THE ANGEL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON: LIVE AT THE UNION CHAPEL -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 2/1/09

 

"I had a dream that this guy was sentenced to death for attempting to commit suicide."

He has a beautiful voice, though it's rarely on key. His lyrics are often stunning and emotionally complex, though they don't always make sense. Each song is deceptively simple and touchingly heartfelt, yet on a technical level he'd probably get kicked out of a high school talent show.

No doubt about it, Daniel Johnston is one of the strangest musical stars of all time. Never heard of him? Just check out his new concert DVD, THE ANGEL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON: LIVE AT THE UNION CHAPEL, and get ready for something completely different. If you're a fan but, like me, have never seen one of his performances in its entirety, then this is your ticket to spend a little quality time in that cheerfully surreal dimension where Daniel lives.

If there was ever a self-made musician, this is the guy. As a kid, Daniel began recording himself singing his own songs of teenage angst and romantic yearning while banging out the music on a piano. Crashing an MTV taping in Austin in 1983 with a guitar and a handful of cassettes, he managed to get himself on TV and lay the groundwork for a growing cult following that would lead to concerts, a record contract, and a seemingly bright future. There was just one catch--Daniel was a severe manic depressive with a tenuous grasp on reality, and over the years his increasingly erratic and irrational behavior sabotaged any potential he had for breaking into the big time.

In my review of the brilliant documentary THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON, I described him as "a Syd Barrett who never gave up his music." These days he's an overweight, graying, middle-aged man who lives with his parents in Waller, Texas, but never stopped writing songs or dwelling upon his various muses. And after being discovered by some local musicians who were amazed to find the legendary Daniel Johnston living in their town, he found himself back onstage.

Recorded in July 2007 at London's beautiful Union Chapel, a spacious yet somehow intimate venue whose stained-glass atmosphere is a perfect setting for Daniel's often spiritual lyrics, the concert features over an hour of his best songs including some familiar oldies that sound better than ever.

With a jovial "Hi, everybody!", he begins by strapping on a guitar and performing "Mean Girls" while artlessly strumming the chords just like he did in the old days. "Mean girls give pleasure...it's my greatest treasure" he sings, still speaking for every awkward, lovestruck teenage boy who ever went down in flames.

Settling in behind a piano for the haunting "Love Enchanted", a song vaguely similar musically to "Hotel California" but with much more emotional resonance, Daniel holds the audience in rapt attention. The solo portion of the concert thus over, various musicians join him for the rest as he simply stands at the microphone and sings while reading his lyrics from a notebook, hands shaking. It can't be easy playing backup for Daniel because he doesn't always stick to the beat, but these guys are good at fitting the music to Daniel's style of singing.

The familiar "Some Things Last a Long Time" weaves a spell that continues through a series of quirky gems such as "Try to Love", "Speeding Motorcycle", "Walking the Cow", and his classic "Casper the Friendly Ghost", about a guy who had to die before anyone gave him any respect. His voice shifts constantly between caterwauling to high, Neil Young-type clarity and is often surprisingly poignant.

All in all, there are eighteen songs about life and love, brimming with vaguely Beatlesque melodies, from a cockeyed point of view that is sometimes disarmingly amusing and often strikes a deep chord with its honesty and perception.

As he sings, I can see flashes of that young kid that still lives inside him. As I once wrote about him, "it's as though the patron saint of guys who sing in front of the mirror took pity on him and made all his musical dreams come true (well, a lot of them, anyway), which is really an amazing sight to behold." Even now, he can't believe it himself--"Are you still with me?" he'll sometimes ask the audience between verses. And they always are.

Surrounded by a band and buoyed by the good spirits around him as the performance nears its end, Daniel's "Rock and Roll/EGA" progresses from a spare little tune into a rousing rocker with some impressive vocals. The beautiful "True Love Will Find You in the End" closes the show. As an encore, Daniel saunters back onstage and sings "Devil Town" all by himself, then waves goodbye to the crowd as they give him a standing ovation.

Director Antony Crofts provides a good no-frills record of the concert with some imaginative camerawork. The sound is available in both stereo and 5.1 surround. The bonus features include rehearsal footage of "Some Things Last a Long Time", plus two more solo songs from the concert, "There is a Sense of Humor Way Beyond Friendship" and "And I Love You So", that didn't make it into the final cut but are well worth having. There's also a post-concert interview with Daniel that finds him happily discussing, among other things, his obsession with The Beatles and his lifelong love for horror movies such as HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN, Hammer films, and his favorite movie, KING KONG.

The way I see it, Daniel Johnston is a seemingly ordinary guy with an inner musical genius trying to get out, but he could never quite get all the way out. So his fans are gladly willing to meet him halfway in order to reap the rewards to be found in Daniel's songs and performances. When he eases into what I consider to be his theme song, "The Story of an Artist", he recalls his parents' long-ago admonition: "We don't really like what you do, we don't think anyone ever will." He says his family's still trying to figure him out. Good luck. I don't think anybody's ever really going to figure this guy out.

THE ANGEL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON: LIVE AT THE UNION CHAPEL -- DVD Review by Porfle

THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON -- Movie Review by Porfle

(NOTE: This review originally appeared online in 2005.)


"It was my fate to become famous. And, uh...also to be damned."

