SINNING IS EASY: Daniel Johnston Live @ Neumos [w/illustrations & Photo-Set]
August 31, 2011 in art, Music, Reviews
In this version of the non-existent biopic that no one is making for Daniel Johnston, they dress up the actor in a paint-speckled gray pocket-shirt, the front of which is tucked into a pair of gray draw-string sweat pants. The make-up department sets him up with those great eyebrows that would be the dominant feature of his face if it weren’t for his fantastically bulbous nose. The set director gives him all his characteristic props—the saintly attributes that disambiguate him from every other martyr of the stage: a chair with three identical water bottles, a guitar that resembles more of a ukulele when nestled into his torso, and a pair of converse. And of the actor’s props, the most outstanding is the pair of converse. They are pristine and blue, and say, “despite how he appears, he actually is slightly concerned with coolness”.
But it isn’t a movie. It’s Daniel Johnston, dressed up as himself, at Neumos in Seattle [August 24, 2011]. By now, in his latter—but not quite as late as you might think—years, Johnston is something of a loving parody of himself. He looks and sounds just as the crowd expects to see and hear (all except for a surprisingly well-kept beard that defies his characteristic baby-face). And in its predictability, the evening had the tight and tingly sense of sacrament, which begins at the base of the spine and works its way up with the words that everyone knows they are about to hear. Read the rest of this entry →
