50 albums (nearly), and I’m gradually learning about each one. This thought, in the long interval before I consider each album in turn, Why does Jandek not credit his collaborators on his albums? In the case of ‘Nancy’, ‘Richard’ and ‘Mike’, perhaps it is clear: the first and second were neighbours of his, he says somewhere. Does he know their real names?, he’s asked in a telephone interview. Long pause. He won’t say. Mike’s name we know because he’s asked by the singer to take a solo on one of the albums. And there are other collaborators in the period before which Jandek played live, none of them credited.
And then, playing with Richard Youngs and others? With musicians so sensitively and wonderfully attuned to what it is Jandek is about? He doesn’t credit them, either, and here’s the reason: because Jandek is not the name of a man but a group. Jandek is like a crown that hovers above anyone who plays with the Representative from Corwood. A crown, a fiery nimbus. Why, then, does the Representative, cornered as Sterling Smith by a journalist, claim Jandek does not need him?
Very enigmatic. Because Jandek comes into being only when he plays. Because Jandek is the name of the aurora borealis as it burns over his playing. We are Jandek: that’s what he says by not crediting his collaborators. We are all collaborators, and you are Jandek, too. And how would the Representative credit himself if he were to credit everyone on his record sleeves? It would be to cut Jandek into pieces. To betray Jandek by delineating its parts. The whole is always greater. Even when it is the Rep playing as Jandek, Jandek is still greater. I think in some way, Jandek is close to God. Or at least that Jandek is closer to God than the Rep.
50 albums (pretty much; the 50th’s coming out this month); I’m getting to know them, one by one. Listening to them, thinking about them. Nothing else matters to me, really. So much to write about! And the sense that by writing on Jandek, with him, I’ll break into a new country.
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