disinformation

Welcome to Disinformation | July 06, 2003

Abuse Your Illusions - the follow-up to Everything You Know Is Wrong & You Are Being Lied To is in the store and every bit as essential. The long-awaited Disinformation DVD is in too!
>>Go

U.S. Weighs Military Intervention in Liberia
>>Go

What The European Papers Say
>>Go

Violence Mars Nigerian Strikes
>>Go

Religion in the News: June 2003
>>Go

jandek
by Alex Burns (alex@disinfo.com) - December 20, 2000

"Jandek's not pretentious, but only pretentious people like his music."
~ ~ Kurt Cobain, Spin magazine interview, 1993.

"The man continues to live with the curtains drawn and the phone off the hook."
~ ~ Irwin Chusid.

You have probably never heard of him, even though he has released 28 albums since 1978. Even more reclusive than authors Thomas Pynchon and J.D. Salinger, he continues to survive on the lonely fringes of Outsider music. He is subterranean pop music's most startling enigma. He is known simply as Jandek.

Jandek has never performed live or made public appearances. He doesn't give interviews. He doesn't send out press releases. He doesn't do remixes. He has never recorded a promotional video. When Texas Monthly reporter Katy Vine traced him to somewhere near Houston, Texas, they talked about allergies, gardening, and the philosophy of The Matrix (1999), and he told her curtly that he never wanted to be contacted by anyone about Jandek again.

According to musician Irwin Chusid, Jandek's real name is Sterling R. Smith. Jandek's albums - released by the obscure label Corwood Industries - have no liner notes, credits, or photos, featuring only a Houston post office box address that has not changed since the early 1980s.

The discordant guitar strumming and 'stream-of-consciousness' lyrics have been honed with each release (which ended up in university college radio stations, but never in record stores). Recently, Jandek has added drums, piano, and a female vocalist to his repertoire, but his music still exists in a parallel universe far apart from increasingly commodified 'alternative' or even 'DIY' music (Beck, anyone?).

Perhaps, suggests Chusid, there is a secret agenda behind this almost unlistenable music:

"Jandek's ultimate mission could be to test the mortal limits of patience, tolerance, and understanding. Perhaps he's the Messiah, dispatched to Earth as an Outsider Musician, giving the human race one last chance to accept the unacceptable, to embrace that which is infinitely difficult to embrace."

The great explorers of the psyche's subjective depths - such as H.P. Lovecraft and Emperor Norton - have always fashioned themselves a distinctly unique worldview, daring to transgress the fragile margins of consensus reality. Eschewing the norms of parasitical music industry conglomerates, Jandek is an unlikely model for antinomian practitioners. Perhaps his example of Existenz is his ultimate gift to us all.
(With special thanks to Richard 'Rotting Lips' Metzger)

Jandek & The Puddle Jumpers
"My package from Corwood Industries arrived, stamped with its P.O. Box number in Houston, my address sketched in ink on a white sticker, on a Monday morning rife with bending trees; the homeless man selling Real Change at the Safeway warned of a huge storm for late afternoon and newscasters kept their yelping edge unsubsided from their "killer meteorites" of a week or so before."

Jandek
The enigmatic Texan artist Jandek is profiled here, with a nice links collection. Is he the king of subterranean pop?

Jandek MP3s
Sample some of Jandek's biggest selling hits, including the memorable Blue Corpse, You Walk Alone, and the riveting Lost Cause.

Mystery Man: The Jandek Story
This Providence Phoenix newspaper review (September 30th, 1999) by Douglas Wolk sums up Jandek candidly: "The longest-running, weirdest, loneliest enigma in popular music is a guy from Texas who calls himself Jandek."

Jandek and Me
This Texas Monthly article (August, 1999) by Katy Vine chronicles an encounter with the reclusive artist name-dropped by Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. "If you think these oddball characteristics have endeared him to the hipster set, think again; the number of people who consider him a genius could fit in a sedan. But even though most listeners would agree that his records are amateurish, there is something appealing about him."

A Guide To Jandek
The definitive guide to Jandek, compiled by Seth Tissue. Features background, lengthy biography, lyrics, a mailing list, and more. Highly recommended!

Forced Exposure: Jandek
A listing of albums (with descriptions and cover scans) available from Forced Exposure by mail order. Jandek moves into the digital era!

Jandek: The Original Disconnect
A reflective article by Irwin Chusid: "Who would release such a record? And why? What was "Corwood Industries"? Was it a large multinational, run by a CEO with a retarded son who made recordings at home, and the dutiful Dad pressed this album without commercial intent, as a simple gesture of paternal devotion?"

Naked in the Afternoon: A Tribute to Jandek
Nifty new CD from Summersteps Records featuring all your Jandek fave raves. Participants include Dapper w/Thurston Moore and Pipes You See Pipes You Don't w/ Will Hart and Pete Erchick from Olivia Tremor Control. Even has Corwood Industries style graphic design. A Jandek tribute album, huh? Now I've heard everything.

Corwood Industries Unofficial Homepage
Complete your Jandek collection through the extensive list of recordings available from this Web site.

Drag King
"Well, our tribute to Jandek, a cover of "How Many Places..?" is finished. I hope the other folks who worked on it, especially Mark Wardo who was so into it, enjoy the mix I did last night at DogPatch. I'm listening to it now and I think it's great. But then no one else has heard it. The compilation Eric Schlittler is putting together won't be out until the summer at the earliest, but we may put some audio file sup on the web so you can check it out. If you want to hear the song, drop me a line at sluggo@dragking.org . And who knows maybe it won't make the cut after all. I heard Eric already has more than enough material for one CD."

Mapping Empty Spaces
Journalist Douglas Wolk covered Jandek for the Boston Phoenix newspaper. Loses credibility points because his friend the 'Cloud of Unknowing' dissed Disinfo.con 2000 in a Suck.com article!

Weep Magazine
The Jandek of the zine world. Rumoured to have profiled the legendary Outsider Musician.

Interview With Calvin & Brett
A bunch of Jandek wannabes try to hustle in on his territory, and fail miserably. Their album name is my review rating: D+.

Forbidden: New Music
Jandek CD re-issue catalogue reviews.

Band-A-Minute
"Condenses literary works into a matter of a few lines, and a mutual urge to humiliate every indie band in existence." Jandek entry: "Who?"

Grape of Wrath
This Village Voice review (September 8th, 1999) by Richard Gehr features the following dismissive comment: "Neither should you reduce him to the likes of such sadly compulsive '80s weirdos as Daniel Johnston (redeemed by K. McCarty) or Jandek."

Futures: FYI
This College Music Journal review (December 4th, 1992) about the band Odor of Pear comments that the band: "is turning out to be much like a mysterious cross between Jandek and Nine Inch Nails - every couple of months, like clockwork, we receive a quasi-anonymous tape in the mail, and each is significantly improved over the previous."

Geoff Lo's Webpage
Ultra-minimalist 'black depths' design: just like a Jandek album!

Know Your Cholesterol
This page appears on numerous search engines for the term 'Jandek'. Could it be a clue to his ulta-private secret identity?

? ! ?
This person is rumoured to be a big Jandek fan. Not who you think this is: a competing Web site run by a team of evil reptilian doppelgangers. Deny everything!

No Messages Posted Yet...