Both Kinds Of Music

Daniel Johnston will always be one of my favorite artists, and the cassette he holds in his hand in the photograph to your left, Yip/Jump Music, is one of my all-time favorite recordings. True, he can’t really play any instrument very well, and he is not a great singer. In the old times this would have been the death knell for a musician, but since Bob Dylan we know better. For those of you who don’t know Daniel, he is what some people call an “outsider” musician, suffering from manic depression. His songs are characterized by an incredible honesty and naivete, and many of them are strongly influenced by his Christianity, having grown up in a very religious West Virginia family. Daniel was embraced by musicians such as Yo La Tengo, who covered his song “Speeding Motorcycle”, and Kurt Cobain, who ran around with his Hi, How Are You? T-shirt for several months, wearing it on MTV and for promo photos.

My first (non-)encounter with Daniel Johnston was in the early 90s in Berlin, when I went to see Jad Fair and Daniel playing live. Unfortunately, Daniel had been hospitalized just before the tour started, so Jad Fair played with some other drummer, whose name I can’t recall. The show was great, and I urge you to see Jad Fair whenever he comes to your town, but there was no Daniel Johnston that day. And that is how his whole life has been since he was a teenager, constantly battling with mental problems, being hospitalized, living with medication which dulls all senses. Right now he is again in critical care in a hospital in Waller, Texas. For updates and newest infos check this fansite.

I am in Berlin again, more than 10 years after my failed attempt to see him live, and yesterday I got to attend a Daniel Johnston tribute show. It started off with the film The Devil And Daniel Johnston, followed by a video performance by Kevin Blechdom and Planningtorock aka Janine Rostron, who runs the Rostron record label. After the film and video, 19 live bands and artists covered Daniel Johnston songs. Yes, you heard right, 19! It lasted until about 3:30am, at which time you can still get a good Döner Kebab for under 2 Euros and catch a bus home. Man, I love Berlin!

I will not go into details about all the artists, you can check the lineup on this site. Let me just say that the star of the evening was Elvis Pummel. He is one my new favorites, and he is going to play a full show one of the next days at the Tex-Mex cowboy bar White Trash in Berlin. Expect more about Elvis on this blog some time soon.

I want to add a few words about the documentary film The Devil And Daniel Johnston which opened the tribute night. It was shown at the Berlin and Sundance film festivals, and Sony Pictures Classics plans to release it in March 2006. Let us hope that it gets a good distribution, it is an impressive film and required viewing for anyone who is interested in Daniel’s life and art. Daniel always carried around a small tape recorder and recorded just about everything around him, and sometimes kept a sort of audio diary, too. The film features many excerpts from those tapes with thoughts about his family, Metallica (he did not want to sign a record contract with Elektra because he thought that Metallica was promoting Satanism), the devil, anything. When they are played, the camera zooms in on those old cassette tapes with Daniel’s notes and drawings on them. Your love for recording on crappy tapes will surely be restored, if you ever lost it. Apart from his family the film features Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers, who is interviewed at the dentist (not for the faint of heart), denying that he gave Daniel acid; Jad and David Fair; his longtime manager and great guy Jeff Tartakov, who even continued to support Daniel after he was fired unceremoniously and for no good reason; Austin Chronicle editor and Daniel Johnston friend Louis Black; and many other interesting people. You can see how he shows up uninvited for an MTV special about the music scene in Austin, fulfilling his dream to be on MTV, how he gets a bunch of New York über-hipsters to sing along with his religious songs, how he stars as his mother in a film shot by his brothers, how he decorates a Christmas tree with a sign showing the Number 9 and a Beatles album, and much more.

I want to close with the lyrics to his song “Devil Town”. Now this is something you should sing in church, if you ever happen to go there. By the way, current indie superstars Bright Eyes covered it recently on the tribute album Discovered Covered: The Late, Great Daniel Johnston, which also featured Tom Waits, Beck, Calvin Johnson, The Eeels, and many others.

I was living in a devil town
I didn’t know it was a devil town
Oh lord it really brings me down about the devil town

All my friends were vampires
I didn’t know they were vampires
It turns out I was a vampire myself in the devil town

In the film you can see a Swedish audience sing along to this one. Do you need any more reasons to see it?

This entry was posted on Friday, December 16th, 2005 at 10:18 am and is filed under Crazy and Good. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.