CORWOOD 0739
1978
STYLE: Early Period Acoustic, but electric on the last track, the infamous "European Jewel".
NOTABLE SONGS: "Naked in the Afternoon", "First You Think Your Fortune's Lovely", "They Told Me I was a Fool", "European Jewel (Incomplete)"
MY RATING: Four bird houses.
REVIEW: This is where it all began. The first time Jandek sent out his message to the people. Good luck trying to figure out what the message is.
This album basically defines what Jandek would be playing for most of his first five records, ie Early Period acoustic, which features an acoustic guitar (I'm fairly sure it's steel string) being tuned in a way it was never meant to be tuned, quiet sometimes whispered vocals, and introspective, generally depressed lyrics. The overall sound of the album is hard to describe, because you can't put it fairly in standard musical terms. Jandek is mainly influenced by the blues, and he's definitly got the "depressed" part down. The music, however, sounds like nothing near blues. In fact, it sounds like nothing near conventional music. Jandek's style is all his own.
Total isolation, incidentally, is one of the themes of Ready for the House, particularly in the second track, "First You Think Your fortune's Lovely". The song is about someone who does not wish be a part of the world, either because he feels he cannot, or because the world isn't letting him. He speaks of the tides of society ("I feel a bit like floating water/Headed for the rocks at bay") and feels he is doomed to travel "Down the permenant, lonesome way". He spectualtes why he is where he is ("The reason I haven't been accepted/Is 'cause I failed to come on strong). Now separated from the rest of society for his fears and doubts, he feels more comfortable watching the world from his "chair beside a window" at his ranch. He complains of his frustration at being unable to understand the world. "Inside myself there is no question/Just the jangle of a brain/three times four is twenty-seven/Only fragments still remain." With cryptic lyrics like that's it's easy to see what has compelled so many people to try to figure out what Jandek is. Most of the album is in the same lyrical vein, with some departures for "Cave in on You", about blind men, eskimos, and possibly suicide, and the final track "European Jewel (Incomplete)", whose lyrics defy any true interpretation. I don't think even Jandek knew what he was talking about there. The vocals are sung and spoken. Some songs almost have a vocal melody, particualrly the first two and the last tracks, but he never approaches a real "song" in any definition we're familiar with. Oddly, he always makes sure it rhymes, in a rare show of artisitic effort. That's typical Corwood logic. A song doesn't havce to have an in-tune guitar, but dammit, poetry has to rhyme! Overall, It's poetry with bizarre guitar accompaniment and a hint of a tune.
As for the sound of the guitar...Mailing Lister Paul Condon has worked out that he uses five different notes, tuning the last two strings to the same note. John Trubee confirmed in a Spin article that Jandek makes up his own unqiue tunings before each session. And they certainly are unqiue. He plays it in two ways: single string plucking, strumming his one chord, or a alternation of both. The single string plucking is used in a very creepy way on "They Told me About You". Jandek tunes his guitar and one chord not in a musical way, but more as an ambience. The sound of the one chord fits the feelings of sadness and isolation expressed in the lyrics. Viewed from this perspective, the tuning is actually quiet progressive and brilliant. No one had ever used the guitar for anything but straight musical accompaniment, but on Ready for the House, Jandek uses it as a second voice, groaning its one, mornful "word" over and over. One rule though: never touch the fretboard. He sticks with this formula through all the first eight tracks, until "European Jewel (Incomplete)", in which he plays electric in a more or less standard tuning, hacking his way down through E-Shape barre chords from High F-sharp to low. As one would expect from the title, the song, and thus album, just cuts off near the end, leaving us with one last line "Just a shaking shaaaaaa-" and a lot of questions.
Something must be said of the cover photo, perhaps the most infamous of all Corwood pics. It's a living room that was clearly painted by a color-blind individual. Now, I'm now interior decorator, but pink mouldings look bad in any context, I don't care if you're Elton John. It seems however that Jandek put some thought into this photo. The pot of red flowers appears to have been put there to balance the green couch, carpet, and paint. That works quite well. This is one of my favorite Jandek covers. Note the the cutain is drawn from the inside; most pictures of Jandek's house show drawn curtains from the outsdie as well. This is a rare look inside the home of the J-Man. And notice the William Shakespeare book in the window. Is he trying to show us where he gets his inspiration?
Overall, Ready for the House is essential listening for anyone interested in Jandek, and no self respecting fan is without the album. Aside from setting a load of precedents for Jandek's music, it is also a good Corwood album in its own rite, one of the best of the typically boring Early Period.
*I've been informed by a certain documentarian that RFTH is not actually the rarest, but is in fact the most abundant. We've been talking about it on the Mailing List, and most agree that it is proboly the creepy Twelfth Apostle.