thing.

That being said, Corwood has made it very clear over the years that nothing happens without their stamp of approval, and I don't doubt any deviation from this policy for Corwood reissues via Jackpot. Part of me wants to think that the Corwood approval makes the reissue authentic, but the fact that it wouldn't be distributed via Corwood (purely speculation here, but probably accurate) just doesn't seem right to me.

Will I buy it? You bet. I'm eager to see whether it will contain the original recording from the LP or one of the 'remastered' versions Corwood has crafted over the years.

Will I still try for an original on eBay? You bet. And maybe I am a Jandek elitist after all.

Also, The Myth of The Blue Icicles was 'released' this Saturday. Check it out!

Let's Turn the Record Over

B-sides and bonus tracks allow artists the opportunity to showcase covers and toss-offs they would otherwise save for the occasional encore, as well as precious gems that didn’t end up meshing with the rest of the album. And, of course, absolute crap, stray live tracks, and pointless remixes. Yet even the most banal of bonus tracks becomes an absolute necessity to the obsessed fan.

The first b-side I encountered was a bonus track on the Japanese version of Fastball's 1998 release, All the Pain Money Can Buy. "Freeloader Freddy" seemed like the perfect name for the perfect, laid-back power pop song. Unwilling to dish out $30 for the imported release, I simply “visited” the album every now and again at the now-defunct CDNOW.com. The more artists I became enthralled with, the more forbidden tracks I had to pine for. Why, why did all the bonus tracks have to go to Japan?

When Napster burst on the scene in 1999, I suddenly had hundreds of these b-sides and bonus tracks at my fingertips. * I finally heard the opening riff of "Freeloader Freddy" after more than a year of waiting, and I was not disappointed. It's still one of my favorite pop songs today. I have roughly three discs of Everclear b-sides, non-album tracks and tracks from members’ preceding groups, and songs like “Gay Bar Song” and “The Swing” were a huge part of my high school experience.

I was born into an area when the b-side was transitioning out of the collective conscious of the record industry. What used to be a way to promote 45 rpm singles became bonus tracks on cassette and compact disc singles in the 1980’s and 1990’s, always accompanied by a completely worthless remix of the song (in case you didn’t want to hear the repeat of the chorus after the second verse; see Aerosmith’s Livin’ on the Edge radio promo for an example). Nowadays, finding a hard copy of a mainstream single outside of the checkout line at Walgreen’s is a feat, though various indie and hipster groups still release 45s and CD singles like it’s 1983.

What used to be a reward for buying a single track has now become an expectation with the purchase of every album. Most often, independent record labels reward listeners for pre-ordering albums by throwing in a 45 or several free downloads. Independent record stores will sometimes have a limited quantity of bonus discs, buttons and stickers to hand out on release days. DVDs of performances, too, have become quite popular. Since 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco has made a habit of releasing non-album tracks within about six months of an album’s release.

And it is in examining Wilco’s various bonus offerings that we encounter the bastard child of the Unnecessary Remix, the Needlessly Included Live Track. Whereas the bonus EP More Like the Moon, released in conjunction with the Australian edition of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot contains six studio tracks, the AGIB and SBS EPs include (what I find to be) rather bland live interpretations of several of the album tracks. Perhaps I’m just a completist, but I can’t see the interest in hearing one song from a single concert (see my upcoming post on live bootlegs).

The digital era does not itself lead to more songs per album (though arguably the prevalence of digital studios and recording technologies can decrease producing costs, increasing the amount of studio time artists are able to use), but it does definitely decrease the cost of making extra tracks publicly available. Therefore, the artist is able to pass on to the customer even the most banal studio riff raff (see Ryan Adams) free of charge.

And so I suppose you and I are both wondering what the moral of this story about b-sides is? Like the studio instantiations mentioned in my previous post, these extra tracks become evidence of the time that exists outside of the 42 minutes on any given album. While some of the songs seem like toss-offs – bridges to better songs and 2:30 of life lost – others are honestly compelling music that wouldn’t have fit on the album for which they were recorded.

My two favorite examples are Wilco’s excellent “The Thanks I Get,” left off of 2007’s Sky Blue Sky, and Sleater-Kinney’s powerhouse track “Everything,” left off The Woods. (Seriously, listen to how Janet alternates between the snare riff and the hi-hat riff depending on whether Carrie or Corin is singing.) Both of these tracks are fair assessments of where the respective bands were creatively during these times, but neither of them are particularly suitable for the albums. See also, “Kicking Television,” the Wilco track that is shit-kicking live, but fell incredibly short in the studio.

While the b-sides of the past were hard to track down because so few surfaced, and then nearly disappeard altogether as 45s went out of style, the bonus tracks of the present are more elusive simply because those that aren’t official leak in the strangest of places. Nevertheless, they have always had the elusive appeal of a forbidden fruit. Even when the song is crap, the hunt often renders them all worthwhile.

Well, except for this.

[*] Well, not my fingertips - too chicken to 'break the rules' as it were, I had my dear friend Alyssa download and burn at least 100 bonus tracks for me during high school. Bless you, Alyssa!

We're Burning Up Tape, Godammit!

I have a dim recollection of a family trip to Michigan, listening to Sheryl Crow’s “Hard to Make a Stand” on the Aiwa Walkman my aunt bought me for Christmas that year. As the song segued into the outro, I heard a voice! A voice where there shouldn’t be a voice! I rewound the tape 5 or 6 times, turning up the volume to try to make out the words. Finally, there it was: a faint, “c’mon boys.” After discovering it, I probably listened to it another six or seven times so I could actually hear Sheryl enjoying herself in the studio. In a word, I was shocked at how ‘real’ that toss off was.

Whether intentional or unintentional, stray studio blemishes wind their way onto the master tapes of our favorite and unfavorite recordings. Rarely reproduced live (and almost always viewed as inauthentic if they are), these studio quirks serve as a matter of proof that musicians are not robots – they actually record these songs! None of these are a necessary part of the bare song structure, but become instantiations (to borrow again from Gracyk) of the recording process.

Perhaps the most prevalent “studio authentication” present on recordings is the ‘count off,’ before starting a song. Wilco’s “It’s Just That Simple,” “When the Roses Bloom Again,” and “The Thanks I Get” all employ the count off, as do, well, other artists I’m sure. Billy Joel cuts the crap and incorporates the count off right into “Matter of Trust.”

Another common authentication is the pre-song chatter, between the artists, engineers or producers. Ani Difranco and the Old 97’s start “Imperfectly” and “Victoria,” respectively, with the query, “ya rollin’”? Fastball and Everclear include the ejaculations “We’re burning up tape, godammit!” and “Play the fucking song!” on “Freeloader Freddy” and “Bad Connection.” Elliott Smith’s “In the Lost and Found,” contains nearly a minute of studio clutter before the piano starts. The only studio chatter I think is really worth a damn is the first track on Ryan Adam’s breakthrough, Heartbreaker, “Argument With David Rawlings,” which segues into the ‘real’ opening track “To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High).”

Scroll through your own music libraries to find numerous coughs, hacks, ‘c’mons’ and other sundry instantiations. Arguably, Jandek’s entire catalog pre-1994 is one giant studio blunder, and it is telling that his CD reissues painstakingly remove all microphone bumps, coughs, and motorcycle drive-bys.

