Saturday, May 17, 2008
Concert Review: Jandek
Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI
5/17/08
Jandek you say? The mysterious guy who put out 50+ albums, never gives interviews and never plays out?
Yep - it was Jandek alright. WCBN sponsored the concert, and was genuinely surprised that he agreed to do it. They made a great radio spot for it, identifying how Jandek is "at the leading edge of improvised music" and containing bits of phone interviews with Jandek as to why he doesn't do interviews - "I put out products, and that's it, I really don't want to talk about them."
I have never been to the Lydia Mendelssohn, which is in the Student Lodge at the very center of the main campus, an older building often rented out for weddings, parties and the like. The theater is in the very back of the building, and in general hard to find. I was running late, but when I got there the performance had only been going ten minutes or so. I found I hadn't missed much, and it wouldn't have made much difference if I'd seen it from the start.
Jandek was off stage left, so far off that he was nearly offstage, playing what looked like a DanElectro Bass that was really detuned to those sour, Jandek notes. He was joined by people who were recruited for the performance from the University of Michigan: Christian Mathijs, harpsichord - James Cornish, trumpet - Biba Bell, dance and voice. Cornish and his trumpet were set up at far stage left, more or less behind Jandek in relation to the audience, but Jandek himself was facing across the front of the stage, wearing a floppy ferora, only his profile apparent - his face was no more visible than it is on some of his blurry album cover images. In the back, stage right, was the harpsichord and player Mathijs. There was a taped down square in the center of the stage, and two chairs for the dancer to sit in, one at rear center, the other placed in front of the harpsichord. In the part of the concert I saw, she only used the rear chair.
When the dancer wasn't sitting or singing - nice voice actually - she was moving around the stage very slowly and inarticulately in a performance that reminded me of some the non-objective dancing that Yvonne Rainer did in the 1960s, only slower, with no sudden bursts of energy as one might see in Rainer. Jandek used his bass sort of like a drum, gently hammering out an erratic pulse on two strings; at the beginnings of pieces he would pick out a pattern on higher strings, but invariably moved back down to the lower ones, strumming nervously away as before, a pattern that was between a drone and a drum. The harpsichord player was quite good early on in the show, but after awhile he began to get on my nerves - he would try to pick up and project musical ideas from Jandek's playing, which given that Jandek wasn't playing anything specific, didn't really seem to work. At other times Matijs' inspiration would flag and he'd be picking out single notes, absentmindedly; sometimes he would drive into dense, excessively busy textures seemingly out of frustration. The trumpet was better, centering on slow tones and using mutes rather effectively, although I was wearied at times by Cornish's limited use of the range of the trumpet - I think he was just trying his best to stay out of Jandek's way.
Jandek did sing from what looked like a notebook or legal pad placed on a music stand. He was half-singing, half-speaking the texts and sometimes would hold onto certain words in a kind of a moan, or sing in a loopy, yet toneless and elliptical way that could be described as "I-don't-want-this-to-sound-too-much-like-singing" singing. The texts have a narrative flavor, but don't make much sense. I recall following a part where he was singing about bleeding and that he had a torn piece of shirt he could use as a tourniquet and he had to find a way to stop the bleeding and so forth. After that I lost the thread, and there really was no distinct thread as such to follow.
When this gig was first announced, I was asked to play the harpsichord, but in the end Jandek was given the credentials of a number of people to pick from and decided to go with the UofM players. I was hoping to convince my dear friend Tim Schwallie to come up from Cincinnati - he's a major Jandek fan and has followed Jandek's work with some consistency. My involvement with Jandek is less direct; I heard some of the early albums when they were new, and definitely enjoyed them; I used to play "Painted My Teeth" on early Art Damage programs with some regularity. But as his albums began to become very numerous I wasn't able to keep up, and just didn't maintain the interest. Tim wasn't able to get away, unfortunately.
