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.

Interstellar Discussion, Part Three

Show Me the Way, O Lord (Part 2 of 2)

Fluency with the work of an artist is the result of collection of and immersion in the artist’s body of work. Because popular music is almost entirely commodified, the acquisition of the artist’s work takes place largely in the economic sector. Fans differ greatly on what they consider to be the ‘complete’ collection of saleable items for any given artist, but items for purchase will include albums, singles, import releases, different formats of releases (7”, 12”, tape), t-shirts, posters, tickets and stickers, and even magazine and newspaper clippings.

In addition to commodified items there exist a range of non-commodified items, some of them ‘artifacts,’ which are distributed among fan communities. The most frequent non-commodified item of music communities is the bootleg: an audio or video recording of concerts, or an audio recording of unreleased demos or studio tracks. As technology advances, the distribution of bootlegs through file-type protocol servers and Bit Torrent sites renders most of these bootlegs as simply ‘non-commodities’ – items that people share instead of purchase. The artifact, then, is the item that has not been disseminated in the wider community. Obtaining an artifact is thus often an extensive and emotional process. An autograph acquired in person becomes an artifact; if this autograph is put up for sale on eBay it becomes a commodity. The non-commodity is a work distributed by and for the community; an artifact becomes a personal relic of fandom.

Identifying with an artist becomes the ultimate defining process for fans. While many listeners identify with artists without becoming fans, the particular dialect of identity that fans engage in with the objects of their devotion is pivotal to their experience as fans. Cavicchi relies heavily on the identity theory of William James, who proposes that identity is constructed through a ‘process of self-continuity’ in which the self always recognizes the same ‘me,’ despite changes in behavior and norms (Cavicchi 1998:136). Therefore, if a fan identifies not only with the music of a particular artist but also the artist himself, the fan becomes dependent on the identity of the artist as a means of reinforcing his own identity.

By using the artist to reinforce his or her own identity, the listener first engages in the ‘endlessly deferred narrative’ of fan cultures. Matt Hills describes this phenomenon as a discourse perpetuated by the creator of the text that ‘remains focused on particular themes and issues of (character) identity’ (2001:134). Hills discusses these narratives within the context of science fiction television shows: Doctor Who? The truth is out where? And what is the truth? With popular musicians, however, fans are dealing with the tumultuous narratives of actual, unpredictable people. Because fan identity is reliant on artist identity, then a discussion about Ani Difranco’s sexuality or Bruce Springsteen’s Hollywood marriage becomes legitimate discourse in the fan community.

They Told Me About You

The two most basic differences between popular and outsider music fans are exposure and access to music. Outsider musicians literally exist outside the discourse of popular press; lack of exposure coincides with (but is not necessarily a direct result of) difficulty in acquiring the music. The work of many outsider musicians is out of print; some of them do not even release records on record labels, but simply distribute home-recordings. Others exist on labels that may have no method or mechanism for distribution, and rely largely on word of mouth for record sales. While websites like Forced Exposure seek to introduce the world to outsider music, they remain fixed in the discourse of the outsider community – people that are not inspired to find this music will not.

In addition to the physical inaccessibility of their music, outsider music fans take pride in the perceived un-listenability of their music. The regression of listening, according to Adorno, is ‘the arrogantly ignorant rejection of everything unfamiliar’ (2002:51). Whether one is enjoying the vocal stylings of Kathy McGinty, the static ambiance of The Conet Project, Jandek’s ‘deliberate’ tunings or Daniel Johnston’s heartfelt chord organ, outsider music – novelty or serious – is not for the regressive listener. In ‘getting’ the message of such inaccessible music, outsider music fans identify themselves superior to those who listen to mainstream music. Maintaining distance from the tasteless masses then becomes a crucial to outsider listeners in the same way distance is important for indie rock listeners: if the tasteless masses whom they have distinguished themselves from begin liking the outsider music they listen to, then this means either outsider listeners have no taste, or their music is not superior (Hibbett 2005:70).