Each of these studio moments caught on tape could have easily been edited out on the masters. The inclusion of banter, count offs, and other studio occurrences lend each of the songs a “genuine” quality that seem to say this really happened. The aesthetic quality they lend to the final product is a sense of immediacy, if not intimacy. Interesting, because there really is no other way for the song to be recorded than for at least one musician and one piece of equipment; the tracks thus occasionally urge the listener (or at least this one) to respond, I know this really happened, assholes.

Two of the Wilco songs mentioned, as well as the Everclear and Fastball tracks, are b-sides – a term that is becoming obsolete in favor of ‘bonus track.’ In any event, the banter and count offs also seem to signify a certain ‘unfinished’ quality. Arguably, the effort of preserving these instantiations was probably no more than removing them to appropriately ‘finalize’ the product.

Do these instantiations then further bolster the authenticity of a recording? Would removing them be more of an embellishment of reality than leaving them in when they could have been removed? Will Lassie save Timmy from the well? Tune into tomorrow’s episode, when we explore the authenticity and contemporary purpose of another gem, the b-side.

On Authenticity (Kevin Bacon, What the Fuck?!)

In the upcoming days, I would like to explore the idea of authenticity as it applies to various aspects of music. After recently finishing Theodore Gracyk's Rhythm and Noise - An Aesthetics of Rock (1996), I have started thinking about the different ways that authenticity and sincerity are both manifest and expected from the music we listen to and the people who create it.

The authenticity of music and artist can shift from song to song, performance to performance, simply based on intention, inflection, and even the medium through which songs are presented. Expanding some ideas from yesterday's post I will first explore the phenomenon of studio flubs, both intentional and unintentional, and the different ways they can change the authenticity of the music. I will continue with discussions on b-sides, demos, bootlegs, concerts, perhaps even a foray into different recorded mediums, and finally, the finally artists themselves.

Gracyk is quick to point out that authenticity can apply to a specific recording in hundreds of different ways: the artist is expected to conform to a specific genre in order for a song to be considered a 'genuine' effort; the medium this song is distributed by is either genuine or bootleg; this bootleg is either the 'original' bootleg, or a derivative of the derivative; the live performance is a genuine replication of the record or the live performance is a genuine re-incarnation of the record, not a phony performance; and last, the artist believes in what he or she is doing.

To apply the measure of authenticity, let us take the mp3 I have provided below: Ryan Adams' near-breakthrough rap effort, "Aw Shit (Look Who Got a Website)". Would-be alt-country hero turned speedballing crackpot goes apeshit with Garageband, resurfaces with 13 unreleased albums on his website and the homepage presents us with his alter-ego DJ Reggie's first 'hit,' and his record goes balsa wood in India (or someplace like that).

Genuine? Some people would argue this is a genuine piece of shit, but it holds a special place in my heart. The rap is flippant but clever, like most of Ryan's output between 2005-2006, and is most definitely coming from a man starved for attention. Or is he just bored? This is certainly not of the genre that gave him his name, and most people would argue that this presentation does not constitute an official release. Nevertheless, Pitchfork jumps at the chance for a track review the day after the song appears.

So why do I view this as an authentic Ryan Adams track? For a man who was playing with remote control cars onstage, leaving nasty messages on Jim DeRogatis's machine, and redesigning his website to better reflect DJ Reggie's tracks, I suppose it got to the point where "Come Pick Me Up" seemed inauthentic.

Dot com, muthafucker!

Anatomy of An Obsession

I’m in love.

Chris had posted a comment on one of my Jandek posts about why we obsess about what we do when we do. While my love for this song doesn’t constitute a full-blown artist obsession just yet, I think it provides a bit of insight nonetheless.

On Saturday night I was closing up shop for the night, when I noticed an mp3 on my desktop I had downloaded about a week ago. The track, “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” is off of Zooey Deschanel’s and M. Ward’s upcoming collaborative effort “Volume One,” to be released under the moniker She and Him on Merge records this March. Chris had alerted me to the collaboration via Hype Machine (so there you go for its usefulness), and I got this album track off of ViaChicago. I finally listened to it, and from the first piano chord to the time I went to bed I had played it successively seventeen times.

My first listen though the song, the lyrics became apparent right away. After “why do you let me stay here/ all by myself?” it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know where the lyrics are going. BUT – then the line “it’s not a secret/ why do you keep it?” coupled with the introduction of playful backing vocals just mad my heart flutter. The piano descant that starts at 0:33 followed by the full kit, and then the perfectly placed guitar solo, sealed the deal.

So what is it about this song that pulled me in? This song shares several qualities with my most played iTunes track (Sleater-Kinney’s “Rollercoaster” which, at 81 plays has over 30 plays on the second most-played track) – for one, you immediately get the sense that Zooey enjoys singing this song. The sigh at 0:06, the “uh-huh” at 1:31 and “just give me credit” at 1:36 come from a singer whose smiling, providing the song with a humanizing, energizing sex appeal – reinforced by the oh-so-human missed notes at 1:53 and 2:01. This isn’t a technically perfectly track, it’s an emotionally perfect track.

Similarly, “Rollercoatser” begins when Janet drops one of her sticks, and the track ends with one of the ladies laughing. The tracks also share a quality that lures me in every time, “oooohs” and “do-do’s.” “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” also employs hand claps, another aesthetic weakness of mine. Like the piano descant in “Stay Here,” “Rollercoaster” has an ascending riff on the chorus (first at 0:46) that drew me in the first time. The energizing sex appeal of Zooey’s “uh-huh” is matched by Carrie’s brilliant breakdown, “I’ll be your monkey, your puppy, I’ll be your superfreak/ I fell the first day it took you a whole week.”

The coy lust of each song’s opening gives way to seamless breakdowns (contradiction?) and, ultimately, more enlightened closures.

“Rollercoaster” conveys the arc (rollercoaster, if you will) of a relationship, the emotions one is left with when the initial spark wears off. Opening with a brilliantly cliché trip to the market for a “red cherry tomato,” (tempting her sorely – she’d like to bite one!) the singer then offers to make her lover dinner. Trouble appears in Eden when “appetite isn’t what we predicted/ would you wanna heat it up later?” Well, would you? The song ends with an acknowledgement of reality: “I know that some of our days are bitter/ but stay with me honey, things will get better” and returns to the first chorus, ending the song with the promise, “I’ll go at full boil til you s-s-s-s-stop me later.”

The period of enlightenment, as it were, in “Stay Here” is subtler – more evident in Zooey’s inflection as it is the actual lyrics. The whole song is rather light, but a funny thing happens after the guitar solo/key change. While the first half of the song contains musing and begging, the key change gives way to requests phrased as questions followed by the sly, “just give me credit.” “I’m just sitting on the shelf” goes from a lament to a “who, me?”

In the end, the most brilliant thing about these songs is that they are pop, plain and simple. Clever, yes, but not terribly deep. Pleasing to the ears, but not technically difficult to appreciate. Both of these songs have the ability to inspire longing without hangover, and as everyone knows, a high without the consequence is a sure road to addiction.

Plugged In and Strung Out

As a part of my introduction to blogging, I purposely amped up the amount of ‘tracking’ applications I use on the Internet. I am now using Digg, Hype Machine, and Last.fm, and I have to say I feel even more out of it than when I started. Though I understand the purpose of these applications from a more removed perspective, I can’t help but feel that I am creating an artificial representation of my media consumption by using these sites.

