Jandek: Six and Six

I didn't get into Jandek until around 2002.  I heard the song "Feathered Drums" & liked it enough that I sent in for the 20 albums for $80 deal that was going at the time (this was a time in my life where I was making more money than usual & didn't have a girlfriend to make me live a little nicer off the extra cash).  Maybe it's because the first song I remember hearing by Jandek is on this album that I gravitated towards it, but this was pretty instantly my favorite of his & clearly the one I'd listened to the most times.  It reminds me of what I like to think I would've done if I'd recorded an album in high school on LSD armed with the acoustic guitar I had with broken tuning pegs.  But at the same time it sounds out there & crazy, the whole thing feels intentional & like a letter from a friend on the brink of discovering the ultimate truth of reality.
It's probably been three years since I last listened to this album & I really have no reason why.  Probably because after seeing him live a while ago, it felt like part of the magic was gone (due in large part to the backing band he had).  Wow, this is still brilliant.  Put him next to Bob Dylan as one of the best songwriters of the twentieth century.  Just a man & his acoustic guitar & that's all you need.  When I put the record on it immediately feels like the room is turned into Jandek's home, he penetrates.  But as much as I love this record I know it's not for everyone.  The guitar is tuned to bring a degree of emotional accuracy rather than tonal accuracy.  The same with the vocals.  People want to call this a blues record & I can see it being up there with some of the Leadbelly stuff that I also like a lot.  This is generally thought of as Jandek at his most raw & that's what I want.  Some how undistilled is better than cleaned up & purified.  The lyrics here stick with you, every time I hear someone talking about going to jail I think of the lines "I've been to jail before / Been let out to" & whenever I see two spiders I remember "two spiders meet on a rock / but they're the same anyway." 
I can't really explain what makes this record special.  There is a vibe like it was made from the sole survivor of a cult that committed suicide & I think that feeling is part of what allowed the rise of the Jandek mythos.  This is the second record (or first record if you credit the first album to The Units) & if you only ever hear one Jandek record, this probably should be the one (though I am also quite fond of the much later The Gone Wait).
The strangest thing for me is on this record Jandek is presumably 35, the same age I am right now.  So it gives me a certain degree of hope that I could go on to do something brilliant & start a new career & we all need to have that feeling of hope more often.