There is a fundamental flaw at work in being exposed to Jandek through someone else’s lens. In the documentary film Jandek on Corwood, director Chad Freidrichs projects his own subjective take on the elusive Texas musician’s ghostly legacy, via the words of a handful of deejays, rock critics and the like. It’s the Jandek inner-circle, if you will, and throughout the film most of these expert witnesses get hung up on speculating until they’re blue in the face about their own personal reactions to Jandek. But in many of their assessments, the music becomes secondary to the mystery and therein lies the problem.

On the most basic level Jandek is not really so different from the Chan Marshalls, Will Oldhams and Simon Joyners of the world. He sings and strums according to his own sense of tune, and occasionally someone else wanders into to the recordings to sing along and/or bang on drums. But what sets Jandek apart from the rest of these urbane and art-damaged singer/songwriter celebrities is that there is no celebrity. Jandek has created an utter void where there should be a personality for listeners to latch onto and use as a vehicle to vicariously express their quirky thoughts and half-baked sentiments. Since he denies listeners that outlet, he is literally what you make of him. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, because there is no man behind the curtain. There is no graven image to sell the music, and amidst an industry where mass production drives the machine, Jandek causes a few short circuits. He offsets the traditional balance between the artist and audience in a post-modern art equation that exposes some very twisted social and psychological truths in said relationship.

The music is sparse and warbling and his words spill out like the seemingly free association mutterings of a sociopath at the dog end of a week without sleep. His unrestrained strumming stumbles in a zombie-waltz over his hushed moans that echo the unrefined sentiments of your own mind with an accuracy that you would never freely admit to in public. His song writing is a survey of all the natural impulses that men are taught to restrain since day one: sex, greed, jealousy, envy, anxiety, elation and maniacal melancholy, oozing from a cracked, pressure cooker brain, venting steam one word and one warped note at a time. He has invented a distinct and absolutely impeccable musical vocabulary that, to date, stretches out over nearly 50 full-length recordings. This is not something that can be quantified in terms of coherent structure, but of intuition. To the layman his records sound like a mess, but Jandek knows the sounds that he likes, and those sounds have continually evolved since releasing his first album, Ready for the House in 1978, under the name the Units.

To the adventurous listener, these are the basic ingredients of a musical holy grail, and no one should point any fingers at Freidrichs for undertaking an endeavor such as the film. He’s a competent director and the film flows quite smoothly. The very nature of the subject matter works against maintaining a sense of objectivity. Fascination with the rumors and mythology surrounding Jandek and his Corwood Industries label is contagious to say the least and after all Freidrichs’ take on the Jandek experience is just as valid as anyone else’s. But the bridge imagery, the shots that drift over a loaf of bread, blood-stained sheets etc. - shots meant to give the viewer the impression that you’re sitting in the room where Jandek records are over-the-top. These things are best left t the mind’s eye.

Likewise, witnessing folks like Roctober magazine Editor Jake Austen pining over the fact that Jandek is not pronounced “Yawn-dek,” or to see Dream magazine Editor George Parsons evaluating the mystery man’s notions of sin are quite telling. It’s easy to go overboard when the pieces of a puzzle are dangled in front of you like a carrot on a stick.

Even voices of reason, such as Calvin Johnson, Byron Coley, Douglas Wolk and, ironically, Dr. Demento have the unmistakable gleam in their eyes of staving off stalker-like enthusiasm when talking about the records. It’s plain that these guys have listened to and connected with the music rather than spent their time critiquing a persona, at which most of them are poorly skilled, as unwittingly demonstrated by this exercise. What makes the whole documentary worth while is excerpt from the 1985 phone interview that Jandek granted to Spin magazine writer, John Trubee. To date it’s the only interview he’s willingly granted to journalist and the encounter is quite revealing.

As a promotional tool, Jandek on Corwood is a big step toward reaching a larger audience. But as an honest-to-goodness brush with the Jandek experience, the film is a poor substitute for sending $8 to PO Box 15375 every few weeks and getting to know the records one-by-one.

Chad Radford is an independent music journalist and founder of Ponce De Leon records. He can be reached at chadrad@bellsouth.net.