Last.fm, for instance, is able to ‘scrobble’ the music that I listen to on my iTunes, on my computer. The application cannot scrobble my iPod tracks, what I play in my car, or how much I listen to NPR. Even iTunes’ ‘Most Recently Played’ application cannot log tracks I listen to multiple times, and so no one really knows how much I listened to “Drivin’ on 9” in the past 24 hours, that The Woods is in my car, and I listen to ‘Morning Edition’ for about 20 minutes each day.

Hype Machine has the uncanny ability to accurately reflect that I have specifically searched for and selected the ‘heart’ icon for specific tracks posted on blogs. This means I like the tracks. Isn’t that why I searched for them in the first place? While I can browse through the most popular blog posts and also view what my friends ‘heart,’ I’ve found that the site really just provides you answers to questions you already knew.

Digg allows me to share favorite news stories and web features with family, friends, and intimate strangers with whom I share the site. I have been digging articles aplenty these past few weeks, but mostly from the Washington Post, New York Times, and Salon.com, places everyone knows I visit anyway. Further, Digg is not able to distinguish from articles you ‘digg’ versus articles you ‘abhor’,’ but simply wish to highlight for the horror of it all. While I can expect my family and friends (none of whom who monitor my activities on Digg) to distinguish the two, unsuspecting strangers on the web have no clue that I really think that Huckabee talking to God is a load of horseshit. For the record, I do.

So what I can’t figure out about these sites is if they are intended to track the regression or your habits, or help you to expand by emulating what other peoples’ trends are indicating? Because if I am reading/listening/digging/scrobbling the same things everyday, and you start reading/listening to what I’m Digging/scrobbling, then as far as I can tell you’re just making my bad habits yours, and we really aren’t getting anywhere in the name of progress. If you find that I’ve selected 20 Sleater-Kinney songs on Hype Machine and already knew I liked Sleater-Kinney, that all you really get out of it as an observer is that I still have a swift trigger finger.

In my album cue this week was Ani Difranco’s Not So Soft, an album I played the heck out of in high school. Though it’s been on my iTunes since I bought this computer in 2005, I apparently haven’t played a track from this album since then. It just didn’t seem right to me that none of that history is reflected in any of the applications I use.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that these sites are completely useless, and I do enjoy seeing what my friends like. I just thought that the whole point of all of this was to expand our horizons. and reflect our tastes If anything, my introduction to these sites has limited my exposure to certain music/news/cultural events, if only because I feel inclined to ‘pad’ my early use to create a foundation composed of my interest. (Not to mention the duality of rejecting ‘Big Brother’ surveillance in favor of self-selected surveillance – I suppose it’s not evil so long as you can manipulate it to present a better version of yourself.)

And you know what? That’s exactly what I don’t like about the sites – it is so hard to project an accurate image of how I use the Internet/listen to music daily. While these tools are easy to manipulate, I find it incredibly frustrating that I can’t manipulate them to tell the truth. So why do you use these sites? What do you personally gain from digging articles and scrobbling your music? Who has turned you on to what based on these tracking sites, and have you found your tastes to change since tuning in to tracking?

I Couldn't Make This Stuff Up

This morning I kicked off my Saturday with Jandek’s “Foreign Keys,” not because I love Jandek so much I simply can’t get enough even after 10 installments of Interstellar Discussion, but simply because that was the next album in the queue. Que? Well, if we’re going to be talking so much about music obsessions, perhaps the best place to start is how we listen.

Now, I have an inkling that the way I listen is entirely different than the way 99% of the populace listens to music. Like all listeners, I believe I have a tendency toward regression – playing the same records and songs over and over – and I have devised a rather neurotic scheme to overcome my favoritism.

Every Sunday morning, after my shower and before my coffee, I visit random.org, where I randomly select an integer between 1 and 18, corresponding to the number of playlists in my iTunes. These playlists include my entire library, three general playlists, unplayed tracks, radio (internet or ‘real’), and several artist-specific playlists. When I have generated the integer, that corresponding playlist becomes my ‘background music’ for the week (this week: 6 = Bob Dylan). I keep a catalog of the eight most-recently played lists, and don’t repeat a playlist until the eight weeks are up (also corresponding to how frequently I wash my duvet cover, if you’re interested).

My album queue is drawn from my entire list of shows and albums, which I keep in a Word document. I’ve divided up longer anthologies to avoid fatigue (all four discs of Billy Joel’s box set at once might give me a brain aneurism), but for the most part I like to keep all titles intact as a single selection. Rather than regenerating the queue weekly like the playlist, I simply create a new one when the previous queue has been exhausted. Again, I go to random.org, this time selecting the Sequence Generator instead of the Integer Generator, and used the first 10 integers in the sequence out of 168, the current number of ‘unlistened albums’ in the document.

This isn’t to say, of course, that I have never heard any of these remaining 168 albums in their entirely (the original Word document was well over 300), but simply that they haven’t been placed in the queue yet. I usually listen to an album completely several times after I buy it, and most from my high school and junior high days have been played to death through my older music listening schemes (I have employed many throughout the past decade).

This installment of the queue, per usual, had an even mix of Jandek (a 51 titles kind of stacks the ‘unlistened music’ list), live shows (which comprise 40% of my library) and Wilco/Wilco-related music (the band and Jeff Tweedy alone are 30% of my library). In this queue:

1. The Rocks Crumble – Jandek
2. The Showbox: 1998-09-16 – Elliott Smith
3. Side 4 – Ryan Adams (the bonus disc to the album Gold)
4. Brooklyn Wednesday – Jandek
5. Not So Soft – Ani Difranco
6. Bootleg Series Vol. 5: 1975 Rolling Thunder Review – Bob Dylan
7. The Fillmore: 2000-07-29 – Wilco
8. The Giant Pin – Nels Cline Singers
9. 2004-02-07 – The Autumn Defense
10. Wesbeth Theater: 1996-03-30 – Elliott Smith

When explaining a similar method I use to choose and renew passwords for various Internet sites to a co-worker, he laughed and said that I do it in this convoluted way because I enjoy the process more than I find it helpful, and I would agree that this is true. On the other hand, I also believe that one should listen to albums the way one might read a book or watch a movie, and what’s a better way to do that than a randomly chosen queue? The playlist of the week was something I began to use when I was buying lots of new music, and wanted to make sure that new artists were played on their own for a week so I could get into the music.

So, I thought I would close this post with how this scheme allows me to revisit music I haven’t heard in a while/et cetera, but basically I do it because I enjoy the process of selecting the albums, taking a break from Wilco/Sleater-Kinney/Silver Jews, and sometimes there really doesn’t need to be a moral to the story. Random.org!

Interstellar Discussion, Part Ten (FINAL!)

There’s Bugs In My Brain, I Can’t Feel Any Pain

For many Jandek fans, the myth has become the central feature of his appeal. While some fans adamantly maintain that they do not want to know who Jandek ‘is,’ others devote many hours scouring public records and examining lyrics to find any clues that will reveal some sort of ‘truth’. It has become apparent in my research, however, that no matter what fans find out about Jandek, the ‘truth’ will never be satisfactory.

