Johnston media saturation

[moog]

There was a feature about the film and a review of the album in yesterday's Metro paper in the UK.  I might be persuaded to transcribe it if there is no website or anything.

I just searched and couldn't find anything.  Sit tight.

[Stress Records]

Meanwhile here's a new one from Ireland:

'http://entertainment.ie/movie_review/The_Devil_and_Daniel_Johnston/4446.htm

[moog]

As promised, here you go, from the Metro newspaper (apologies for the delay, I'm just about to start my finals):


Daniel Johnston – Lost and Found
A few biographical facts about Daniel Johnston are essential in order to understand this cult US sensation; they also make his latest album, even more uncomfortable than its predecessor.  A life-long suffer [sic] of mental illness and incapable of living on his own, Johnston has the extraordinary ability to articulate his suffering and chaotic life into a surprisingly coherent, quasi-redemptive music that may be cauterised with a profound psychological pain, but that also possesses a raw, fierce beauty.  Nonetheless, Lost and Found makes for particularly difficult listening thanks to the large number of love songs devoted, one can only assume, to Johnston’s 20-year-long muse Laurie – the unrequited love of his life who lives an entirely separate life elsewhere.  There’s a strong and not always pleasant sensation of voyeurism associated with listening to this often extraordinary album, but presumable one way for Johnston to cope with his illness is to explore it fully in his music, and who are we to take that away?
Claire Allfree


His heart and soul
‘Satan knew my secret heart and he knew I wanted to be famous,’ reflects quivery-voiced DIY pop phenomenon Daniel Johnston on the events that led him to spending five months in psychiatric care.  The story is recounted by Johnston’s distraught father, Bill, in Jeff Feuerzeig’s documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston.  Following a rapturously received performance at Austin’s South By South-West festival in 1990, Johnston refused interviews and wanted his father to fly him back to Virginia in his two-seater plane.  Mid-flight, the singer grabbed the keys and threw them out of the window.  Fortunately, his father managed to safely ditch in the forest below.
To onlookers, this seems like a dangerous act of self-sabotage; to Johnston it was all part of the battle between the forces of good and evil.  Similar, two years later, he gave an eleventh hour refusal on a record deal that would have guaranteed his long-term financial security.  The reason?  The label were also home to the supposedly satanic Metallica.  Any director would surely find Johnston’s life story a gift.  Indeed, the incidents that Feuerzeig’s interviewees recount have a profundity more associated with parables than anecdotes.

‘The film is not a music documentary; it’s an artist portrait,’ says Feuerzeig, who won the documentary director award at last year’s Sundance Film Festival.  ‘No one could make up a story that was as beautiful and tragic as Daniel’s.  So I wanted to f**k with the medum and create a movie as singular as him.

‘It was like when I hear his album, Hi, How Are You? I knew that this wasn’t just an album – it was an artist’s statement.  Apart from all these incredible songs of unrequited love that wrench your heart out, there were snippets of his life, with his mom yelling at him.  And this amazing artwork.  It was this very personal soap opera that was so raw and direct that it was disconcerting but utterly riveting.  His songs are as good as anything Dylan ever wrote.’

Johnston allowed Feuerzeig access to all the material he’d amassed over the years.  In addition to the hundreds of songs – mostly addressed to lifelong muse Laurie Allen – and the reams of vibrant, wild and often grotesque artwork, were darkly comic, Keatonesque Super 8 home movies from Johnston’s adolescence, not long before the symptoms that would later be diagnosed as manic depression were recognised.

Just as Feuerzeig takes care not to scapegoat the religiosity of Johnston’s parents or the music industry for his illness, the film never lapses into voyeurism.  Even when things get decidedly dicey (and they do), they tone is always one of frankness tempered with affection.  If anyone has been wily enough to mine his illness, it was Johnston himself.

‘He’d go off his meds before performances to be crazier,’ says Feuerzeig.  ‘On the film, there’s footage of him on MTV and there he is with Hi, How Are You? saying: “I recorded this when I was having a nervous breakdown.”  Undoubtedly, his art is completely pure with no filters and is very, very singular.  But don’t confuse the art with the artist.  How it gets out there is because of a masterminded plan.  That’s the difference.  Daniel Johnston is the wizard behind his own curtain.’
Nadine McBay

[Henry Long]

Thanks moog! Interesting Lost and Found made for "difficult listening." "...But its Easy Listening for you now."

[notdaniel]

Thanks moog! Interesting Lost and Found made for "difficult listening." "...But its Easy Listening for you now."

And let's not forget how:

 "There’s a not always pleasant sensation of voyeurism associated with [the new album]", but ...

"the film never lapses into voyeurism."

And here I thought voyeurism was a visual thing...

  - notdan

[LuckySperm]

Here's a clip from an arts show in Ireland called The View

(real player) http://www.rte.ie/tv/theview/archive/20060502.html

[moog]

From South Wales' Buzz magazine:

Daniel Johnston
Lost and Found
****

It's not hard to comprehend why everyone from Kurt Cobain to The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening has sung Daniel Johnston's praises.  Creating a platform for any sometime asylum-bound, lisping individual to inflict his songs publicly should be a recipe for utter car crash disaster.  Johnston's childlike wonderment has other ideas.  And any man who can, as he does here, turn a lament to The Beatles into a sogn equally jaunty as tear-worthy deserves all the adoration the world can give.

[notdaniel]

The "Devil & Dan" piece in the San Antonio Current has some excellent bits in it! Check it out at:
http://sacurrent.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16611934&BRD=2318&PAG=461&dept_id=484045&rfi=6

Meanwhile, Joe Gross' CD review in the Austin American-Statesman (http://www.austin360.com/search/content/music/stories/xl/2006/05/11cds.html) managed to lose me THREE TIMES! First off, can "Welcome To My World" really be considered Daniel's...

"first-ever 'best of'" ?

More to the point, though, regarding...

"The Beatles and Elvis Costello will recognize their melodies here and there."

and...

"Remember when a sub-popular career seemed like a possibility? Those were good times."

...someone wanna help me out here?

  - notdan

[notdaniel]

This also comes from the S.A. Current - more Dan news on the funnybook front!

"[Martin] Cendrera and [R.'s daughter Sophie] Crumb also pop up in Issue 4 of the hard-to-find English import Sturgeon White Moss, which I recently discovered online (see Whitemosspress.com). The mag includes enough high-profile talent to attract readers — a spin through the first half-dozen issues offers Dave Cooper’s lush paintings, a bit of Daniel Johnston, and 'some random drawings' by Charles Burns."

  - notdan

[The Dentist]

I thought this was pretty cool. Today a long-time patient, who just so happens to be the Editor of our County's weekly newspaper, was in the chair today and I told him about Danny and the new movie. He was waaaay interested and promised to do a featurette once I can get him some press releases. Now how cool is that?  8-)Danny will get some good press from his old home here in Hancock County, West Virginia.

[ondafritz]

I thought this was pretty cool. Today a long-time patient, who just so happens to be the Editor of our County's weekly newspaper, was in the chair today and I told him about Danny and the new movie. He was waaaay interested and promised to do a featurette once I can get him some press releases. Now how cool is that? 8-)Danny will get some good press from his old home here in Hancock County, West Virginia.

Thats very nice of Hugh!

[The Dentist]

Thats very nice of Hugh!

And that's how small our Hancock County really is. Right Kevin?