RECYCLING

RECYCLING

I wrote a blurb about Jandek for South by one year to promote his show. So, read it, but also watch the Jandek on Corwood documentary (you can get it in 13 parts on youtube.com).

Here's the trailer:

I've been a fan of Jandek for 10 years now, and he just started playing live shows a few years ago. He plays maybe 3 a year and not all in the States. Hence, I'm flying to Nashville this afternoon to catch his show at The Basement, 1604 8th Ave S. If you're in the area, stop on by. You will not be disappointed. Scared? Maybe a little. But a Jandek show is like nothing nothing NOTHING you've ever seen before and his music is like an undiscovered musical solar system unto itself.

Here's the old blurb:

My ex-boyfriend used to say, "If she stays for the second song, she knows what she came for."This was usually said in reference to Al Green's Call Me album and if you stayed for "Have You Been Making Out OK?" then you DID know what you were there for. But the real stamp, the defining moment in our relationship was one night, late at night and early into the "dating" part he played a disc entitled Ready for the House by an enigmatic Texas musician named Jandek.

To understate it clearly, it was eerie. Spooky. Creepy. All the Halloween words. The sounds were dissonant, disjointed, incongruous, ghoulish. There were wails and moans, there were cracks in the voice, discordant guitar sounds, and phrases like "My rapture'ss painted on the floor" from a song called "First You Think Your Fortune's Lovely". Sitting in my ex-boyfriend's house, darkness and words falling, bare feet on the cold, hardwood floor with a rising chill inside me it sounded like a ghost had recorded an album on an old push-button tape recorder in an empty house under a mountain somewhere it's really, really overcast. Jandek became an important name in that house, like he was living among the two of us. Hanging onto haunted walls, seeping into our pores, stealing our breath to gain energy. He is myth and mystery and his music is like a painful sickness that you just...might not beat. The Ex, who I am still great friends with, became quite involved in discovering who Jandek is and finally did. Not at all ironic that mere days after his first phone contact from Jandek, we ended our long, desperate, torturous run as a couple. The task of discovery took a new turn.

I was ill-prepared for the sound, the art, the context, the inference, the meaning and unbelievable importance that very first listen

would have on me up until even this very minute, as I write this with chills rising inside me.

I stayed for the second song. I knew what I was there for.

I'm one in 2 million. Literally.

I live life as a libertine.

I love books, beers and bands.

I drink Smithwick's and Jager shots.

I love and miss my Grandma and My Best Girl Bigsby.

I like geeks, writers and responsible people.

I like dangerously clever people with multisyllabic vocabularies and twisted logic.

I like to fall sleep in the Whedonverse and wake up on my own.

I like kickin' it old school. I like the Doctor on Friday nights and Zach Morris on Saturday mornings. I like tat'd greasers with bad attitudes and soft hands. I like epic books and shifts in the paradigm. I like Centro-Matic at midnight and a full moon view from my front porch.

I like my cocktail hour to start at noon. I like Lester Bangs and the rock writer ethos. I like bad movies and gossip sites. But, I loathe bad writing and insincere fandom.

I like Ernie Cline and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I like sidewalk orgasms and rock overload in spring.

I like Elvis Costello and My Name is John Michael. I love Kathleen Edwards. I like F U songs with bitter lyrics. A lot. I like words: well spoken, well written and well justified.

I like epidemiology. I like late nights in dark rooms in a self-conscious haze. I loathe the daylight. I like cozy bars and strong cocktails. I like making lists. I love Saints football, cold days and hot toddies.

I like people who don't question my motives.

I like beans and rice at Juan's and Torchy's tacos. I like socialist theory and the history of salt. I like being guided by Robert Pollard. I like dirty, rotten scoundrels. The movie and the rogue class.

I like playing unfair. I like holding grudges. I like to rage. I like to make out in random places. I like to wake up in my own bed. I like the occasional karmic kick in the head.

I like to find out how people who got married in high school are doing these days. I like people who f**k for validation. I like cribbage and farkle and games with interpretable rules.

I like when the universe tells me to jump already.

I like Chicago. The city, not the band. I like New York and Nashvegas.

I love New Orleans.

I like expensive hotels and cheap drinks with men of dubious character.

I like random magic tricks, well-practiced bad jokes and short road trips with people who listen to good music. I like vampires, the Chupacabra and Roberto Clemente. I like Bigfoot and Godzilla and UFOs and Jandek.

I like to change my mind. I like when others don't.

I like a sincere laugh. I like irony not defined by Americans or Emo kids. I like screw-ups and screwing with people. I like being serenaded by boys who sing me Death Cab songs.

I like to try and hide the pain for the things I can't explain.

I like WILCO.

I like to geek out.

I like the slow descent into a life I never meant.

I do not like hugs. I am never bored.

STALK ME:

Twitter: @champsuperstar

Email: champsuperstar@gmail.com

Google Voice: 504.383.4277

Champ Superstar

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