Today, it is well accepted in the Jandek fan community that all of the records are created and distributed by Sterling R. Smith, who owns and operates Corwood Industries. He is based in Houston, Texas, and has been writing and recording music for a good portion of his life. For a good portion of his life, he has or has had a day job that pays enough for him to independently record, release and remasters nearly 50 original works and allows him to travel internationally. He values his privacy, but will accept and return calls and mail regarding orders, and occasionally responds to fan mail. When he plays live, he is billed as ‘a representative of Corwood Industries,’ and is usually the first person out of the venue.

In their imagined subjectivities, quite a few fans believe that Jandek has created a myth himself, and they are merely trying to uncover what is unknown. As a fan wrote in 1999, ‘he's definitely interested in creating a mythology around his records…regardless of how few people know or care about his music or his history’ (mailing list, May 5, 1999). A 2004 discussion about Library of Congress records on Jandek revealed that Sterling R. Smith held copyrights to all the songs, and also revealed his date of birth. One fan replied to this discussion, ‘I personally think that Jandek is cleverer than that... I don't think if he was going to such lengths to conceal his identity he would himself register the copyrights...’ (mailing list, January 21, 2004). Another fan responds to this hypothesis by illustrating that it is fans who create the myth: ‘Jandek has never said you COULDN'T find him… Rather, with Jandek it's that he doesn't WANT to be found. Leave the man alone’ (mailing list, January 21, 2004).

Riddles Riddling Me

Jandek fans provide a glimpse into a world of unmediated fandom, in which the object of devotion rebukes and avoids any dissemination of his art outside of the records themselves. Even Jandek’s current live performances are comprised of original pieces, none of which have reappeared except in the recording of their performance. Each Jandek album is a self-contained artifact that still manages to reference other Jandek works and almost never the world outside. His fans’ penchant for scouring public records in search of his ‘real’ identity is perhaps indicative that we feel entitled to a certain amount of information in our hyper-mediated age.

While outsider music fans are not the only fans who define their identity based on the music they listen to, the activities that they engage in are unique to outsider fandom because of the lack of information surrounding their artists. Jandek fans cannot discuss the finer elements of Jandek’s personal life as Bruce fans can, nor have they been able to engage in the community atmosphere of Jandek concerts until recently – and that is still a bit of a stretch. Instead, Jandek fans engage in an endlessly deferred narrative in which they frequently project their own lives and feelings onto Jandek only to absorb them again. Fans distance themselves from other music listeners, but also fans within the Jandek community, as a way of intensifying their personal connection with Corwood Industries.

As with other fan communities, the Jandek mailing list provides an opportunity for fans to share their admiration and speculation for an artist they admire – or, at the very least, are curious enough about to discuss. The myth that surrounds Jandek, largely created and perpetuated by the fan community itself, will continue so long as records appear from Corwood Industries. Whoever the man in Texas making the music happens to be, every fan on the list is quite sure who Jandek is.

Interstellar Discussion, Part Nine

I Love You Now, It’s True

Jandek’s first live appearance, in October of 2004 at the Instal Festival in Glasgow, was met with familiar anxiety, not to mention utter shock. Perhaps the most fitting response was from a member named Bob: ‘hells bells. keep an eye out for the plagues of locusts and the pale gent riding a horse’ (mailing list, October 18, 2004). The next five persons to respond to the list all believed the announcement to be a false rumor, and even after one of the musicians participating at the Festival confirmed that it was Jandek playing that night, several list members remained in a state of disbelief or disappointment: ‘Imagine if Thomas Pynchon started giving interviews and appearing on the Today Show. Someone who has such an aura of genius and mystery about them suddenly becomes just another shmo on the television’ (mailing list, October 18, 2004).

Why do Jandek fans form this myth around the artist? Several particular points of interest caught my eye when conducting my ethnography: I was surprised to find that many Jandek fans do not very much care for each other. I attribute both of these to the fact that Jandek fans desire to have a connection with Jandek outside of the collective identity. That is, Jandek fans very much perceive their relationship with Corwood to be ‘personal’. Therefore, they express themselves territorially, discounting other’s relationships and communications with Corwood, describing other Jandek fans with very undesirable traits, and enhancing their own relationship with Corwood.

One of the questions I submitted to the list, ‘What is your perception of other Jandek fans?’ elicited responses that I was certainly not expecting: Jandek fans on the whole spoke quite negatively of other Jandek fans. The most succinct response I received stated simply, ‘buncha tards’ (questionnaire, April 28, 2006). Kyle’s response, however, was more representative of the overall feeling about other Jandek fans: ‘Most of them seem like annoying, over-educated debaters, passive agressives and know-it-alls’ (questionnaire, April 13, 2006). Of 36 responses to my survey, 33 responded with negative perceptions of other Jandek fans, two responses were neutral regarding other Jandek fans, and only one was positive.

Many of the responses were not only negative, but portrayed other Jandek fans as mentally unstable or deviant. One respondent described fans as ‘borderline art-fags’ (mailing list, April 16, 2006). Brian wrote:

Musicians, depressed people, record collectors, obsessive/complusives, depressed musicians obsessive/complusive record collectors, people who feel they don't belong and found a voice in him (probably depressed musician obsessive/compulsive record collectors). Not people who are suicidal though because the act of constantly putting out albums is completely life affirming.
- questionnaire

Every Jandek fan that replied with a negative perception of other Jandek fans seemed to do so as a way of disassociating themselves from other fans. They are deranged, but I am not. This is particularly interesting in light of the fact that, the day after I distributed the survey, one user completed my questionnaire and mailed it out to the mailing list as a way of encouraging others to participate. After he did so, all but four of the other respondents followed suit and mailed their questionnaires out to the list; even persons that had already emailed questionnaires back to me reposted them online. The three respondents with neutral and positive perceptions of Jandek fans were of the four who did not post their responses to the list. I interpreted this to mean that Jandek fans do not regard each other with hostility, but as they come together on the list modify the aforementioned statement to read: they are deranged, we are not. Given the number of fans who contacted Corwood Industries for reasons other than placing an order, these negative perceptions of other Jandek correspond with their desire to establish a personal connection with Jandek.

All fans uniformly reported on the questionnaire that they preferred listening to Jandek alone. A significant reason for this is that much of their family and friends cannot stand Jandek’s music, however respondents to the questionnaire also reported that they did not especially like to share Jandek’s music with others; for many, listening to Jandek was a personal experience. Pat wrote, ‘Leaving yourself open and feeling the music is more intense and satisfying than simply deconstructing it…I prefer to listen to Jandek when I’m by myself. Early mornings, late evenings, in the car’ (questionnaire, April 13, 2006). Kevin echoed these sentiments: ‘I love the catharsis. I enjoy the tension of the dissonance and bleakness and melody and humor. I love the revelation of pain side by side with the joy of creation’ (questionnaire, April 13, 2006). Listening to Jandek alone intensified the personal connection many fans already felt to the music and the man.

Because Jandek’s albums, ordered direct from Corwood, are always personally packaged and addressed by hand, each record takes on the spirit of an artifact. As an outsider musician, Jandek does not experience a great deal of distribution, and his records are therefore a unique find among fans. Cavicchi wrote about one Springsteen fan who remarked that every time she heard Bruce mentioned, her ears perked up (1998:57); for Jandek fans, hearing about Corwood outside of the Jandek community is nearly mind baffling. The nature of the record as artifact renders it more personal, intensifying the connection some fans feel with Corwood.

