Best Album (In Your Eyes)

[entertainus]

The only one i have is Continued Story/Hi, How Are You? But if i were to get another, it would either be Yip Jump! or Songs of Pain. What do you recommend?

[Pascal]

To me, Daniel is at his best alone. That's where his incredible songwriting skills really shine. I for one do not need the extra musicians and production (though I like a lot Fun and Fear, etc). So my best buy would be the re-issue of the two first cassettes: Songs of Pain and More Songs of Pain

Pascal

[Doug Sulpy]

I think Daniel's best album is his most recent one - "Fear Yourself."

[Tartakov]

Anything on Stress Records.    

[Henry Long]

Indeed! For the price just under a good steak dinner (with dessert) for two, one can acquire the complete and stunning musical foundation upon which we have all rested our ears.
I recommend getting as many of the cassettes from STRESS as possible, then, take 2 days off from your regular life and play them in the order they were made. Headphones not manditory but suggested.
Once internalized this way, the songs really become a part of the listener, and there's no going back. Fear not. This is a good thing.
Afterword, get a good quality 90 minute tape and make a personal "Best Of" compilation. This will be the tape you play on a regular basis and share with friends, so the originals won't wear out.
Also, you can take all these tapes, make measurements, and with a little wood or foam core board, glue and downloaded Daniel Art, make a Box-Set nobody on Earth has ever seen.
Oh the fun never ends. Peace.

[Doug Sulpy]

Personally, I would be happy never to see another cassette as long as I live, Daniel or not.

Of course, I transferred the Stress cassettes to CD-R (for my own use, of course!) and listen to them that way. Not only is it easier to skip the indecipherable dialogue recordings (ahem), but if you scan and print out some inserts they don't turn yellow .

Strangely, I remember the Stress material was uploaded a couple of years ago onto a pay-per-mp3 site, and the quality seemed better than the  tapes (I suspect the uploaded MP3s were mastered from CD, and not from the lo-bias cassettes). Maybe Jeff can explain this more fully. Of course, there's only so much fidelity you're going to squeeze from those tapes, and fidelity's not what it's about ANYWAY (although fixing the pitch on "Retired Boxer" really DID make it more listenable).

Doug

[dejected]

This is a good point - I wouldn't drive you away from Stress as a source of this material, but I should point out that all the worthy stuff (twelve early cassettes) is available as pay-for downloads as mp3's from EMusic.com.

Continued Story
Hi How Are You
Frankenstein Love
More Songs of Pain
Respect
Songs of Pain
The Lost Recordings
The Lost Recordings 2
Don't be Scared
Live at SXSW
Retired Boxer
The What Of Whom
and even Rejected Unknown

[Tartakov]

The EMusic stuff was poorly mastered and in many cases not taken from the best possible source.  I spent most of 2002 and part of 2003 digitalizing the material from the best possible masters and now use these new improved "masters" to make the cassette dubs. A few people have asked me why the Dualtone CD version of Songs of Pain/More Songs of Pain doesn't sound as good as the cassettes and this is why.

I'm a little surprised to see anyone here knock the cassette format. Without cassettes what medium would Daniel have used?

[Doug Sulpy]

Of course, cassettes were the only game in town when Daniel was recording the tapes. But I believe they've been supplanted by CD-Rs, which retain their quality copy-to-copy, and are cheaper to buy as well.

[Stallion]

Anything on Stress Records.

You are correct sir.  

[Disfranchise]

All the tapes on Stress and I have to include Artistic Vice which I think is the only album Daniel's songs sound really good in a studio or with a band.
None of the other studio albums are even close!
There are such great melodies on it. The only thing that's not as great on it are the lyrics because they're not as compelling as they are in most of his other albums.
I find it hard to get that people really like Fear Yourself and Fun more than the tapes. I JUST DON'T GET IT.




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(In your eyes - I'm not lazy)

[Doug Sulpy]

Perhaps the answer is this...
What's the first Daniel Johnston you heard? I wonder if one likes best what one was initially exposed to (my first exposure was "Fun" back in 1994).

Doug

[Disfranchise]

doug-

I don't really understand...
If I'd heard Fun first I'd probably wouldn't have bothered to find out more about Daniel. I don't get your point here??









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Give me back my alcohol

[Doug Sulpy]

Some people like the raw, lo-fi early tapes best.
Some people like the more produced, studio recordings best.

I'm simply wondering if there's any relationship between one's preference, and what type of recording one first encountered Daniel's music through. That is... do people who first heard the Stress Records tapes generally prefer the lo-fi stuff, while people who were first exposed to Daniel via "Fun" prefer the more polished recordings. I'm not saying this is an answer... just wondering if it's a possibility.

I do, however, find your comment about "Fun" quite interesting. What is there about the album that you don't like?

[Disfranchise]

about he fun album;
Sure, there are good song on it, I especially like Sad Sac + Tarzan and Love Will See You Through. Those songs are really good. However, I find the album very flat and slick. Also I don't find it really focused and it don't really stick togheter, if you know what I mean.
The first song I ever heard by Daniel was "Worried Shoes" and after that I heared "Speeding Motorcycle". Before I had heard his music I had just  heard about Daniel Johnston as the lofi artist that Kurt Cobain liked.
I thought he was like Beck or Rufus Wainwright or something so I really was surprised when I heard the songs. I had no problem with the bad sound quality because of all bad bootlegs I'd heard over the years. I found the songs magical but most of all they had as good melodies as the Beatles once managed to create. The melody always comes first to me, then the feeling mood of the song and after that the lyrics. Although I find lyrics very intriguing and I can just sit for hours and read the lyrics of different artists.



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