Saw the Space Ducks release gig last night. Hefty merch table, with CDs & LPs, the book, T-Shirts, post cards, stickers, pins, posters, and even a Space Ducks Video Game!

Performance was very reminiscent of the '97 comeback: Four songs backed by rockin' backup band; large, energetic crowd, relatively chatty Daniel in fine voice.

Set List:

Hobby Horse (?)
Rock This Town
Speeding Motorcycle
True Love Will Find You In The End

  -- notdan

I think the NEWS page over at rejectedunknown.com is gonna be your best info source about that, so keep checking there, but if you miss launch party for any reason, I can tell you that Austin Books (as seen in The Devil & Daniel Johnston) has been in contact with Dan's management regarding the possibility of an unofficial appearance/signing/whatever during his time in Austin for the official comic book release. Give them a call before SXSW Music ConFest begins if you can't otherwise succeed jin your goal...

  - Not Daniel

A post? I thought this place was actually SHUT DOWN for remodeling or somesuch!

It pretty much comes down to whichever ones he's come across. Believe it or not, he has more QUEEN boots than anything else -- I mean, I never even realized there WERE Queen bootlegs before I saw Dan's freakin' motherlode! Like, the whole point of Queen is their polish, precision & production, don't you think?!? Queen bootlegs would be full of half-finished demos and poorly recorded live gigs, I would imagine...

Specifically getting back to Beatleboots, I can speak for Daniel in highly recommending the M&M sessions CD. because I made him a copy of the copy that I got from Mick Gray (Alan Moore's inker on 'Promethea'), and Dan swooned over it for about a year!

M&M are better known as Paul McCartney and Declan MacManus, and the bootleg CDs comprise the complete demos for what SHOULD have been the Beatles' new songwriting team -- this stuff easily compares favorably to anything penned by the original Lennon/McCartney duo.

Read about it in detail here:

http://therarestuff.blogspot.com/2010/02/elvis-costello-paul-mccartney.html

This looks like a good alternate place to get it:

http://www.bootlegzone.com/album.php?name=vt174&section=3
http://www.bootlegzone.com/album.php?name=mcmanus2&section=3

And here's the basic info:

The McCartney/McManus Collaboration [Vigotone Recs. 1998]
2-CD set + slipcase/24 page booklet.
SONGS: The Lovers That Never Were /25 Fingers /Tommy´s Coming Home /
So Like Candy /You Want Her Too /Playboy to a Man/Don´t be Careless/
My brave face/Veronica/One after 909/Mistress and Maid (live)/Pads, Paws
and Claws (live)/Shallow Grave/My Brave Face/That Day is Done/Back on
My Feet/Step Inside Love/Hey, You´ve Got to Hide Your Love Away

  -- Not Daniel

I can't get it to work -- I get a dead link even if I go through the mohawkaustin.com website where the poster is supposed to be up at.

 - notdan

This probably won't help you at all, but I'm pretty sure that this was the record I used to have with a really good version of the song you seek:

Roky Erickson "Acoustic EP" -- 1988 bootleg 45rpm 7-inch record in fold-out poster sleeve. Contains four songs and an interview snipped from a 1980 documentary.

Also, Shout Factory has a 2-CD best-of set with a version of the song by Roky Erickson & Clementine Hall; I don't know if it's particularly good or not.

If you're really desperate, you might wanna call Casey Monahan, who among other things compiled and edited the 316-page compendium of Roky's lyrics OPENERS II that was published by Henry Rollins. Casey's work number is (512) 463-6666.

(Don't worry, it's OK to call him there -- his job is to answer questions like yours! He's the head of the Texas Governors' Office Music Information Department.)

  - notrok

Didn't mean to offend -- it was one of those "hit-send-without-thinking" moments.

I've removed the comment from my post, but I can't excise the quote from yours,
so that's up to you.

  - notdan

> Sarah Drove Around In Her Car (short spoken thing)

The above title is more appropriately referred to as "Worried Shoes II" -- or at least it contains most of the lyrics to WS2. In its original 1986 incarnation with the Rhythm Rats backing up Dan, it is easily one of my very favorite Daniel Johnston recordings -- even though objectively I would have to admit that the "standard" lyrics to "Worried Shoes" are in fact superior.