Explicitly, Jandek fans will deny that Jandek has an identity. Tisue’s website proclaims on its homepage, ‘Everybody knows one thing about Jandek, that no one knows anything about Jandek’ (A Guide to Jandek 2006). A post on the mailing list in 2000 regarding the relationship of Sterling R. Smith to Jandek wrote, ‘part of the beauty of his anonymity [is that] there's no acknowledged "personality" to build a cult out of’ (mailing list, July 17, 2000). However, the very lack of identity is the identity that fans have projected onto Jandek. The idea of Jandek seems to be one that many fans find seductive: Jandek possesses the ability to be obscure and anonymous, while having enough of a myth surrounding him that people actively seek out his work.

Through generating a myth of Jandek and endlessly debating it on the mailing list, fans have created an identity for Jandek as that of a sought-after recluse. Fans that identify with Jandek perpetuate his myth as a way of enhancing their own connection with him and reinforcing their own identity. As Adorno writes, ‘Reality becomes its own ideology through the spell cast by its faithful duplication’ (2002:63). If a fan identifies with Jandek as a sought-after recluse, then in order to perpetuate this identity fans must continue to see him as a recluse and desire to know who he is ‘in reality’.

These projections of identity continue on throughout discussions of Jandek’s personality and mental stability. Without fail, fans project their own disorders or experiences onto Jandek when interpreting lyrics. One fan began a discussion about Jandek’s a capella album Worthless Recluse as being composed of vocal inflections used in military code, citing his own career in the military (mailing list, March 6, 2006). In a recent discussion regarding a lyrical analysis of Jandek’s music, one fan proposed that Jandek was epileptic, because he shared characteristics that she experiences as an epileptic (mailing list, April 28, 2006). Projecting their own experiences onto Jandek, fans are able to have someone to ‘share’ their experiences with.

Interstellar Discussion, Part Eight

Why Did I Change A Word In The Last Song?

Artists who value their privacy do not frequently generate as much mystique about their persona as Jandek; indeed, it is not merely his lack of contact with the media or his fans that puzzles fans, but the content and presentation of his work, as well. Three puzzles that Jandek fans discuss frequently on the mailing list are the numbering of the Jandek catalog, the order in which the catalog was recorded, and who the other musicians are who appear on Jandek recordings. Lyrical content and musical styles of the albums give only enough clues to provide further questions and no answers. The three of these debates, and obviously the search for the true identity of Jandek, compose Jandek’s endlessly deferred narrative. While Hills argues that the creator of the text perpetuates the narrative, Jandek fans have taken his text and created their own myths.

Jandek’s oeuvre is not without a full cast of characters. In addition to lyrical allusions to persons named Max, Jenny, Ezekiel and Phillip, his catalog includes a ten-year period in which he is joined by several additional musicians. Based on the tracks, “Nancy Sings,” “John Plays Drums,” and “Down at the Ballpark” (which features the line, “take it, Eddie”), these additional musicians during the ‘band era’ have all been referred to by these respective names. Though Nancy only appears on about four albums in this period, she is commonly accepted as the subject of all of Jandek’s love songs. In 1999, in response to Jandek’s recent release New Town (1998), Tim wrote:

I think the title song refers to Nancy. I think Nancy moved to Madison (reference: "Rain in Madison" off of "[Glad] to Get Away [(1994)]". Jandek goes to Madison and sits in his car outside Nancy's house) and this is what he means by "you're living in the new town.”
- Tim, mailing list, June 8, 1999

Based on these lyrical ‘clues,’ fans on the mailing list have extended their public records searches to look for Nancys in the Madison and Northeast (Jandek sings about Point Judith, Rhode Island on Six and Six (1981)).

Jandek’s lyrics are, more often than not, quite depressing and heavy. Fans often attribute a large portion of this unhappiness to a relationship with Nancy gone awry, though she only appears for several years and one style of music in the Jandek catalog. Tisue’s site has compiled a list of Jandek lyrical themes, which includes numbers, rivers and Spain, love, and depression. A large number of album titles also appear as lyrics in preceding albums. In his first album alone, ‘staring at the cellophane,’ ‘chair beside a window,’ ‘somebody in the snow,’ and ‘follow your footsteps’ are all lines that will later become the titles to albums.

The aesthetic continuity of the photographs on the cover of Jandek’s albums provokes questions about their chronological order, as well as the contexts in which they were taken. As previously mentioned, the majority of cover art depicts Jandek in various stages of his life. Several covers, Modern Dances (1987) and Blue Corpse (1987) were obviously taken on the same day, most likely one after the other. One fan wrote about the cover art, “Does anyone think that the pictures of the covers could be arriving in some sort of cycle or arrangement that continues itself within different themes?” (mailing list, January 24, 2001). Years later, the discussion comes up again; fans wonder who is taking the cover photos, as they are obviously ‘snapshots’ and not professional photography.

One fan attempts to construct a theory of Jandek’s life based on these photographs, in which a wife took all of the younger photographs of him (these appear on covers until about 1998), and then the photos that begin to appear depicting Jandek in Europe, obviously aged, signal to fans that he has divorced (Ivan; mailing list, June 30, 2004). Seth Tisue presents a collage of Jandek cover photos on his website that he feels are an accurately chronological representation.
A second discourse about the cover art began in 2004 with the release of Shadow Of Leaves. After one of the users posted that it looked as if the cover art had been altered in Photoshop, members almost uniformly agreed. Writes Ivan, who proposes the alterations:

I had a look at this and it seems that the path over Jandek's left shoulder is largely a photoshop creation. Some of it is quite hard to locate in the rest of the picture, but I've marked all the obvious areas that repeat. The parts that aren't marked feature so much repetition it looks like it's covering stuff up too. Also the leaves in that path are bigger than the ones in the other path.
- Ivan, mailing list, June 26, 2004

Responses to this post referred back to Katy Vine’s article, in which Jandek admitted that he did not use computers (Vine 1999:96). Fans cited this as evidence until one user distinguished between the identity of creator and person: “Maybe ‘Jandek’ doesn’t use computers, but ‘Sterling Smith’ does” (Tim; mailing list, June 27, 2004). The theory about Photoshopping continues into the present. The cover for Jandek’s Khartoum Variations (2006) shows Jandek in front of a castle; a fan posted in late April of 2006 that Jandek had been superimposed upon the castle, despite having the knowledge that one of Jandek’s live performances took place only several miles away.

The first Jandek release, Ready For the House (1978), was released with the catalog number 0739; logically, every release since has increased by one integer. In all nine years of the mailing list, fans continually discuss what might have motivated Corwood to begin the catalog at 0739 instead of 0001, or any other number. Circulating theories are that the numbers corresponded to Jandek’s birthday, the numbers were part of Jandek’s address, or that ‘0739’ was where the tape counter was set when Jandek first began recording. A fan who wrote Corwood with the question received the ominous reply: ‘NO SPECIAL REASON/ WE DON’T KNOW WHY/ START 0739’ (mailing list, October 5, 2004).