That's just one of the enlightening statements made by the severely whacked-out title character in the kaleidescope of self-revelation that is writer-director Jeff Feuerzeig's THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON (2005). As a study of someone who leads an extraordinary life outside society's norms it's as fascinating a journey as FORREST GUMP, ZELIG, BEING THERE, LUST FOR LIFE, or any of a number of films about individuals whose mental "differences" are what make them great artists or noteworthy people.

But whereas those were fictional (or fictionalized) accounts, THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON is a documentary, and is all the more interesting because this guy is real. That's right, he's really out there somewhere. And I do mean "out there."

Which kinda makes me wonder about myself, because up until the point where Daniel starts exhibiting disturbing symptoms of manic depression, his life story is one I could strongly identify with. He grew up loving comics, cartooning, and music, and was the family jokester who always had his home movie camera whirring away.

But as time went by, it looked as though he would never learn just how to straighten up, buckle down, get a job, and begin to lead a more "well-rounded life" (his mother's phrase during one of her frequent harangues, one of many things Daniel recorded on his tape recorder over the years and an inspiration for an early home movie in which he portrays her as a crazed, rolling pin-wielding harpy).

Although art was a consuming passion, music began to dominate his interests, and he became a prolific songwriter who taped dozens of songs as he sat at the piano and banged out the accompaniment. He gradually imagined that he was actually recording albums on tape, for which he decorated the covers with his own cartoon characters.

Wow...so far, this is my life story, too, except my mom wasn't on my back all the time (although my dad griped at me for not getting a job and for having such a flaky, non-"Dukes Of Hazzard"-type sense of humor). Daniel was even more of a no-account college student than me--I was able to fake my way to graduation--and soon returned home, where the signs of his manic depression began to manifest themselves more and more overtly over time. (This is where our life stories begin to part company--I was never manic).

As his behavior became stranger, he was sent to live with his brother, who evicted him soon after. Then he lived with his sister for awhile before buying a moped and running off to join the carnival. One day a large, hostile carny knocked him senseless for taking too long in the port-o-potty, and Daniel wandered into the nearest Church Of Christ for help while the carnival left town. It sounds like I'm making this stuff up, but I'm not.

Anyway, he eventually ended up in Austin, Texas, where he conned his way into a taping of MTV's "The Cutting Edge", which was covering Austin's burgeoning music scene, and performed some of his songs for a national audience. He soon became a cult figure in Austin and word of his unusual talent began to spread even as his mental problems increased to the point where the people who had to deal with him on a daily basis began to have him committed to mental institutions. Somewhere along the line he started dropping acid, which was pretty much the genesis of his lifelong battle against Satan and the forces of evil.

If this were a SPINAL TAP-type mockumentary instead of one of the most entertaining and compelling documentaries I've ever seen, it couldn't be any more far out. Thanks to Daniel's overriding compulsion to tape-record his thoughts on a regular basis, we get to hear much of the story in his own voice at the time it was happening, which is augmented by dozens of his freaky cartoons that serve to illustrate his mental state at the time.

There are also interviews with many of his friends and associates, including Jeffrey Tartakov, the guy who tried to be his manager for several years and even got Elektra Records and Atlantic Records into a bidding war over him--while he was still in a mental institution--before Daniel fired him for no discernible reason. He finally signed a contract with Atlantic and released an album, "Fun", which sold 5,800 copies. (He was dropped less than two years later.)

His parents also provide many of their own bittersweet recollections and insights, including the time his father was flying him home after a triumphant appearance before thousands of fans in Austin and Daniel suddenly turned off the engine, took over the controls, and sent their small plane spiralling headlong toward earth. His father managed to get back into the pilot's seat and crash-land in a forest. Daniel, who thought he had just accomplished something marvelous, was proud of himself.

In addition to tape recordings and interviews, there is a lot of home movie and video footage to keep this from being anything but a talking-head movie. We get to see Daniel's ill-fated trip to New York to record with Sonic Youth. We see him performing passionately before admiring crowds from Austin to Stockholm, always with the same cracking voice and awkward guitar-strumming that somehow manages to captivate people. And we see him going farther and farther off the deep end, his delusional behavior always returning to sabotage everything that goes right in his life.

Daniel is now an overweight, gray-haired, middle-aged man who lives with his parents in Waller, Texas. He reminds me of a Syd Barrett who never gave up his music. In fact, after being discovered one day by a local rocker who was blown away to find the legendary Daniel Johnston living in his very own home town (he was being attacked by dogs while walking), Daniel is now the frontman for an honest-to-goodness rock group called Danny And The Nightmares.

As for Daniel's music--well, he still sounds to me like a guy singing and playing badly in front of his bedroom mirror and pretending to be performing for an admiring crowd. Which I, myself, might have done a time or two over the years. Only he isn't pretending--he's really doing it, and his songs display a cockeyed lyrical talent that is often surprisingly poignant.

It's as though the patron saint of guys who sing in front of the mirror took pity on him and made all his musical dreams come true (well, a lot of them, anyway), which is really an amazing sight to behold. Only Daniel would argue that it was Satan who granted him musical fame, which is why he is damned, which is why he spends so much time and effort preaching to whoever will listen and warning them to turn away from evil.

"Don't play cards with Satan, he'll deal you an awful hand," one of his songs tells us. But I don't think he's damned at all. Like a somewhat more benevolent Norman Bates, he just goes a little crazy sometimes.


Read our review of THE ANGEL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON: LIVE AT THE UNION CHAPEL

THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON -- Movie Review by Porfle