The most significant differentiating feature of the outsider fan is that curiosity, not conversion, is often the primary introduction to the music. Popular musicians are just that – they receive publicity and are easy to come by in the press. Even ‘indie’ rock is rarely difficult to find anymore, as it has grown in popularity and receives increased public exposure through blogs and indie music review sites such as Pitchfork Media, Glorious Noise, and Tiny Mix Tapes. Thus, fans are frequently introduced to an artist long before they become a fan; the point at which they transition from listener to fan becomes their conversion.

Interstellar Discussion, Part Two

Popular Music Fans: Show Me The Way, O Lord (1 of 2)

Daniel Cavicchi’s ethnography of Bruce Springsteen fans for the first time places the audience not only in a position of power, but presents them as articulate subjects. He readily admits that he himself is a Bruce Springsteen fan, and draws upon his own encounters nearly enough as the one hundred interviews he conducted as part of his research. From this point of view Cavicchi’s argument authoritatively challenges the academic elites; what Adorno frames as a regression of listening Bruce fans readily admitted was a passion to play Bruce ‘over and over until the tapes just about wore out’ (Cavicchi 1998:47). While Theodor Adorno (2002) and Dick Hedbige (Subculture: The Meaning of Style: 1978) approach rock music as part of ‘popular’ or ‘mass’ culture, Cavicchi notes the fans’ propensity to use ‘high culture theory’ to assess Bruce’s work as a means of separating themselves as ‘fans’ as opposed to ‘listeners’ (1998:122). Cavicchi’s work and innovation in the study of fan cultures, likening fandom to religion in a way that does not paint fans as ‘disordered,’ and using the theories of William James and Sigmund Freud to explain the fans’ relationship to their object of devotion without rendering them perverted.

What Cavicchi has trouble articulating from his ‘insider’s narrative,’ Hills articulates from what he would call the ‘fan-scholar’ point of view. Cavicchi attempts to distance himself as a fan to present fan identity accurately and articulately, but Hills more urgently tries to blend his academic and fan identities. Cavicchi’s research of fans is conducted within the existing framework of academic scholarship, but Hills tries to amend this current paradigm by challenging fan ethnography more explicitly than Cavicchi (by way of a litmus test he calls ‘autoethnography’), and attacking the imagined subjectivities and moral dualisms of academia and fandom.

In his 2005 article about indie rock listeners in Popular Music and Society, Ryan Hibbett discusses social differentiation and intellectual superiority. He notes that indie rock’s increasing popularity in ‘mainstream’ markets forces ‘true’ indie fans to differentiate themselves from ‘posers’ or more casual listeners. Ultimately, the indie label has little to do with music and everything to do with style. Like Hedbige with punk, Hibbett observes that indie rock operates within a system of codes that amount to a form of cultural capital (2005:57). Hibbett argues that indie rock listeners define their identity and community through the ‘ownership’ acquired through ‘knowledge and experience’ of rare and obscure bands, records, and performances (2005:72). While Hibbett’s work does not examine a particular group of fans, his work provides a contemporary companion to Hedbige’s examination of rock music subcultures.

Cavicchi, Hills, and Hibbett all examine various behaviors and beliefs that compose popular music fandom. As a fan of an artist, one assumes a subjective authority over critics and scholars alike, based on both fluency of the artist’s work as well as his or her perceived connection with the artist (Hills 2001:3-5). To become a fan of an artist, argues Cavicchi, one must experience a moment or process of awakening; his ethnography of Bruce Springsteen fans contains quite a few narratives about the ways in which people stopped being listeners and became fans (1998:39-53). Fans often participate in pilgrimages, then, traveling to a place of significance to the artist or the artist’s work. For fans of Springsteen, this may be Asbury Park, or even his New Jersey home; Wilco fans search for The Loft on Irving Park Road or photograph the Marina Towers in Chicago; Ani Difranco fans will visit her church in Buffalo, NY to ask for a tour of her headquarters.