The numerical theme continues beyond the cataloging of albums. Several of Jandek’s songs, in particular ‘European Jewel,’ ‘Message To The Clerk,’ and ‘River to Madrid’ have been recorded in several forms; other lyrics reappear in different songs, and some melodies take on new lyrics. Rerecorded versions of songs are often followed by a number, furthering the myth about the significance of numbers. ‘European Jewel (Incomplete),’ originally appearing on Ready For the House, appears three times on The Rocks Crumble (1983), titled ‘European Jewel II,’ ‘European Jewel 613,’ and ‘European Jewel 501’. These titles reinforce the theory of some fans that 0739, the beginning of the Corwood catalog, corresponds to the number on the tape counter when Jandek started recording. This theory, however, directly conflicts with the debate about when albums were recorded.

Few Jandek fans assume that Jandek’s records were released as they were recorded, and therefore also believe that they have not been released in the order that they were recorded. In early correspondence with Irwin Chusid, Jandek claimed to have about ten albums already recorded; this number has now been increased to 30 on mailing list discussions, though I am not quite sure when this first occurred. After three acoustic albums, Nancy and John first appear on Chair Beside A Window (1982) and Your Turn To Fall (1983), respectively, however they each only appear on one track on the album. The ‘garage rock’ albums begin in 1982 and continue through 1985, until a brief relapse into acoustic music. Telegraph Melts (1986) returns to this electric phase, beginning Jandek’s ‘lounge’ period. A guest male vocalist (fans believe it to be Eddie, the second guitarist) appears on 1987’s Modern Dances and Blue Corpse, and Nancy sings on quite a few albums between 1988 and 1992’s Lose Cause. The blistering final track on Lost Cause, ‘The Electric End,’ is a startling 20-minute whoop-and-holler session between two guitarists, a drummer, and who knows what else. True to form, this is Jandek’s last track of the ‘band’ sessions.

After ‘The Electric End,’ Jandek’s output returned back to his acoustic style reminiscent of his albums released in the early 1980s, so much so that many fans believe these albums to have been recorded during the same period. The Beginning (1999) marks the end of this period with a first-ever piano-only piece. Following The Beginning is the biggest anomaly in the Jandek catalog: the a capella phase. Put My Dream On This Planet (2000) shocked listeners not only because it was an entirely spoken-word album, but it was also recorded on what appears to be a voice-activated recorder with fidelity similar to that of a telephone. Jandek’s voice rambles on for three tracks, two of which are each nearly 30 minutes long, in what Byron Coley likens to ‘creepy messages left on your answering machine’ (Jandek On Corwood, 2003). The album sounds strange enough that one poster, William, likened it to electronic voice phenomenon, in which ‘ghosts’ appear on the static of running tape (mailing list, March 6, 2001). After three a capella albums, Jandek returned to his guitar-and-vocal format of the past. On the a capella albums and all subsequent releases, Jandek’s voice appeared to have aged significantly in comparison to The Beginning and all prior releases, contributing to the theory that albums were not recorded as released. The a capella album’s low fidelity also contrasted with the increasing quality of other studio recordings.

Jandek’s catalog is not without a sense humor. The song, ‘Why Did I Change A Word In The Last Song,’ off of Interstellar Discussion (1984) follows the track, ‘Hey,’ in which the title comprises the only lyric in the song. ‘Om,’ from Somebody in the Snow (1990) appears to be a parody of Gregorian chant. ‘Mother’s Day Card,’ from Telegraph Melts (1986) can best be described as a Hallmark Card adapted to the style of a traditional drinking song. Banter throughout the electric phase presents Jandek goofing off with his collaborators.

During the late 1990s and into the release of Put My Dream On This Planet, Jandek albums went out of print and slowly began to reappear, remastered. Though all of the albums have been reissued to date, Jandek is still re-remastering them and re-reissuing them. Each reissue is sent to Seth Tisue accompanied by the following note: ‘remastered [year given] – all other editions obsolete’. Track times on reissues tend to be longer, extending the gaps between songs. Newer reissues also carry UPC barcodes, a first for Jandek. In the transition from vinyl to CD formation, Jandek also edited and remastered a significant amount of the back catalog; lines from a Frank Zappa song at the beginning of a track were removed, as was an instance where Jandek appeared to knock into his microphone accidentally.

The a capella phase is too creepy to go without a sample. Here's 'You Wake Up Deadmen,' from Worthless Recluse (2001)

Interstellar Discussion, Part Seven

Message To The Clerk

One of the most frequent rituals that Jandek fans engage in is writing to the P.O. Box address on the back of album covers. Of the list members who responded to my questionnaire, over two-thirds of them had contacted Corwood Industries for reasons other than placing an order; three of them had called the phone number for Corwood Industries, and three of them have had extended contact with Corwood. Most fans who write Corwood either write a letter of appreciation for the music, or write with specific questions that they hope to have answered.

One fan, Mark, wrote, “Every time I order, I write down a question that requires a short answer. We were having a running conversation (as such) about ‘liturature’ (his spelling), but after he let one note pass unanswered, I let it go” (questionnaire, April 19, 2006). Fans largely regarded their contact Corwood hesitantly, very cognizant of Jandek’s desire for privacy. When explaining why he had never contacted Corwood for reasons other than placing an order, Rob replied, “The man clearly wants to keep the public past arm’s length. I don’t bother pursuing, speculating, or asking questions” (questionnaire, April 14, 2006). Brian, who dealt with Corwood on the phone responded, “I try to word a question so that it doesn’t sound quite so direct or asking direct personal info” (questionnaire, April 18, 2006).

On the other hand, a small contingent of fans dealt with Corwood with a sense of entitlement. When told vinyl was no longer available, one fan responded in the following way:

“I fired back another letter demanding access to any vinyl that may still be or will be in the future available. As an attempt to bribe him, and as a riff on the photography response, I sent Corwood a series of out-of-focus photographs of my friends fixing their cars, doing bongs, laying in bed asleep, mundane stuff like that.” - mailing list, September 30, 2007

One fan admitted to calling the phone number for Corwood Industries several times, fabricating problems with his orders to try to keep Corwood on the phone for as long as possible. Several other fans (discussed below) also called Corwood for no other reason than to call the number they found for Corwood Industries to see who answered. This sense of entitlement some fans held seems to develop for a few reasons. One is the availability of Corwood Industries – the address is there, so they write. Fans who call Corwood justify their contact with two seemingly contradictory reasons: the phone number is available to the public, and if they have looked hard enough to find the number they ought to be entitled to call it.

Though simply contacting Corwood is enough for many fans, there existed quite a few instances in the history of the mailing list where fans presented ‘evidence’ of their contact with Corwood. Some fans scanned endorsed checks, handwritten notes, and took photos of the packaging that Corwood sent to post to the list; other fans were more audacious, recording their telephone conversations with Corwood and posting audio files of the conversations on the mailing list. Of these instances, scanned artifacts from Corwood were often met with confirmations that the handwriting was indeed the same that others received with their orders; those who posted audio files were chastised and asked by several members of the list to remove the audio files from their websites.

The majority of fans have decided that the appropriate ways to contact Corwood are the ways that Corwood had provided for them; telephone calls are only to be made as-needed, and therefore evidence of these are not considered to be public: “Man, no wonder he’s so reclusive, what with stalker-type phone calls and all…If you have no reason to call other than to harass the man, [these] calls are ultimately a naïve type of stalking/harassment” (mailing list, February 25, 2000). Throughout the mailing list archives, there also exist a number of instances in which fans discuss exploring the Houston public records and finding addresses, phone numbers and names cross-referenced to the P.O. Box. Surprisingly, persons who have admitted to engaging in public records scouring are not rebuked unless they post their findings on the mailing list.

