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