Fantasies of Jandek's Future

Dig this, folks, this is hilarious... (I'm stoned alone, listening to "Message to the Clerk" on Canada Day eve): I have the most fun darn fantasy prediction for the future of music: Jandek becomes a superstar. I mean, he's actually touring, now; perhaps he'll catch on? In the same way that punk, allegedly elitist and inaccessible, became just another commodity -- not what those of us who were affiliated with it expected -- perhaps now Jandek too can be transformed into fodder for the masses? He wins a Grammy, mebbe gets an acting role, sorta an obscure side-character like Dylan's Alias in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Jandek t-shirts will replace Kurt Cobain t-shirts (his corpse has been pretty much picked clean by now, anyways). Given how empty the cult of celebrity is lately, given how hungry people are to express themselves via it, and how eager the market is to exploit everything that can be commodified, it might just happen: a savvy music industry type will approach Jandek with a big label deal and sink a bunch of money into promoting him as the next "thing," and the alienated youth of today will be the Jandek-lovin' spenders of the future. Hell, if I were David Geffen...

It's food for thought, Mobsters!

I've got to see Jandek on Corwood sometime soon. I should mail this to Seth Tisue, too... Hm.

Wow, I must be stoned, I'm really getting off on the musicianship on this disc... It actually kinda cooks! Damn, here's "Give it the Name" -- it must have been years since I've heard this. Christ, I'd listen to this over Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, B.B. King, or damn near any superstar bluesman of the past century.

I'd listen to Blind Gary Davis, Charley Patton, or Mississippi John Hurt first on most nights lately, too. I was going to take this off and put on the Harry Smith anthology... but then I got writing... it's pretty good. I could play Loren Mazzacaine Conners next and smoke some more... Hm.

Harry Smith still seems a bit daunting at the moment. It's the occultist stuff... My own handle on esoterica is pretty flimsy, but I'm not... that... interested. A little, maybe. I've been around a bit too much weirdness in my day.

What was I going to do before I got writing, anyhow?