LastNight: Daniel Johnston Posesses Bimbos

Daniel Johnston
August 22, 2007
Bimbo’s 365 Club

Better than: Watching the documentary a fifth time.
Download: One of the hundreds of Daniel Johnston videos available.

It’s 9:00 on a Wednesday night and a sold-out crowd impatiently waits. They cheer. They clap in unison, faster, faster. But Daniel Johnston -- noted singer/songwriter and the subject of a Sundance Award-winning documentary -- does not appear. “What time is it?” the girl behind me asks. It’s 9:09. “Come on,” she says. “This is nuts. Jesus.” Outside, the unlucky ones are asking people in line if they have extra tickets. It’s already stuffy in the packed venue. They dim the lights. Years pass. The crowd cheers. At 9:17, Johnston ...

wanders in.

His manner suggests he’s lost or looking for something—hunched over, eyes downcast. A black long-sleeved t-shirt and sweatpants do nothing to hide the 46-year-old's bulky form. He picks up his small headless guitar and begins strumming chords. The sound is muddy and feedback is intermittent, but the crowd is screaming as he sings “Mean Girls Give Pleasure.”

Johnston was born in Sacramento in 1961, the youngest of five children in a conservative, God-fearing household. He started drawing cartoons at an early age and, inspired by the Beatles, he soon began to create music. In the late 1970s, using a $59 Sanyo mono boom box, he started recording homemade, lo-fi cassettes in his parents’ cellar. He gave the tapes (accompanied by his cartoons) to whoever would have them, and amassed a cult following that continues to grow. In 2005, he was the subject of the documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, which won the Director’s Award at the Sundance Film Festival.

Doctors diagnosed Johnston with manic depression, and his struggles with the disorder permeate his work. His childlike music is intensely personal. During “Living Life,” he stood at the microphone with his eyes closed and sang, “Hold me like a mother would / Like I always knew somebody should / Though tomorrow doesn’t look that good.”

Although his voice is always a little wavering and uncertain, it was louder and more assured when Brett Hartenbach accompanied him and Johnston stopped playing the guitar.

The evening’s crowd supported him with screams of “I love you, Daniel!”, before singing along during old favorites like “Walking the Cow” and chuckling at tragicomic lines, such as in “I Had a Dream,” when the queen (representing the pervasive Laurie) orders, “Off with his head!”

Backed by openers Thee Ohsees, the show’s second half was less intimate and therefore less captivating. But he played crowd pleasers “Casper” (written in a record two minutes flat, according to Johnston) and “Speeding Motorcycle.” And soon thereafter—too soon, actually—he was done.

After all the build-up and anticipation, Johnston played for only an hour, with not one fleeting moment of encore for the persistent crowd.

Critic’s Notebook
Personal Bias: I have never been so affected by a film as I was by The Devil and Daniel Johnston
Random Detail: The back of the shirt of the guy in front of me read, “No Bono. No rules. No mercy.”
By the way: Johnston will be playing tonight and tomorrow at Henry Fonda Theatre in L.A.

-Liz Iversen