jandek and beautiful richmond
I went to Richmond and I saw Jandek play live for the first time and I also befriended a seventy-something year old dude who’s a survivor of the Kovno ghetto. I’ve never met a Lithuanian Jew who survived the second world war (although I suppose I could have met one before and not known it).
As I walked through the Virginia Holocaust Museum I noticed the focus on Lithuania and the Kaunas/Kovno area in particular, then realized that the exhibits were presented from the survivors’ viewpoint; the museum was more about their personal experience than a comprehensive study of the holocaust. The woman at the front desk confirmed for me that many of the exhibits were created according to the executive director’s memories. In 1943 he escaped the ghetto with his immediate family through a hole in the barbed wire and hid for about a year in a potato cellar on a farm in the countryside. The hiding space is recreated in the museum; you have to crawl through a thin, long, dark, scary (if you’re claustrophobic like me) tunnel to get into it. The effect is, well, effective, to say the least.
So the woman called the executive director over to talk to me. (Shit like that just wouldn’t happen in DC; I love Richmond.) He has the most bizarre accent…a combination of Lithuanian, Yiddish, and American southern twang, if you can imagine that. I told him my family was from Alytus (according to one of the museum’s diagrams, somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 Jews were offed in the Alytus area over the course of the war). I told him I wanted to talk to him some more, because I don’t really get to talk to too many old people (I didn’t put it that way, though) and he was receptive and accessible and all that. He asked what brought me to Richmond and I said “Um well there’s a musician called Jandek and he’s really very reclusive and he performs on rare occasions and for some reason unknown to anyone he asked to have a show set up for him in Richmond…” and the dude said “Eh...stranger things have happened.” He's a trip, despite the fact that’s he’s a total fossil. I want to start making more old people my friends now.
Unfortunately, I’ll probably never be able to befriend Jandek, who is indeed old but not half as outgoing as the Lithuanian. He’s also rail-thin and doesn’t have much of an ass; I can confirm this because throughout most of the show he had his back turned toward me and at several times he got all jiggy with his guitar and starting wiggling his ass, or at least whatever ass he has, around. He played with a drummer, saxophonist, and bass player (didn’t recognize any of them as people who I should recognize; should I have been able to recognize them?). It was all free-jazz that got quite shreddy and it was cool, but I really, really want to see him play solo sometime. According to Seth Tisue he’s only perfromed solo twice. I wonder what it would take to get him to do it again? And more importantly, how will I know in advance??? Shall I consult Corwood directly regarding this matter??? He didn’t address the audience throughout the set, but at the end of the show the band got a standing ovation and he turned his back toward the audience but from where I was sitting I had a view of the side of his face, which had broken into a massive but shy smile.
As I walked through the Virginia Holocaust Museum I noticed the focus on Lithuania and the Kaunas/Kovno area in particular, then realized that the exhibits were presented from the survivors’ viewpoint; the museum was more about their personal experience than a comprehensive study of the holocaust. The woman at the front desk confirmed for me that many of the exhibits were created according to the executive director’s memories. In 1943 he escaped the ghetto with his immediate family through a hole in the barbed wire and hid for about a year in a potato cellar on a farm in the countryside. The hiding space is recreated in the museum; you have to crawl through a thin, long, dark, scary (if you’re claustrophobic like me) tunnel to get into it. The effect is, well, effective, to say the least.
So the woman called the executive director over to talk to me. (Shit like that just wouldn’t happen in DC; I love Richmond.) He has the most bizarre accent…a combination of Lithuanian, Yiddish, and American southern twang, if you can imagine that. I told him my family was from Alytus (according to one of the museum’s diagrams, somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 Jews were offed in the Alytus area over the course of the war). I told him I wanted to talk to him some more, because I don’t really get to talk to too many old people (I didn’t put it that way, though) and he was receptive and accessible and all that. He asked what brought me to Richmond and I said “Um well there’s a musician called Jandek and he’s really very reclusive and he performs on rare occasions and for some reason unknown to anyone he asked to have a show set up for him in Richmond…” and the dude said “Eh...stranger things have happened.” He's a trip, despite the fact that’s he’s a total fossil. I want to start making more old people my friends now.
Unfortunately, I’ll probably never be able to befriend Jandek, who is indeed old but not half as outgoing as the Lithuanian. He’s also rail-thin and doesn’t have much of an ass; I can confirm this because throughout most of the show he had his back turned toward me and at several times he got all jiggy with his guitar and starting wiggling his ass, or at least whatever ass he has, around. He played with a drummer, saxophonist, and bass player (didn’t recognize any of them as people who I should recognize; should I have been able to recognize them?). It was all free-jazz that got quite shreddy and it was cool, but I really, really want to see him play solo sometime. According to Seth Tisue he’s only perfromed solo twice. I wonder what it would take to get him to do it again? And more importantly, how will I know in advance??? Shall I consult Corwood directly regarding this matter??? He didn’t address the audience throughout the set, but at the end of the show the band got a standing ovation and he turned his back toward the audience but from where I was sitting I had a view of the side of his face, which had broken into a massive but shy smile.