Ready for the House

Ready for the House Jandek 1978. Corwood Industries release #0739.

Track Listing:

1. Naked in the Afternoon
2. First You Think Your Fortune's Lovely
3. What Can I Say, What Can I Sing
4. Show Me the Way, O Lord
5. Know Thy Self
6. They Told Me About You
7. Cave in on You
8. They Told Me I Was A Fool
9. European Jewel (Incomplete)

Album Cover Description Strange film stock. Strange muted colors. Window dressing is drawn. A book (Penguin Classics[?] "Shakespeare," perhaps?) conspicuously (deliberately) placed on the sill. Two other books on a circular table with a brandy snifter vase with three or four red flowers (carnations?). A couch or armchair is half off the left side of the frame... with an ashtray resting on the arm.

The edge of an ottoman can barely be seen in the lower right corner of the frame.

Very large window with old wooden molding. Bizarre coloring, perhaps even for the late seventies.

The scene seems very "forced"... the objects are not arrayed naturally.

Music Notes

Album was originally recorded under the name the Units. After a legal threat from the New Wave band of the same name, Corwood Industries released every subsequent album under the name of Jandek.

Reviews

The stark, painfully exposed, untuned-acoustic blues/folk that once made for such a richly uncomfortable listening experience now sounds focused and brilliant. it’s not that the music is any less dark, or the technique any more refined than it was 22 years ago; it’s just that the world has moved closer to Jandek’s reality. The anxious beauty of isolation and doubt. -- Scaruffi, Piero The History of Rock Music, Vol. 4

Outside Links

• Seth Tisue's Ready for the House review (http://tisue.net/jandek/discog#0739)