The Mysterious World of JANDEK

there's a man in the room he's got a guitar he knows a few chords [Music] and he's he's a melancholy sort [Music] he picks up the guitar and he sort of reassociates his way through several minutes then he stops and then he does it again and he does it over 20 or so odd albums there it is [Music] [Laughter] [Music] the year was 1978 the birds were chirping the sun was shining and a brand new album was about to be released to a very niche audience by an ominous band called the units we did not know any information about this group who produced the album who played the instruments and who sang the vocals were all questions that might as well not have been asked in the first place because we certainly were not going to be getting any answers well it turns out that another band also called the units from san francisco had trademarked the name meaning it could not be used for this album and thus we were given a new name jan deck jan deck was not a band but a musical project created by one man sterling smith from 1978 to today sterling would be the creator of some of the most ominous and interesting lo-fi folk and blues music you could possibly imagine very little is known about sterling smith or jandeck and he became sort of an urban legend that was also a very real person making very real and raw music so with the little information that we can gather the very large catalog that he has released and the bits and bobs he's given us along the way let's try and create a somewhat cohesive timeline of this man's life and career and dissect the legacy of one of music's most interesting and mysterious figures this is the story of jan deck [Music] sterling smith was most likely born on the 26th of october 1945 and it is rumored that he was born in providence rhode island these rumors spawn from a number of songs he released where he mentions or references rhode island but many of his album covers show a myriad of different places and his albums contain names like glasgow sunday dublin friday london tuesday and helsinki saturday that's four different cities and four different countries and each of these albums have covers that feature photos of those respective places and we can assume that they were likely taken by him meaning sterling is more than likely a well-traveled man who takes inspiration from a lot of different locations and it kind of makes his place of origin more and more arbitrary regardless of where he comes from we do know a little bit about his past and more importantly his previous creative endeavors in one of his very rare interviews sterling spoke about his attempts to become a published author but burned the seven books that he wrote after getting rejected from various different publishers around new york city maybe if he did become published we wouldn't have been given the bizarre world of jan deck so in some ways this could be described as a very strange blessing in 1978 he released his first album that we know of titled ready for the house the album featured some simple but somewhat ominous artwork and we were also given the name of a distribution company known as core wood industries there was a lot of strange elements to this album that's hard to unpack because there is basically no cohesive music in this album whatsoever very little chord structure almost nonsensical lyrics and basically no direction it always sounds like he's one step away from making some kind of sense but we never really get there the first song naked in the afternoon is a testament to jandak's bizarre process as a poorly constructed guitar riff takes us through a four minute rambling where sterling sort of just ominously sings a series of sentences [Music] those days are laid in that evening [Music] i keep repeating it takes a beating [Music] honestly this could be a song a poem or just a nonsense and it's pretty much completely up to you the listener you can dissect his lyrics in whatever way you want and your interpretation of his music will probably be wildly different from any other person's interpretation music critic brian coley did an interview for the 2003 documentary titled jan deck on corwood where he breaks down jandeck's purpose as a musician it's the kind of music you could play for so many people would say this is random you know anybody could do this and it's a it's an argument that goes back uh you know as soon as people started to make any kind of break from representational art anywhere you know when you can't argue about the quality of technique when you have to start saying this has uh a theoretical presence and this has an intellectual basis for it that has nothing to do with with a measurable technique there's art that's going on here that's not representational and it's not supposed to be beautiful and it's not supposed to be attuned to any kind of standard in a commercial sense again this is simply an interpretation of jandak's work and this documentary is a very interesting look into who jantek is as an artist with multiple music critics and journalists sitting down to talk about what they think about the work of sterling smith a lot of opinions are varied but they remain open-minded as they try to dissect the discography of jandik but again these are all just opinions and ideas and you can agree or disagree as much as you like but it will not bring any conclusive answers [Music] now let's have a look at the previously mentioned core wood industries was it a distribution company a label or simply something that was made up on the spot well throughout jandeck's career he would consistently refer to core wood industries as the company that released these albums from 1981 to 1983 jan deck released five projects on the core wood label and listeners began to notice a trend there was a p.o box on each album that you could actually use to contact the label over the years many people have done this and on the seemingly official corwood website which has been recently updated this po box is still listed in their contact section for almost 50 years people have been able to directly contact sterling and ask him pretty much anything they want to ask and we have learned a lot through these interactions the first thing to note is that sterling smith basically is core wood industries and this po box essentially serves as their headquarters another interesting thing is that he was not afraid to have a pretty open line of communication with whoever contacted him one of these people was irwin chusid who is a music historian that covers a lot of outsider music including jandak in 2000 he wrote an article titled jandeck the great disconnect where he detailed