Who's Your Tailor?

Jandek.

In the world of white-boy music-geek fandom, there is none higher. No single name evokes more ebullient outbursts of nerdy pride. He is a living rock myth, a folk hero for losers, an icon for individualism. You know... or some shit.

I have admittedly contributed to the cult of Jandek by simply being a fan of his carefully cultivated public persona. I have also struggled with my ideas about the man and his music as I have found much of his work (and I have a shitload of it) to be unlistenable.

In the early 90s I was roommates with Tom Carter, then Mike Gunn guitarist, now avant-garde sensation in his own right. Tom worked in the local underground record shop and thus had a huge selection of records that I willingly and thankfully plundered daily. He was the guy to introduce me to the music of Jandek. I found the shattered and disemboweled blues-ish horror show to be oddly fascinating in a Cramps play an asylum sort of way. I also dug that whoever Jandek really was was something very carefully guarded. I also liked that there were bits of information that would occasionally surface that shed some light on who the reclusive and prolific artist really was.

Back then nobody really knew about the guy save for record dorks like Tom. This didn't make Jandek cool, it made him sort of warmly pathetic. He seemed to do whatever he was doing because he was compelled to, not because he had some master plan to be the king of hipster dorkdom.

Over time of course thing changed for our hometown hero. Spin magazine hit the guy up in an article. Texas Monthly tracked him down. Some folks put together a documentary about the man which was much more interesting than perhaps the man himself. And in the process they exposed the beauty of Jandek. He began to function as a mirror to the dreams of music dweebs.

It wasn't long before you-know-who made a now legendary appearance (unannounced, naturally) at an outsider-ish music festival in Scotland. With the cat more or less out of the bag, suddenly the guy was out and about. It became feasible to read about him bagging Paris, or knocking up Sarah Palin's kid, or what have you. He was becoming a little too... exposed.

And this was the point at which the rift began to open in his ocean-wide reputation as a reclusive cipher.

Enter Sunday afternoon.

Jandek shows now being a dime a dozen, it was only a matter of time before he headlined his own local performance.

But not to be outdone by himself it had to be something special.

So what does the sepulchral lord of darkness and shadow do? What does the undisputed master of hiding and mystery do?

He plays a day show, at a pub, to a cheering, dancing, adoring audience.

And best of all...

He plays funk.

Funk.

With slap bass and groovy drumming.

He plays a 90 minute freeform funk jam. And he motherfucking raps.

And no, it isn't cool in an ironic sort of way, and no it isn't transcendent in a do what you want and fuck who doesn't get it kind of way.

Nahh, it's none of that.

What Jandek does is erase every last shred of mystique and curiosity and wonder and appeal and simply reduces himself to an indulgent dupe who has consumed barrels of his own kool-aid and has come out the other side as the single most fervent adherent to the cult of himself.

Not cool. Not clever. Not good. Not worth it.

Just unabashed and unadulterated garbage. Street corner busking with a pitiful withered husk of a man begging for your love. He emerged from his self-made cocoon, shed his parchment-like skin, and burst forth a newly minted reflection of whatever idiotic dreams everyone but himself had made of him.

The well has been poisoned.

The drinks are watered down.

His naked majesty, the grand marshal, the overseer of nightmares, paraded before us, in the bright light of spring, and exposed to be nothing more than what he really ever was...

A man.

Too bad. I liked our idea of him better.