Interstellar Discussion, Part One

I Went Outside

The subject of fan communities has, to date, been largely ignored in the social sciences. While scholars in recent decades have closely examined the relationship between the audience and the media (Kellner 1995; De Zengotita 2002; Postman 1981), fans have often been described as deviant, obsessive, and in some cases psychotic. Two recent works by Daniel Cavicchi and Matt Hills (Tramps Like Us, 1998; Fan Cultures, 2001), however, have argued that fans are often very rational and articulate people who happen to have an intense investment in a particular aspect of popular culture. With now legions of websites, message boards, mailing lists, blogs and file-sharing sites dedicated to musicians, television shows and celebrity, fans have more opportunities than ever before to share with each other and present themselves to the world as articulate, reasonable people who happen to be fanatics.

Though anthropologists are starting to examine the communities that have been formed by popular music fans, the world of outsider music* still remains unstudied in academia. Outsider music, sometimes considered more novelty than art, is generally defined as ‘weird,’ for lack of a better word. The artists who fall into this genre tend to be rather prolific, enigmatic and, not least of all, eccentric. Quite literally, outsider music is separated from the production paradigm of popular music; outsider music is usually produced through small-scale home recording, and is almost never issued through a distributor. If popular music fans spend hours waiting in line for concert tickets, pouring over magazine articles and music videos, own band t-shirts, and try to get their autographs after the show, what can we make of the fans of an artist who plays no concerts, has no t-shirts, and grants no interviews?

In late 2005 I was first exposed to the music of a reclusive Texas musician known as Jandek. Though he has now released over 50 albums and DVDs since 1978, he did not first appear in public until 2004. However, when I came across a website and mailing list devoted to his work, I was not surprised to find an active discourse about the man and his motivations. His low public profile, large body of albums, and several cryptic interactions with the media have led the story of Jandek to grow into a myth that fans endlessly sustain, debate, and investigate. As I learned more about Jandek and his fans, I began to wonder how fans of outsider musicians might differ from fans of popular music.

* for those of you new to the genre, please visit Aquarius Records or Forced Exposure for catalogs and soundclips. Seriously, it's a trip.

Hey Mister Can You Tell Me

Is that a knife stuck in your face?

As promised, the following series of posts will be installments of a rather long essay I wrote in 2006 about the fans of ‘outsider’ folk-myth-hero Jandek, the pseudonym for a Houston-based gentleman who has been pumping out the jams via Corwood Industries since 1978. For a much better description of Jandek than I myself can proffer, refer to the following sites:

Seth Tisue's definitive, ‘Corwood-endorsed’ Jandek site
Ever-ready Wikipedia

I first came across Jandek through my then (and still current) obsession of 2005, Wilco. On ViaChicago, a gentleman posted a track that Jeff Tweedy recorded for the Jandek tribute album. I was so eager to hear a new track from Jeff that I didn’t think twice about who Jandek was. The recording, “Crack a Smile” – featuring Jeff’s then-nine year-old son on drums – was haunting, touching, and absolutely what I needed to hear at that moment. And anyone who knows anything about musical obsessions knows that hearing a song for the first time when it is exactly what you need to hear that moment is a sure way to never shake yourself of that song.

Months of listening to that track and I still hadn’t looked into who Jandek was. When he came up again on the Wilco boards, someone mentioned his music as totally inaccessible. I listened to “Crack a Smile” again, and could not understand how Jandek's original version of that recording could possibly be inaccessible. At that moment, it hit me – I needed Jandek, I needed all of it, and I needed all of it five minutes ago.

After scouring the internet and swallowing everything Jandek for weeks on end – but still not having heard one not of his own music, I received four albums for Christmas that year. After being utterly mystified by Ready for the House, specifically the first, track, “Naked in the Afternoon,” I wrote to Corwood and said I was interested in the music, would love to know more, and an contact would be appreciated but not necessary. I suppose I was kind of baiting the man, as I had heard all sorts of creepy, ‘eerie’ responses to correspondence. Sure enough, a few weeks later, a large bubble-packer arrived full of CDs with broken cases and the infamous brown muck. You can only imagine what this did for my budding obsession.

I ordered the remainder of the albums – at that point, 38 I believe – and wouldn’t you know? The day they arrived I was suffering from the first flu I’d had in years. I signed for the package with a major fever, went back to my room and fell into a deep sleep riddled with the kind of bizarre nightmares you can only have with a box of Jandek and a fever. I then endeavored to listen to all of the albums – and nothing else – until I had worked my way from the beginning to the end of the catalog (referred to in the industry as a ‘Jandekathalon’). Boy howdy, if that won’t change your disposition!