As such, it's an extra-sad shame that this cut is so uninteresting. Well, we can all continue to keep those fingers crossed for the eventual release of the DanJ/RRats long-ago completed December Blues album, which is already around 2 years late... AH, WELL!!!

BTW: It maybe was just my computer, but I found this to be a dead link:

 http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3783345&id=34700824580

(It works now when I click it off my own follow-up, though... how strange!)

  - notdan

Wow! That's actually a CUTE baby -- and I generally agree with Dave Sim's "Cerebus The Aardvark" who famously said that "All babies look like Winston Churchhill to Cerebus!"

   --- notdan

For those with shorter attention spans, here's an edit of "I'm a Believer" from the show, combining live concert footage and footage from that afternoon's rehearsal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lhdcF_931E

And an unrelated clip of Dan covering Paul McCartney:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wRUrBLTwSk

  - notdan

As some of you know, one of my pet peeves is the misleading -- actually flat out WRONG -- bit in Don Goede's book Hi, How are You?: The Art, Life and Music of Daniel Johnston where he claims that Daniel's 1997 SXSW show was a chilling affair that "ended abruptly" with a heavily-medicated Daniel screaming "We're all gonna die!" to the crowd. As the "mastermind" behind that comeback gig, I take this error personally, especially since I contacted Don with a correction long before the book was reissued in its current edition.

Well, sure enough, I recently ran into yet another person who took the book's erroneous info as gospel, and that finally got me up off my butt to put the ENTIRE show on Youtube -- actually, it wasn't all that big a deal, since Dan and the Rhythm Rats only had time to work up 4 songs that afternoon (I tried to convince Daniel to go back out for an encore, like maybe "Why Don't We Do It In The Road" or something else they could pretty much wing on the spot, but he declined on the grounds that under those circumstances "Elvis wouldn't have done an encore.")

Parts one and two of the gig can be found at these URLs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsbGE9xvtZY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXtfrz-6GGM

And please, if anyone can find anything even resembling "We're all gonna die!" among Daniel's comments on these clips, share it with me!

  - notdan
___________________________________________________________

PS: For those who missed  these clips on my channel, they're still there:

Tim Hamblin's excellent "Funeral Home" music video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK4Q03v0Eyc

My own visual interpretation of the never-released 1982 number, "Grievances/Greensleeves":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRCMt3sbaq8

And a clip of my old band with a cameo from Dan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVdn7ONh5SE

This is true. And Brian Beattie (producer) has said that there's still probably enough good material to cull a THIRD album from the sessions as well, if the need arises.

I have no idea what keeps stalling the release of "December Blues", but half of it consists of old recordings from 1986 with enough new material recorded in 2008 to fill it out into a complete album.

   -- notdan

PS: I hope everybody already got their full share of enjoyment from the unreleased recordings I posted on IMEEM... since f*cking Myspace apparently bought out the site and wiped out everything I had on there!

They should have a word for that exact precise moment when an album goes from being a collection of songs that someone recorded and you bought and you like it alright to something magical and personal that can alter your mood in an instant and will continue to glow somewhere deep inside of you for the rest of your life.
  - NotDan

You think the pizza thing was gross, you shoulda smelled the back room where we would meet at the McDonald's where he worked!

  - NotDan

Yo, I'm just trying to liven things up around this graveyard, Longfellow!

I do see how putting the two subjects together gave my post that sort of "Red Bull gave me Paul McCartney & Wings" feel, but keep in mind that whenever Daniel calls and invites me out to Waller, it's usually in the hope of doing some off-the-cuff writing, recording and/or filming. "The Nine Lives of Danny the Cat" is the first Dan-film concept I've ever come up with that I thought might actually be worth pursuing.

Admittedly, though, the club scene would require a pretty high degree of professionalism, and the project in general would probably involve more memorization than Dan would be comfortable with taking on. I can't see the idea being worth a damn with anyone other than Daniel as the central character, though, unfortunately.

If anyone would care to throw out some ideas for a more simple, improvisation-based, "Sanka-fied" concept for a Dan-film, I finally have a decent digital camcorder to work with...

  - NotDan

Hey, Hey, gang!

It looks like one of the Monkees is gonna be owing me a favor soon -- I won't say which one but here is a hint: he was the first member to quit the group after the TV show ended. So whaddaya think -- should I work on getting him and Dan together to co-write a song? I mean, it's largely true that, as someone once said, there's really no such thing as co-writing with Dan (usually he either charges ahead and does all the writing himself before you can get a word in, or else he does the opposite and confines his role to providing encouragement to his "partner").