A package from Corwood, whether ordered or unsolicited* is always met with excitement by fans. Jandek always mails small orders in the same, bubbled mailers with Corwood Industries labels, and includes an up-to-date catalog with each package. Shipping for all orders, and insurance for large orders, are always paid by Corwood. All notes and addresses appear to be written with the same felt-tip pen. This consistency and the personal nature of the packages (for instance, packages are always hand-addressed by the same person) makes packages from Corwood – and their contents – appear more like artifacts than products. Tim, Richard, Stuart and Samuel all admitted to keeping all of their correspondence and packaging from Corwood. Since I did not directly ask about this in my questionnaire, I am unsure as to how many others have (I do).

Many fans in and around Houston have admitted to visiting the Corwood P.O. Box. Ian, a member of the mailing list from Texas who was moving north inquired to the list, ‘if there's anything Jandek-related i should try and investigate and/or photograph while i'm there, drop me a line and let me know, i'll see if i can work it into my schedule’ (mailing list, July 21, 1999). Fans in the greater United States have visited other areas of significance in Jandek lyrics: some fans have purposely driven through Madison (‘Rain In Madison’), Point Judith, Rhode Island (‘Point Judith’), Ohio (‘Governor Rhodes’) and other areas that may or may not have a geographical significance for Jandek. Fans have also extended their public records searches to encompass these geographical locations and the characters in his songs that accompany them.

It is not unusual, by any means, for popular music fans to try to contact artists or even present evidence of their contact with artists by posting autographs or photos of themselves with the artists on message boards and mailing lists. Why this is different is because fans perceive it to be some sort of ‘clue’ into Jandek’s real identity. As Ken wrote to the mailing list in 2004, “I wanted to ask a question…it almost felt like consulting a mystical oracle or something!” (mailing list, October 5, 2004). In an age in which music videos, extensive touring and press junkets are a standard part of any popular musician’s career, Jandek’s fondness for privacy renders him mystical. The accessibility of contacting him, even if he does not necessarily return the favor, is an enticing part of the myth for many fans. Unlike popular musicians, Jandek is not mediated to his fans outside of his music, and so becomes paradoxically more available.

* Several fans have developed ‘semi-professional’ relationships with Corwood: Seth Tisue, fans who appeared in Jandek On Corwood and select others receive albums from Corwood as they are released (or re-released), free of charge. Corwood has also established relationships with several radio stations, including KAOS in Olympia, WA, and distributes free records to them as well.

Interstellar Discussion, Part Six

The Katy Vine article *, unlike many of the texts, came as a surprise to the mailing list. Because the mailing list was not established until 1997, the Spin articles, Milstein’s review, and Chusid’s opinions about Jandek were a part of list discourse from its inception. Chad Freidrichs and Paul Fehler solicited the list for interviews for their documentary, and so even the documentary was highly anticipated by the list. Vine’s article, however, was brought to the list’s attention on July 19, 1999 by an unwitting fan from Texas who happened to subscribe to The Texas Monthly. The article was initially considered to be a fabrication, however Vine’s description of Jandek’s ‘white collar job’ led fans to conduct Google searches, locating Sterling Smiths at websites for Compaq, Hewlitt-Packard, and Dave and Busters (Vine 1999:96; mailing list July 21, 1999). Seth Tisue verified the merits of the article when he posted to the list that both Vine and a fact-checker for the publication had contacted him (mailing list, July 29, 1999). One fan wrote about the validity of the text:

Does Ms. Vine claim to have found Jandek? Part of me hopes not (although the other part hopes yes). Jandek is one of the great mysteries of American popular culture. If he is unmasked he will loose much of his power. It would be like giving Sampson a hair cut.
- Ben, mailing list, July 20, 1999

While many fans were excited to see the object of their devotion printed in such a mainstream publication, they expressed anxiety about increased exposure. Ben’s posting is a characteristic of the indie rock aesthetic, the ‘signs negotiated in social status’ and the cultural capital involved in presenting art (Hibbett 2005:56). Fans were nervous that increased exposure – particularly interviews – would betray Jandek’s utterly ‘do-it-yourself’ ethos, but also their elite status as those who ‘got’ Jandek.

Seth Tisue’s site is considered to be the definitive source of old and new Jandek information. Tisue receives all new Corwood releases and remasters, and is often the first to receive news of an upcoming Jandek performance. Lyrics from all albums are available on Tisue’s site, as is an extensive ‘About Jandek’ page complete with a speculated biography and an extensively annotated presentation Jandek’s discography. Mailing list archives and links to aforementioned articles are also on the site, as well as four different Corwood catalogs from throughout the years. Seth Tisue’s site for Jandek is canonical in the highest regard.

All of the texts available to Jandek fans provide fans a starting point for the myth – certainly even more so than the man himself. Fans responding to my question about why they joined the list almost always wrote that they wanted to get as much information as they possibly could. In order to participate in the endlessly deferred narrative of fandom, Jandek fans needed to be familiar with all the texts available: from texts come clues, and from clues come theories.

* Also available in a pdf of the original

Interstellar Discussion, Part Five

Could Be Anyone

Jandek is the pseudonym for a Texas musician who has released 51 albums since 1978. His prolific output alone is not the sole merit for the mystery surrounding him; he has only granted one in-person interview, and only one phone interview, in 28 years. Every album cover depicts the man himself, a house with curtains drawn, or a piece of furniture. No lyrics are included with albums; only titles of the songs, running times, and the address for Corwood Industries, a post office box in Houston, Texas, appear on the back of the albums. Corwood’s only business seems to be the Jandek catalog, which it sells wholesale: single albums are $8 a piece, but if you purchase 20 or more they are $4 a piece. In 2004, a ‘representative from Corwood Industries’ appeared unannounced at the Instal experimental and avant-garde music festival in Glasgow, Scotland. Since then, Jandek has performed a handful of concerts in both the United States and United Kingdom.

Throughout his 28-year career, Jandek’s true identity has become the subject of much speculation. All Jandek songs are registered in the Library of Congress to a Sterling R. Smith, born in 1945. All correspondence sent from Corwood Industries is postmarked from Houston, and all checks are endorsed in Houston by Sterling R. Smith. People who write to the P.O. Box more often than not receive a copy of the typewritten Corwood catalog and, occasionally, cryptic answers to their questions. But what does his music sound like? I find his music to be very diverse throughout his 46-album catalog, by and large a blend of Eastern tunings and garage-rock blues. Jandek himself prefers the phrase one reviewer used, ‘pentatonic refractive dissonance’. When I played the music for a friend, she described it as a ‘collection of atonal, disturbing, twisted sounds that could only emerge under the fantasies of true duress.’