his experiences with jandex music and his experience with the man himself interestingly like many music critics chused didn't necessarily have the nicest things to say about jandak's music he said imagine a subterranean microphone wired down to a month-old tomb capturing the sounds of maggots nibbling on a decaying corpse and the agonized house of a departed soul desperate to escape torturous decomposition and eternal boredom that's bert bacharach compared to jandak now that is a vivid description to say the least and based on that piece of writing you might think that jan deck would potentially want nothing to do with irwin but that was far from the case in 1980 after irwin received a jandeck record from a friend he wrote to the core wood industries po box to get some kind of an answer as to what he had just listened to in the letter he described the music as horribly grotesque but also claims that it could be one of the greatest albums ever made and it simply went over his head well after leaving his phone number at the bottom of the letter he received a strange phone call from the man himself he rambled on about a plethora of topics and it was not a one-time occurrence for the next 20 years they would have an interesting back and forth jandak would send records the two would occasionally share letters and phone calls and it seemed as if there was a genuine correspondence between the pair the reason i say all this is because it is a testament to the character of sterling smith erwin shusid described jandeck's first record as possibly the worst album he had ever heard and this was the jumping off point for a 20-year correspondence where sterling would actually send irwin albums that he could listen to sterling smith did not care what you thought about his music he just appreciated that you were listening over the years plenty of music journalists would recount similar experiences with jandeck and reading these articles listening to these accounts and watching these interviews of the experiences that people have had with jandeck is a breath of fresh air this man truly did not care about what people thought about his music or his art he just created released and moved on [Music] jan deck was always described as a very reclusive person who rarely went outside and stayed in his dwelling with his thoughts and his music this perception seems to be a little warped because his music features titles from all over the world and these respective albums have artwork from these places this is an album titled i threw you away from 2002 that uses an image from a street in northern ireland as its album cover if you reverse google search this image you will not find artists or photographers claiming this picture as their own leading me and many others to believe that this is an original photo taken by sterling smith the same goes for the album glasgow sunday released in 2004 and brooklyn wednesday released in 2007. this shows us that sterling is most likely a well-traveled man at least in the later parts of his life in the very rare interviews he would give he would speak about fellow artists and friends and we obviously know that he wasn't afraid to speak to critics or fans and on top of this there are quite a few jan deck songs that feature other artists such as the track nancy sings this also further cements the idea that the name jan deck represents a musical project as opposed to one man so all of this leads us to believe that this perception that sterling never left his house and spent all of his time alone making strange songs seems more like a romanticized idea than the actual truth and i say all this because it leads us to an interesting period in sterling's career that album i mentioned glasgow sunday was actually a live recording of a performance that he did in glasgow at install festival this was the first known live performance from jandeck and it happened two and a half decades after the release of his first album it was a turning point for his career and after this show jandik would continue to perform live from time to time occasionally he would speak directly with interviewers and in 2016 another documentary was released called i know you well this documentary was different from the 2003 movie that we talked about because it actually featured the man himself the documentary mostly revolves around a show that he did and after all of this time it's very interesting to simply see sterling walking around conversing about things and preparing for his performance it's also interesting to see how many show up to this gig and it tells us that with the internet public radio and word of mouth jan deck in his own way has basically managed to stay relevant to his audience for all of these years a feat that is very impressive considering the niche style of music he plays and the little promotion that has gone into his projects jandak is still being spoken about today and he has been an inspiration to many different artists and bands including sonic youth bright eyes kurt cobain pearl jam and many others in a way he left a pretty significant footprint in the world of music and he's often not credited with doing so although i doubt he really cares jandeck strips away all the conventional elements from his music and he simply creates without any preconceived notions of what music should sound like it leaves us with this it leaves us with jandeck and there really isn't any other way to describe it considering the cult-like audience he attracted and the many musical connections he probably could have made given his influence it's really a miracle that he never fell into the trappings of the music industry it meant that we were consistently given raw unfiltered music that didn't need to be polished or even cohesive because that wasn't what made it appealing regardless of where he goes from here i think sterling and the work he's done with jandeck is a great example of somebody who simply makes music marketing production collaborations and everything else that usually goes into modern day music aren't necessarily thrown out the window but they are definitely sidelined and this is probably for the best his music isn't for everybody and that's because it is not made for anybody it's simply made put out into the world in a very unobtrusive manner and it's completely up to you as to whether or not you want to listen to it regardless of how you perceive his work jan deck will always be jan deck [Music] you

Channel: Deburke321

Views: 97,895

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Id: Mcs979eId_4

Length: 14min 26sec (866 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 15 2021