Before the live performances, Jandek’s recorded output described a great arc. At the beginning and again at the end, Jandek was alone. He moved towards collaborators and more accessible music, then away from them again. In 1978 he began totally alone, not just without the help of other musicians, but practically without relation to other music. The first Jandek LP, Ready for the House, is credited to “The Units”, but it’s obviously a solo work, and the name was never used again.
As the years passed and more albums came out, gradually other musicians and vocalists were added. At first they were only on a song or two; later whole albums were group efforts. At the same time, the music became more extroverted. Electric guitars and crashing drums replaced acoustic guitars; the shy musical whispering of the early LP’s gave way to harsh, even crazed sounds. A woman vocalist sang more and more songs. The music changed again, becoming more melodic and structured and increasingly incorporating recognizable styles of music: blues, folk, sixties rock. A second guitarist and male vocalist appears. The man on the album covers appeared in sharp, fairly contemporary photographs instead of old blurry ones.
Corwood dropped a bomb on Jandek fans in October 2004 when the man on the album covers came out of decades of hiding and played an unannounced show in Glasgow. There’s been a string of shows since, most of which have followed the same basic format as the first. The representative sings and plays guitar, dressed all in black and backed by local musicians on bass and drums. The group rehearses only once, the afternoon of the show. The music is electric, loud, and largely improvised. For each show the representative writes a whole new set of lyrics, which he keeps on a music stand in front of him.
But other shows have been change-ups. More often lately, the music has been quiet instead of loud. The representative might play piano or synthesizer instead of guitar, or recite a spoken word piece punctuated by harmonica, or sit in on drums with a noisy power trio. The other musicians might now play harp, or flute, or bass clarinet, or harpsichord. One audience witnessed an enactment of the primal Jandek scene: a man alone with his acoustic guitar.