Daniel Johnston – Magic Stick – Detroit, February 5, 2008

^{Photo Credit: Lindsay Benson}

Daniel Johnston started the show with a rocker. Yeah, you read that: a rocker. With full band in tow, Johnston blazed into “Speeding Motorcycle,” gripping the microphone as if he were holding on for dear life. And just as quickly as the band entered the stage, they exited, leaving Johnston to strap on an acoustic guitar and have some alone time with the sold-out crowd.

“I got a broken heart, and you can’t break a broken heart”

Alone on stage, Johnston flips through a binder full of lyrics with the frantic determination of a frustrated scholar looking for just the right quote to illustrate an idea before losing it to oblivion. As he sang the words “Mean girls give pleasure. / It’s my greatest treasure,” I couldn’t help but notice his shaky and uncertain fingers on the fretboard of his guitar. I’ve never seen anyone hold a guitar like that–so feebly, but with such a tight grip, like a man holding onto the side of a lifeboat.

Of course, his reputation preceded him. Many were expecting erratic behavior. I was expecting him to play five songs and leave the stage abruptly, knowing his ability to lose track of time. I think a lot of people came because they thought they were going to see a sideshow. But the most striking thing about the show was that Johnston was completely in control, playing one song after another at an almost rapidfire speed. He bantered with the audience and was visibly enjoying himself, asking the audience “Isn’t this the state that KISS comes from?” to a reaction of applause and a little bit of knowing laughter. “Alright! Detroit Rock City!”

“Another day in the past and every hour I’m haunting. / Everybody is wearing a mask playing ‘Skip to my Lou, my darling.’”

The thing about Daniel Johnston’s songs is that you can’t really relate to them the way you do to songs by other artists. You can’t enter songs like “Walking the Cow” or “Funeral Home” or “Museum of Love”–they can’t speak for you and your own life. You can’t live your life through his music. The distinctiveness of his voice, the way it cracks and yelps, and those poorly executed guitar chords or lazy fingers on the piano–they jar you, making it impossible to forget the person who is singing these songs to you. Daniel Johnston is not playing for you. He is playing at you. But it is this inability to appropriate his songs for your own life that makes us so interested in Daniel Johnston. You can only feel real sympathy for a person if you can’t imagine being him. You can’t get in. You can only watch from the outside, concerned.

“That Rock n’ Roll!”

After a well-played cover of “You Got to Hide Your Love Away,” Johnston took at 15-minute break, returning with full band again. “Are we rockin’ tonight?” he asked, and everyone agreed with a supportive but slightly condescending cheer, as if to say “Let’s appease this poor guy and make him feel like a real star. We know this is probably going to turn out badly.”

But the funny thing is that most of the 5-6 songs that followed did rock. I’ve never seen a dorkier man sing “Rock n’ Roll saved my soul!” with more conviction and gusto, certainly more than enough to convince you that it’s true. In fact, the room rocked so loudly at one point that I felt sorry for the dudes pushed up against the 10-foot-tall loudspeakers to the sides of the stage. In all, the most startling thing about the entire night is that Daniel Johnston actually delivered. And I’m sure a few eyes got teary during the finale, “True Love Will Find You in the End.”

“If we were in a movie, maybe we wouldn’t be so bored.”

“True Love Will Find You in the End” is one of Johnston’s rarest songs because it’s not about him. It’s about you. It’s about us. It’s his wish for us, his gift. Living in the real world, I understand that life isn’t a romantic comedy. I know for certain that life continues beyond the fade-to-black on the glamorous kissing couple at the end of the movie. There are taxes, soul-sucking jobs, waiting in lines, funerals, budgets, laundry, cutting your nails, exercising (ugh!), commutes, etc, etc, etc. I have felt love grow, fade, grow again, plateau, kind of leveling off for awhile, only to spike again or to drop like an anchor into an emotional ocean. I’ve lived enough to realize that there are no truly, absolutely happy endings.

But as Johnston sang that song, I kind of believed him.

–Posted by Scotter