Follow Your Footsteps

Telegraph Melts Jandek (1986). Corwood Industries release #0751.

Track Listing:

1. Honey
2. What Do You Want to Sing
3. Jaws of Murmur
4. Preacher
5. Didn't Ask Why
6. Leave All you Have
7. I Know you Well
8. Dearly Need Some Words
9. Straight Thirty Seconds
10. Bring on Fatima
11. For Today
12. Collection
13. We're All Through

Album Cover Description A very young (teenage?) Jandek stands wearing a somewhat disheveled white button up shirt and... a solid body electric guitar! An important cover, because it shows that Jandek has been playing music since a relatively early age. He appears to be in a basement with a very low ceiling, though there's a window behind him, curtains halfway drawn, but it could be one of those basement window well windows. Jandek's facial expression is blank, perhaps slightly startled. -- Seth Tisue

The youngest looking of all the Jandek photos. Well composed and fresh faced.

A basement perhaps? A lamp harp or cord in the upper left makes a crude noose, it would almost look like a film scratch if it wasn't for the shadow it casts on the wall behind.

The window curtains are drawn. There is a vent overhead in the acoustical ceiling that would indicate some sort of modern central heating (inconsistent with the very old exteriors of the houses).

Reviews A song like ‘For Today’, w/ its sparsely-plunked notes and melancholically assertive vocals, could almost be an out-take from one of Michael Hurley’s classic albums on Raccoon... As the soul of individualism is being destroyed by the forces of evil, Jandek’s flame is an especially bright beacon in the dark -- Byron Coley[?] Forced Exposure #12

Outside Links

• Seth Tisue's Follow Your Footsteps review (http://tisue.net/jandek/discog#0751)