However, I'm pretty sure the two of us could have just as easily replaced the UofM guys that played. Even though neither of us are as crisp as the freshly scrubbed UofM students, we might've been a little better for Jandek, being artfully underpracticed and more used to a purely intuitive framework of playing. However, just about anybody could have filled those roles, and that was what was most interesting about the performance - its conceptual content. Jandek has always referred to what he does as an "art project" and to his recordings as "products." Here he created a sort of non-objective theater piece in which the interpreters provided the dimension of a group dynamic to keep the show interesting, but that did not deprive Jandek of his essentially solo performance; he remained the center of attention in a show to which in a sense he was barely contributing. It was definitely "art;" in fact, it was rather old-fashioned post-modernist art in a sense, like something one could have seen in the 70s. Moreover, it also suceeds as being a "product," just like one of his Corwood Industries albums - this is what it is: either you get something out of it or you don't.
However, once I "got" it, I didn't feel compelled to stay. I was entertained for a bit, but 50 minutes of it was more than enough; it's not like you can request of Jandek your favorites among his songs. Plenty of people came in after me and plenty left before - I was up in the nosebleed seats. The lowest level of the theater was packed - the radio ad certainly did it's job. Whether Jandek is "at the leading edge of improvised music" I cannot say, but I would say that he is quite conscious of his product, what it is in its essentialsm, and probably doesn't relate it to the outside world; it's a lonely place - Jandek's world - and he is it's sole inhabitant.
The concert was slated for two hours' duration; this concert review was begun probably before the concert itself ended. I don't think I missed much; although if someone tells me later that he did "Painted My Teeth" I might be disappointed. I got to a point where I really could no longer endure the harpsichord, and that is not out of professional jealousy, as when I first got there I heard him and felt, "Oh this guy is good - they definitely got the better player." The only thing I think Tim and I couldn't have done in this show was to get a cuter dancer than the one UofM turned up; she was a good see, and had some moves, but it wasn't enough to keep me from saying, "Allright, that's enough" and heading for the exit. - Uncle Dave Lewis
Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI
5/17/08
Jandek you say? The mysterious guy who put out 50+ albums, never gives interviews and never plays out?
Yep - it was Jandek alright. WCBN sponsored the concert, and was genuinely surprised that he agreed to do it. They made a great radio spot for it, identifying how Jandek is "at the leading edge of improvised music" and containing bits of phone interviews with Jandek as to why he doesn't do interviews - "I put out products, and that's it, I really don't want to talk about them."
I have never been to the Lydia Mendelssohn, which is in the Student Lodge at the very center of the main campus, an older building often rented out for weddings, parties and the like. The theater is in the very back of the building, and in general hard to find. I was running late, but when I got there the performance had only been going ten minutes or so. I found I hadn't missed much, and it wouldn't have made much difference if I'd seen it from the start.
Jandek was off stage left, so far off that he was nearly offstage, playing what looked like a DanElectro Bass that was really detuned to those sour, Jandek notes. He was joined by people who were recruited for the performance from the University of Michigan: Christian Mathijs, harpsichord - James Cornish, trumpet - Biba Bell, dance and voice. Cornish and his trumpet were set up at far stage left, more or less behind Jandek in relation to the audience, but Jandek himself was facing across the front of the stage, wearing a floppy ferora, only his profile apparent - his face was no more visible than it is on some of his blurry album cover images. In the back, stage right, was the harpsichord and player Mathijs. There was a taped down square in the center of the stage, and two chairs for the dancer to sit in, one at rear center, the other placed in front of the harpsichord. In the part of the concert I saw, she only used the rear chair.
When the dancer wasn't sitting or singing - nice voice actually - she was moving around the stage very slowly and inarticulately in a performance that reminded me of some the non-objective dancing that Yvonne Rainer did in the 1960s, only slower, with no sudden bursts of energy as one might see in Rainer. Jandek used his bass sort of like a drum, gently hammering out an erratic pulse on two strings; at the beginnings of pieces he would pick out a pattern on higher strings, but invariably moved back down to the lower ones, strumming nervously away as before, a pattern that was between a drone and a drum. The harpsichord player was quite good early on in the show, but after awhile he began to get on my nerves - he would try to pick up and project musical ideas from Jandek's playing, which given that Jandek wasn't playing anything specific, didn't really seem to work. At other times Matijs' inspiration would flag and he'd be picking out single notes, absentmindedly; sometimes he would drive into dense, excessively busy textures seemingly out of frustration. The trumpet was better, centering on slow tones and using mutes rather effectively, although I was wearied at times by Cornish's limited use of the range of the trumpet - I think he was just trying his best to stay out of Jandek's way.