But I loved it. I had never thought that way before – never thought to think that way before. Everything I knew about music – what was ‘popular’ and what was ‘music,’ for that matter – had completely disintegrated. Jandek sounded like Helen Keller on guitar, wailing suicide notes, producing ghost-town music from a humidifier. Jandek was cooking up all kinds of crazy, but yet he was so normal about it.

And there you have it. I still write Corwood fairly regularly, mostly responding to new albums, live shows and the like. I flew to Chicago the fall after my Jandek fan ‘ethnography’ (undergraduate ethnographies require the quotations as qualifiers), recently saw him in Grinnell, Iowa, and will be heading out to Denver this spring for another show. I’ve adapted the essay to update it (a lot happens in his world, you see) and make it more blog-friendly, and I hope you enjoy the read.

And The Crowd Goes Mild

After weeks of talking about doing so in a threatening manner, I have finally gone live with my blog. For a long time, I have been averse to blogs, primarily because I do see them as a platform for indulgent self-examination and proselytizing for one thing or another, but after two months of subjecting a co-worker to the same I decided that a blog couldn't be much worse. Welcome to The Electric End, my new venue for exploring fanaticism, obsessions, and fetishes regarding (but not limited to) music.

For as long as I can remember, I've always had obsessions of one kind or another, and I've always been interested in music. My first musical obsession was probably Aerosmith, after watching their music video for "Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees)". Immediately, I needed to know everything about the band - not just the music, but everything. I now own all of Aerosmith's studio albums, and know more about them than any mortal should. (Okay, stop laughing.) Since then, I've never been without one or two musical obsessions.  I'm currently stuck on Jandek, Wilco and Sleater-Kinney.

On February 15, 2001, my desire to woo a classmate led me to a message board for Ani Difranco  fans, and from that moment forward my relationship with my obsessions was never the same. I found out more about Ani in 10 minutes on anidifranco.org than I had in all of my previous hours scouring the internet for information about her. More than that, I was now privy to a sea of other fans' lives, interests and obsessions.

My experiences with anidifranco.org changed me profoundly - as a person, a scholar and a fan. I formed relationships with people I had never met before, some of whom I still haven't met and one whom I stole my parents car and drove to Iowa to meet. I experienced Ani's music privately and maybe even spiritually, but the connection I had with other fans was undeniable.  I engaged in a lot of behaviors and rituals that I later found out were textbook behaviors for most fans. In fact, the more time I spent on the boards, I became less interested in Ani and more interested in her fans.

While studying Anthropology at St. Olaf College, I began to examine my own obsessions through an academic lens. Somewhere in either the library stacks or the classroom, I was disappointed to find that fans of popular music had yet to become the object of many academic pursuits. The academy's seeming lack of interest and dismissive tone regarding obsessive hobbyists was a bit disconcerting. What is a pastime for many becomes an all-consuming way of life for others; the truly devoted engulf themselves in their obsessions the same way Lutherans and 12-steppers do.  Why haven't more people been studying this?

A little effort and a lot of interest have revealed to me legions of scholars, writers, musicians and otherwise boring people whose ideas I would love to share in this blog. The majority of my posts will relate to music fans, obsessions and fetishes, though I will deviate from music occasionally to cover other hobbies and interests. I'll try to draw from observations of others as frequently as (or more than) I talk about myself; I do not want this to be a me-blog. As a frame of reference, I'll generally try to post specific songs I mention in my posts. 

While my initial goal was to post once a week, I seem to have a lot of ideas in the queue, so you may see a fair amount of action initially (more than I can say for myself). To kick things off, I will be posting an adaptation of an essay I wrote in 2006 regarding the fans of Houston-based musician Jandek. The essay conveys many of my opinions about music fans, and provides concise explanations of many of my favorite theories. 

Thanks for tuning in! Feedback is always welcome, though I imagine I'll have to amass some sort of readership before I am able to garner any criticism. And now, the music video that changed my life: 

Aerosmith - Falling In Love (Is Hard on the Knees):