This Saturday, Texas-based outsider-blues legend Jandek will take the stage at Easthampton’s Flywheel Arts Collective.
At Flywheel on Saturday, Jandek, known as the Representative, a nickname created by his record company, will collaborate with some number of Valley musicians, but the details will remain a secret until performance time. The only guarantee is the Representative’s uncannily ghostly presence.
Music fans looking for technical excellence will be sorely disappointed, but those hoping for otherworldly surprises will most likely find what they’re looking for.
In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, a mysterious figure – going by the name of Jandek – started releasing album after album of guitar-and-voice dirges so apparently lacking in musical expertise that any song could have been mistaken for a new musician’s first endeavor. Eventually, the presence of other musicians was announced through song titles such as “Nancy Sings” and “John Plays Drums.” For the most part, though, the main musician seemed to exist in a lonely void.
There have never been personnel listings on Jandek albums, and almost all information about Jandek has been equally veiled. Only in recent times has it become clear that Jandek is the name of the whole project that the main musician wishes to be called “A Representative from Corwood Industries.” Corwood Industries is his personal record label, responsible for all 67 Jandek releases to date. Each album design has maintained a rigid, barely informative formula in almost every case. Only two Jandek interviews have ever been granted, and both present an individual who is rigidly unwilling to discuss what he is doing with music.
Although the apparent main singer of Jandek started his anonymous career playing in a style that almost fit into a classic folk or blues tradition, he has since ventured into all sorts of sounds. Fans of the darker sounds of original Pink Floyd leader Syd Barrett might recognize some of the sonic and psychological ground that Jandek has covered as the singer screams, “Don’t paint your teeth!” in the song “You Painted Your Teeth.” He seems very worried about things like purity, and is liable to venture into explicitly religious concerns, and his lack of personal explanation makes it impossible to understand just how seriously he takes these concerns: “When you go to heaven, everything will be white except your horrible painted teeth.” The music would be a lot less unnerving if he would just explain his own views. Instead, the listener is stuck feeling like something between a voyeur and a victim.
It wasn’t until 2004, 26 years after the appearance of first album “Ready for the House,” that Jandek made its first live performance. Sporadic concerts have followed, almost always involving a band of local musicians.
Ticket presales have ended, but about 100 tickets will be available at the door, the theater reports. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., at which point the remaining tickets will become available. The show itself starts at 8:30 p.m.
Will Henriksen can be reached at [email protected].
