Daniel Johnston - Songs of Pain: Early Recordings Volume 1
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CD Details
Artist: Daniel JohnstonEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2003-05-20
Music Label: Dualtone Music Group
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- Grievances
- A Little Story
- Joy Without Pleasure
- Never Relaxed
- Brainwash
- Pothead
- Wicked World
- Lazy
- I Save Cigarette Butts
- Like A Monkey In A Zoo
- Wicked Will
- An Idiot's End
- Wild West Virginia
- Since I Lost My Tooth
- Urge
- Living Life
- Tuna Ketchup
- Premarital Sex
- Don't Act Nice
- Hate Song
- Phantom Of My Own Opera
- Man At War
- Only Missing You
- More Dead Than Alive
- I Will
- Poptunes
- You Put My Love Out The Door
- You're Gonna Make It, Joe
- Never Get To Heaven
- Follow That Dream
- Pow
- For The Love Of Pete
- Blue Cloud
- Grievances Revisted
- True Grief
- My Baby Cares For The Dead
- Mabel's Grievances
Music reviews of Songs of Pain: Early Recordings Volume 1
Music Review: Unbelievably great
Rating: 5 Stars
Daniel Johnston is one of the world's undiscovered treasures. If things were perfect, his songs would be as widely covered, his life would be as intensely studied, and his work would be as revered and celebrated as the songs and albums of Bob Dylan.
Seriously.
Bob Dylan's voice isn't exactly conventionally good, but people have slobbered over him for decades. And Daniel Johnston's voice...well..you could say it's not conventionally "good" either, in the same way that Dylan's isn't, but like Dylan's, it gets better with every listen, and like Dylan's, it contains more real emotion, more real humanity, and earns more feelings of sympathy and love than any of the lame, slick, polished Michael Bolton-type voices that can hit every note exactly as their voice instructors taught them to.
At times, I've sworn off all music but Daniel Johnston. Nothing has seemed good enough in comparison. His piano is inventive and rockin'. It's a heckuvalotta fun. His use of television as an instrument, his sampling of TV evangelists ("This is an ELECTRIFYING(!) time...for believers!") and of his mother yelling at him, his occasional spooky organ, his blithely unconventional rhyme schemes, his wide (yet obsessively focused) range of topics, his whining and cracked little voice, and above all his lyrics, his lyrics, his lyrics, make him, and these two CDs in particular, classics for all time and space, for all humanity everywhere.
Daniel Johnston is a diagnosed manic-depressive with delusions of grandeur, and his highs and his lows show in these songs. He's also spent much of his life obsessed with a girl who could have cared less about him and who later married a prosperous undertaker and (I've heard) filed a restraining order against Daniel Johnston despite all the great songs he had written about her.
In one song he tells the girl that he'd die without her love, and she says "Too bad about that."
In another, the terrifying "My Baby Cares for the Dead," he sings about the girl marrying the undertaker and about the only way she'll ever care for him (Daniel Johnston) again.
"I know someday my baby
Will care for me.
She'll bleed and dress me, Momma,
Real fancy....
And she'll lay me
In a coffin,
Put marbles in my eyes...
Eyes!
I know someday my baby
Will care for me.
I know someday my baby
Will care for me.
I know someday my baby
Will care for me.
My baby...cares...for...the...dead."
These songs are absolutely genius. They're funny, dark, sad, twisted, happy, joyous, and wonderfully human. You will feel that Daniel Johnston is your friend, as if he's opened himself completely to you, and he has. The recordings are lo-fi, but at times that lo-fi quality even accents and helps the songs: high piano notes are transformed into a different instrument entirely just by the recorder being placed right next to the keys. The barely noticeable background hiss (and the genuiness of the songs themselves) gives the music an old-time folk feel. And Daniel's mother occasionally bursting in while he's playing...well, that's just hilarious.
If you like music, you will probably like this album. This is music for people who love music, who love the way that music sometimes skips the brain completely and goes right to the heart, right to the soul. This is what music was supposed to be: unique, heartfelt, real, and exciting.
Daniel's influence on modern music--on Nirvana, The Flaming Lips, Neutral Milk Hotel, A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Tom Waits, The Butthole Surfers, Beck, and others--is immeasurable, and he could have an immeasurable influence on you as well.
If you let him.
You should let him.
Description of Songs of Pain: Early Recordings Volume 1
Back in the early 1980s, when the punk-rock DIY spirit was going strong, emerging artists found a cheap and efficient way of distributing their music--the homemade cassette. Sometimes very crude and low-fi, the tapes became a hallmark of instant "indie cred." The erratic, troubled, and startlingly talented Daniel Johnston was one of the first musicians to really make a name for himself in this medium, and his first two tapes, 1980's Songs of Pain and '81's More Songs of Pain make up this collection, re-mixed but retaining their rough edges. The anger and sadness of "An Idiot's End," the wry twist of "Joy Without Pleasure," and the resignation of "More Dead Than Alive" exemplify the genius of his carefully chosen words. His lyrics can sting as well as delight, and his piano playing resonates with emotional depth. Hearing these songs makes one long to hear Beck doing a rendition of "Urge" or Johnny Cash taking on "Wild West Virginia." --Lorry FlemingAlternative Rock CDs
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