Jandek did sing from what looked like a notebook or legal pad placed on a music stand. He was half-singing, half-speaking the texts and sometimes would hold onto certain words in a kind of a moan, or sing in a loopy, yet toneless and elliptical way that could be described as "I-don't-want-this-to-sound-too-much-like-singing" singing. The texts have a narrative flavor, but don't make much sense. I recall following a part where he was singing about bleeding and that he had a torn piece of shirt he could use as a tourniquet and he had to find a way to stop the bleeding and so forth. After that I lost the thread, and there really was no distinct thread as such to follow.
When this gig was first announced, I was asked to play the harpsichord, but in the end Jandek was given the credentials of a number of people to pick from and decided to go with the UofM players. I was hoping to convince my dear friend Tim Schwallie to come up from Cincinnati - he's a major Jandek fan and has followed Jandek's work with some consistency. My involvement with Jandek is less direct; I heard some of the early albums when they were new, and definitely enjoyed them; I used to play "Painted My Teeth" on early Art Damage programs with some regularity. But as his albums began to become very numerous I wasn't able to keep up, and just didn't maintain the interest. Tim wasn't able to get away, unfortunately.
However, I'm pretty sure the two of us could have just as easily replaced the UofM guys that played. Even though neither of us are as crisp as the freshly scrubbed UofM students, we might've been a little better for Jandek, being artfully underpracticed and more used to a purely intuitive framework of playing. However, just about anybody could have filled those roles, and that was what was most interesting about the performance - its conceptual content. Jandek has always referred to what he does as an "art project" and to his recordings as "products." Here he created a sort of non-objective theater piece in which the interpreters provided the dimension of a group dynamic to keep the show interesting, but that did not deprive Jandek of his essentially solo performance; he remained the center of attention in a show to which in a sense he was barely contributing. It was definitely "art;" in fact, it was rather old-fashioned post-modernist art in a sense, like something one could have seen in the 70s. Moreover, it also suceeds as being a "product," just like one of his Corwood Industries albums - this is what it is: either you get something out of it or you don't.
However, once I "got" it, I didn't feel compelled to stay. I was entertained for a bit, but 50 minutes of it was more than enough; it's not like you can request of Jandek your favorites among his songs. Plenty of people came in after me and plenty left before - I was up in the nosebleed seats. The lowest level of the theater was packed - the radio ad certainly did it's job. Whether Jandek is "at the leading edge of improvised music" I cannot say, but I would say that he is quite conscious of his product, what it is in its essentialsm, and probably doesn't relate it to the outside world; it's a lonely place - Jandek's world - and he is it's sole inhabitant.
The concert was slated for two hours' duration; this concert review was begun probably before the concert itself ended. I don't think I missed much; although if someone tells me later that he did "Painted My Teeth" I might be disappointed. I got to a point where I really could no longer endure the harpsichord, and that is not out of professional jealousy, as when I first got there I heard him and felt, "Oh this guy is good - they definitely got the better player." The only thing I think Tim and I couldn't have done in this show was to get a cuter dancer than the one UofM turned up; she was a good see, and had some moves, but it wasn't enough to keep me from saying, "Allright, that's enough" and heading for the exit. - Uncle Dave Lewis
Labels: art, avant-garde, experimental, Jandek, music
Comments:
Hi Dave. Nice Jandek review--I couldn't go because I got an assignment and had to go to Black Jake & the Carnies instead. But it really gave me an idea of what it was like.
You may wish to know that the building where Lydia Mendelssohn is located is the Michigan League, not Lodge. It was originally the women's student union, the female counterpart to the Michigan Union back in gender-segregated days. It's a nice building--a bit of the old genteel university.
JM
You may wish to know that the building where Lydia Mendelssohn is located is the Michigan League, not Lodge. It was originally the women's student union, the female counterpart to the Michigan Union back in gender-segregated days. It's a nice building--a bit of the old genteel university.
JM
Thanks Tex for the correction. I have lived in Ann Arbor seven years and still don't know my way around the University.
David Jeffries saw the same show and said he was "blown away" so this provides me the opportunity to further qualify that my feelings about this show were not universally shared.
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David Jeffries saw the same show and said he was "blown away" so this provides me the opportunity to further qualify that my feelings about this show were not universally shared.