Jandek

On Sunday, October 17, 2004, the solitary man we have come to know and love as Jandek walked on stage for the first time in his 26-year career of mysterious musical singularity. In typical Jandek style, this gig, at Glasgow’s The Arches, was completely unannounced. He wore a black wide-brimmed hat, black shirt and grey/black pants, and yes, it was the man who appears photographed on most of his album covers. The show that then unfolded, supported on bass by revered British folk spirit Richard Youngs and on drums by Alex Neilson of Scatter, was one of the finest performances of his life — every bit as dishevelled and aching as his home-recorded solo work, only backed up by a pounding and equally unhinged rhythm section, which gave the show the feel of a band like Can or Sonic Youth being direly plagued by mounting inner tensions and almost religious sullenness. As a document of this momentous event and an album unto itself, Glasgow Sunday is one of the finest representations of Jandek’s free-blues soul purging, an ideal introduction into the universe of an artist who has beat all the odds and founded a living legacy out of his visionary obscurity.