Darby Strong

Playing point. Delivering the rock.

Jandek on Corwood – Farce or Phenom?

Jandek who? I found this movie on Netflix the other month, called Jandek on Corwood, and it arrived at our doorstep for viewing. Ahhh, Netflix.

Apparently, there’s this “musician” who calls himself Jandek. His first album came out in 1978, and he has released around 40 albums since. I had never heard of him, or the mystery surrounding his identity, which happens to be precisely the intrigue. This guy has never appeared publicly*, no one knows his true identity, and he has only granted a splattering of phone interviews.

The filmmaker, Chad Freidrichs, produces some interesting perspectives and Errol Morris-esque shots which made for an interesting viewing, while the Christopher-Guest-Ensemble loving side of me was partly apprehensive in the beginning. Part of me watched for the reveal of a town named Blaine, or for Jandek to to shout that “it goes to eleven” during a phone interview. Once it was clear that this film was for real, I started to notice that the subjects Freidrichs chose to interview to discuss Jandek were far more interesting than Jandek himself.

The bearded DJ, always shown with a red bow-tie, tux, and top hat while seated in front of a traveling circus style piano, has got to be my favorite. I get the feeling he ALWAYS wears this get-up, ever ready for the 3-ring circus to begin. I will forever be drawn to the more eccentric, or at least the eccentric-loving, humans on our planet. And therein lay my connection to this hullabaloo. These people have EVERY RECORD Jandek has made. And the music, at best, is grating. It’s not like discovering Nick Drake or Jeff Buckley for the first time. It’s like catching your crazy neighbor singing in front of the mirror some half-baked fantasy laden rock opera – while on acid. (You AND the neighbor – on acid)

Maybe Jandek is a musical genius. It seems to me that he is mostly like the Wizard behind the curtain. The characters looking for the Wizard along the way are the best part.

*Jandek appeared LIVE for the first time in 2004 in Scotland, as well as a few unannounced U.S. shows in 2005.

‘Zines

I started getting The Sun about 6 months ago, most likely to make myself feel like I was around an interesting lot while in the safe confines of my cozy home, away from the rebel flags, W stickers, and church ladies that make up this southern enclave.

And it worked.

I love this magazine. Readers write, writers write, and it is all compellingly honest and straight forward and thought provoking and human. There are no ads. Sy Safransky, a New Yorker and journalist who now lives in Chapel Hill, NC, is the editor. In the back of his magazine, he provides Sy Safransky’s Notebook, which is actually quite like a blog, but started way before blogging. I’ll say it. Sy Safransky is and continues to be visionary. And brave. From his notebook:

When I was a newspaper reporter in the 1960’s, I frequently wrote about race and poverty. I interviewed scholars. I spent time in poor black neighborhoods talking with teachers and social workers and advocates for welfare rights. But I wasn’t black, and I wasn’t poor…So what can someone like me really know about being black and poor in America – about the way racism crushes a man like a monstrous wave, and poverty, like a razor wind, strips him to the bone?

Sy sold The Sun’s first copies for a quarter, peddling them on the streets of Chapel Hill. I am a sucker for that underdog scrappiness and all or nothing entrepreneurial spirit. And I definitely need to incorporate more of that into my own gamebook. With the scrappiness fully covered, all I need now are the cajones I seemed to have lost somewhere between Colorado and Chicago, in the breadth of my twenties.

Poor Means Black

“It is just a fact…most poor people are poor because they are lazy.”
-An acquaintance

Perhaps one positive outcome of Hurricane Katrina is the sparked dialogue surrounding poverty in America, which demands analyzing race relations, as well. While my acquaintance did, in fact, mutter the outrageous quote above during a heated debate last Friday (whilst imbibing alcohol, praise tha lawd), my dismay stems from the realization that most white Americans agree with her. And in case you’re not paying attention, when upper-middle class white people speak this way, they are careful to not say black people when they say poor people, but it is precisely what they mean.

Let us re-examine the O.J. Trial, which was the last nationwide topic that sparked dialogue on race to this extent. The response to the trial of the decade was sharply divided along race lines. Not because black people in this country necessarily thought OJ was innocent, but because they, like me, were eager to see the system work in their collective favor. A black man gets away with murder and his brilliant black attorney uses the justice system to get his rich client off, just as white men have been doing for hundreds of years. It’s all about the Benjamins, baby. But when the tables are turned, whitey no likee. There existed an overwhelming need of white America to hang O.J. Forget that he was the model of a “good black man” and played golf at our white country clubs. He killed our blonde-headed white sister, and no matter the case, we must take him down.

Not since the O.J. trial has the race issue been so out in the open. We all harbor racist thoughts. Whether we agree with the voices that tell us, from years of white conditioning, that poor people are mostly black and those black folk don’t work (cuz they’re lazy, remember?), our collective consciousness impacts non-whites in a truly negative and oppressive manner. In fact, blacks make up only 1/4 of America’s poor and nearly half of the poor, of working age, DO work. Introducing the idea of the effects of slavery upon a people, which officially ended 140 years ago, was far beyond the grasp of my acquaintance the other night. Let me remind some of my white brethren…we made black people eat, drink, shit, and live everywhere that we did not want to. Let them eat cake, and not anywhere we have to look at them. This was law, less than 50 years ago. 50 years, people. Remove your collective blinders, please, as they are not becoming on you.

My background is a privileged one. I have parents who have always encouraged me and believed in me to an extent that is daunting. They instilled in me a quest for knowledge and self-education that will live with me always. And, as luck would have it, our society expects that I will excel because I am a middle-class whitey.

Ponder, for a moment, how poverty begets poverty. Then, place your natural born poor self into a society which reinforces the idea that you will be and become nothing. Add a generous amount of slavery into the hearts and minds of all inhabitants of this society, and tell me, how does this equation pan-out?