But seeing as how the odds are slim to none that Dan will ever get to co-write with a Beatle, wouldn't working a Monkee make a decent "consolation prize"?

  - NotDan

PS: I had a great idea (at least I think it's a great idea) for a short film starring Daniel:

THE NINE LIVES OF DANNY THE CAT

A trained hypnotist who happens to also be a rabid Daniel Johnston fan gets Daniel to agree to participate in an experiment -- a journey into the subconscious psyche of a genius songwriter. When Dan "goes under", the hypno-fan makes a tremendous discovery: it turns out that Dan has lived and died many times throughout the eons.

In each and every one of his previous lives Daniel was a brilliant songwriter who didn't QUITE make it to the big time, and it was apparently his overwhelming quest for stardom that allowed him to keep getting reincarnated, and each time he got closer and closer to reaching his goal, culminating in Daniel as we know him today. As Dan's "sessions" continue, the fan further discovers that he can actually bring back any of the "pre-Dans" to full consciousness by allowing them to take over the physical form of "Now Dan".

Now, like I said, each one is a genius, but they don't all necessarily write the same kinds of songs. For instance, "Renaissance Dan" does somber tunes like "Grievances/Greensleeves", "Beatnik Dan" works more along the Tom Waits-ish lines of "Billions/Rock", and "Vaudeville Dan" is most adept at lighter, more humorous fare like "Wicked Will".

As the plot progresses, at a high-profile gig an inadvertant post-hypnotic suggestion transforms "Now Dan" into "Renaissance Dan". Things gets off to a rocky start as "RD" keeps getting distracted by "magickal" things like the club's cash register and electric spotlights, and the tension grows when the venue owner asks Dan what his pre-show requirements are. "RD" innocently replies "I supposeth the main thinge is that I shall neede to have my lute up front." An argument ensues as the belligerent owner insists that "Nobody, no matter how big a star they are, gets their loot up front at my club!"

Eventually things get straightened out, but the club's paying customers begin to get confused as further transformations result in Dan performing everything BUT the type of songs they came to see him play. Some people demand refunds, while others merely wander out of the club shaking their heads in bewilderment. Meanwhile, the musical stylings of such alter-egos as "Greek Chorus Dan" and "Opera Dan" do little to placate the increasingly drunk and disorderly patrons as they continue to hope for a positive turn to the performance.

Finally, as the remaining audience members are on the verge of turning violent, the clubowner runs onstage and reveals that as a surprise treat, he had arranged for a local rock band to learn a medley of Dan's greatest songs, and that the group is now ready to back him up on "all the hits" that people have been waiting for. Daniel Johnston (who has now taken on the persona of "Cave Dan") is shoved onstage and the band (the Nightmares would be ideal for the part!) counts off their intro... "one, two, three, four..."

As soon as the roar of the first power chord thunders out of the PA, a terrified "Cave Dan" begins yelling: "Arrgghhh!!! The sky gods am angry! Surely them will kill us all! Kree-gah!!!" He bolts off the stage, streaks out the front door of the venue, and vanishes into the night still screaming about the impending vengeance of ancient elemental deities. Most of the crowd members exit the building in disgust behind him.

As the last few remaining audience members are seen demanding their money back at the ticket counter, Jason Nightmare and the clubowner are engaged in a heated discussion. Citing the fact that they had signed a contract, Jason says "So... we're still gonna get paid for the gig, right?." The clubowner loses his last ounce of composure and bellows "Like hell you'll get paid! Get out of my place right now! I never want to see any of you crazy musicians ever again!" Along with a bouncer, he unceremoniously tosses Jason out the door and throws the last of the night's musical gear after him, then slams the door shut.

Final shot: Jason gets up off the sidewalk, dusts himself off, and turns to the camera. "Well, folks," he sighs, "I guess the moral of this story is..."

(he holds up the broken remains of "Renaissance Dan"'s instrument)

"...Always make sure and get your loot up front!"

Fade to black. The closing credits run as "Speeding Motorcycle" plays in the background: "...In a world of funny changes, speeding motorcycle, won't you change me..."

THE END

So, what do you guys think? Would you be excited about Dan participating in filming the above story, or would you be wishing he'd spent the time doing something else?