You Took Me For A Ride

Aside from the fan website hosted by Seth Tisue, there exist several canonical texts about Jandek. The first press about Jandek was a review of his debut album, Ready For the House (1978), written in 1980 by Phil Milstein in Op Magazine. Spin magazine can lay claim to his second feature, an article by Byron Coley published in 1990 and Jandek’s only telephone interview, granted to freelance writer John Trubee in 1985. Jandek’s only in-person interview was conducted by The Texas Monthly’s Katy Vine in 1999; in her attempt to track down people involved with Corwood Industries, Vine unwittingly stumbled upon the house of the man behind Jandek, who invited her out for a beer. In 2000, Irwin Chusid, a long-time host for an outsider radio show on WFMU out of New York, released his book Songs In The Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music. His chapter about Jandek reveals much about Jandek’s early years: how Jandek used to mail out boxes of 25 or 50 LPs to radio stations and select supporters, how Jandek said to have lived in New York shopping his seven book manuscripts to publishers, only to burn them all when they were rejected. In 2003, Chad Freidrichs and Paul Fehler released their debut documentary about Jandek, titled “Jandek On Corwood”. The film features interviews with fans and the many persons credited to contributing to the Jandek myth, including the aforementioned people, but includes no live footage of Jandek * . The full audio of John Trubee’s nearly hour-long interview with Jandek appears as an extra feature of the film’s DVD release. Finally, two Jandek tribute albums have been released by Summersteps Records, including contributions from professional musicians and fans alike.

The Jandek fan community is not only familiar with all of these texts, but have varying opinions on how they treat the man himself. The most celebrated text is inarguably "Jandek on Corwood," and while some fans criticize it for not telling them anything they do not already know, most respect the level of privacy that the filmmakers showed for Jandek and Corwood Industries. The most contentious of the texts is Chusid’s book chapter, in which he frequently categorizes the music as unlistenable, and Jandek himself as somewhat crazy. He writes, “[Ready For the House] wasn’t just unlistenable – it was unashamedly repellent…It was devoid of artistic ambition; its repugnance was organic, naturalistic” (Chusid 2000:59). Because of his nearly twenty-year relationship with Jandek via correspondence fans feel that Chusid often exploits his subject by portraying requests for privacy as lunacy; describing a period in which he lost contact with Jandek, he writes, “I figured the mothership had returned to fetch the expedition” (Chusid 2000:61).

Fans’ responses to Chusid were quite territorial, to the extent that many who disagreed with him denied that Chusid had ever had contact with Corwood. Though many people on the list referred to Jandek as ‘Sterling’ or ‘Mr. Smith’ long before the publication of Chusid’s book, one fan retorted, “He should know that Jandek (whoever he is) would not want his identity revealed, and that his fans do not want his MYSTIQUE ruined by some know-it-all jerk trying to impress everyone!!!” (mailing list, January 7, 2000). Another fan replied, “Perhaps we can deduce that Irwin printed that allegation (which I think we can all deduce is completely false) as a red herring to prevent people from uncovering the true identity (or identities) of Jandek” (mailing list, January 7, 2000).

* the film does, however, contain Jandek's directorial debut in an eight-second cameo that is sure to make any fan spit out her coffee

Interstellar Discussion, Part Four

Completely Yours

Cavicchi writes extensively about the fan’s ‘point of conversion,’ placing heavy emphasis on the narrative of the listener before becoming a fan. He draws from the two processes of conversion that William James outlines in his own work: self-surrender and volitional conversion (Cavicchi 1998:43). In self-surrender, ‘fans negatively describe their activity or attitude in the period before the actual ‘discovery’ of [the musician]...This indifference or negativity is then radically altered’ (1998:43). Cavicchi’s own conversion to Springsteen fandom was volitional – a disciplined ‘building up…of new habits’ (1998:43). Though he had enjoyed Springsteen’s music in the past, his marriage to an avid Springsteen fan inspired him to listen more closely to the entire Springsteen catalog, and from there he became a fan (1998:51). In both types of conversion to popular music fandom, exposure to an artist’s work almost always precedes a fan’s interest in the artist.

Outsider music, however, receives little exposure in popular (or unpopular) press. While outsider musicians receive occasional mention on indie music websites and in music publications, listeners often must actively seek out their music or even their story. Jandek fans will often relate that their conversion was facilitated by exposure – whether through a friend or self-discovery – to what I call a ‘canonical text,’ one of several legendary pieces of media that feature Jandek. In the case of Jandek, these include the book Songs In The Key of Z by radio personality Irwin Chusid, a documentary, several articles referencing his work in Spin Magazine, and a Corwood representative’s ‘surprise’ interview with a Texas journalist. Through these texts, readers are exposed to the ‘myth’ of the musician first, which then inspires them to seek out further information and, ultimately, the music.

A canon of references is in no way unique to outsider musicians, nor are canonical texts the only avenue for introduction to outsider music. Based on sheer lack of volume alone, outsider musicians’ canonical texts are often easier to identify. For fans of outsider musicians, then, obtaining information about the object of their devotion becomes critical to the formation of fan and artist identity. In the case of Jandek, lack of information not only produces myth, but also drives the endlessly deferred narrative and ultimately creates a particular identity of its own through silence.

I'll Sit Alone and Think a Lot About You

How does this discourse about the theory of outsider music fans take place in the context of the Jandek fan mailing list? Jandek fans engage in many common fan-specific rituals: writing to Jandek, visiting the P.O. Box that Jandek operates out of, listening to Jandek in specific ways and now, traveling to concerts. The discussions that fans participate in on the mailing list largely contribute to the myth that surrounds Jandek. Like many music fan communities, Jandek fans are not always fond of each other. Members of the mailing list exhibit what Hills defines as ‘imagined subjectivities,’ the ‘valued traits of the subject…only to those within a given community, while denigrating or devaluing the ‘improper’ subjectivity of those who are outside the community’ (Hills 2001:134). Jandek fans not only distinguish between themselves and the greater world, but also feel that as individual fans, many of them understand Jandek and his ‘true’ identity more than other fans.

Through these rituals, myths, and subjectivities, Jandek fans are ultimately responsible for creating the identity of Jandek that they perceive. By interpreting the lyrics of Jandek’s body of work and abrupt correspondence as ‘clues’ to uncovering a greater meaning, fans engage in a dialectic with the artist that becomes the ultimate point of contention for the mailing list community. As Jandek’s music surfaces from the same postal code with an intense regularity, the ‘true’ identity of Jandek becomes the dialectic in which fans place his work.

The scope of my 2006 study covered the list archives from its inception in 1997 to April of 2006, supplemented with questionnaires I distributed to the mailing list in March of 2006. As of April 2006, the Jandek mailing list was composed of 524 members, and I received 36 responses to my questionnaire. I also engaged in additional correspondence via email with 5 of the respondents. Of the list members, I was only able to identify five active female members over the course of nine years, and one of them responded to my questionnaire. My analysis will be divided up into several parts. After providing a brief biographical sketch of Jandek, I will present the canonical texts about him, and the fan’s reactions to these texts. Next I will present the bulk of my research: the activities that fans engage in, and how these activities construct the myth and identity of Jandek. I will then present the theory that the identity fans have constructed for Jandek is a direct reflection of their own identities as fans.

It is important to clarify that the primary activity of the Jandek community is engaging in discourse that seeks to define the identity of Jandek. While many other fan cultures engage in this activity, Jandek’s reclusive nature dictates that a bulk of the information about Jandek is largely speculative, and thus forms a narrative that largely feeds back into itself. As a result, my research will deal heavily with the narrative of the myth of Jandek, at times presenting a large amount of background information in conjunction with my analysis. Ultimately, the story of Jandek is the story of the fans.