There are, of course, a thousand artists whose work I know only by reputation and written description, rather than from actual hearing. Daniel Johnston is (or, now, was) one of those. My knowledge of him, as it is, no doubt, for many, based on Kurt Cobain listing him, and the Yip Jump Music album specifically, as a personal favourite and big influence. His name is often raised in histories of the lo-fi cassette underground as well, as a father figure of the entire aesthetic.
These two albums are re-releases. While he had written hundreds of songs prior to this and recorded large numbers of those prior to 1983, Yip Jump Music was the first collection conceived and created as an actual album. It’s tape origins are evident, though remastering has removed much of the hiss. Musically, Johnston sticks to a handful of simple instruments – a toy organ, a trumpet, a ukelele – to simply accompany his barebones compositions. There are strong leanings on rock’n'roll traditions, three and four chord cyclical structures. On many tracks, such as ‘Chord Organ Blues’, ‘The Beatles’ or ‘Rocket Ship’, the sound of hands pounding the organ notes double as the rhythm track. Other, older traditions are also traced. ‘King Kong’ is particularly potent – casting the plot of Harryhausen’s original film as an acapella blues dirge. Much of the imagery could fit perfectly into a 1930s Mississippi backwater blues “They shot him down/They thought he was a monster/’Twas beauty that killed the beast “. The constant tape dropouts add to the illusion of timelessness. Sometimes, tracks can seem to be made of the same backing with different melodies and lyrics and the track listing plays up these connections. So ‘Rocket Ship’ has the same pounding hand rhythm and quarter note bass as the following ‘God’. Lyrically, Johnston explores everyday experiences (‘Speeding Motorcycle’ or ‘Almost Got Hit By A Truck’), pop culture (the melodically catchy ‘Casper The Friendly Ghost’, ‘King Kong’) or simple spirituality (‘Rarely’, Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Your Grievances’). ‘God’ and ‘Love Defined’ could almost be Bible-belt reply to John Lennon’s ‘God’ and ‘Love’ respectively from Plastic Ono Band. Indeed, Johnston’s love of all things Beatle and Lennon are spelled out clearly in the track ‘The Beatles’, even if they hadn’t already had a hit when he was born in 1961, as he tells us a few times.
Welcome To My World was originally released in 2006. It’s a greatest hits album of sorts (there’s a handful Yip Jump Music tracks present). It opens with ‘Peek A Boo’, one of Johnston’s most haunting tracks. With the original cassette source wavering violently, he declares “Junior High/I lost my mind/I don’t know why/It’s a terrible thing/Since that day/It’s been a struggle/Tryin’ to make sense out of/Scrambled eggs/Please hear my cry for help/And save me from myself” to a mournful piano backing. Lennon would have been proud and it’s easy to see where the Cobain connection comes in. Johnston’s entire ouvré is worth it even if only for this one track. The directness, indeed borderline banality of Yip Jump Music‘s lyrics become very potent as Johnston developed more metaphorical and straight confessional strategies, maintaining the previous directness. The sound across this collection is uniformly woozy. All the limitations of cassette recording technology are evident, as is the odd vinyl crackle when material has been thus sourced, and though later work has a crystalline clarity, the wavering vocal delivery and limited instrumentation keep things lo-fi even when recorded well.
There is an underlying subtext to all this music, though, which needs to be addressed. ‘Peek A Boo’ addresses Johnston’s bi-polar disorder and he has spent many years in and out of institutions as a result. Today, this is completely under medicated control, and Johnston tours the world performing. The question for the material here, though, is the same one that was always attached to the work of someone like Wesley Willis – whether the artist is being exploited or supported on the basis of their condition. There is no question that Johnston’s work is consistently naïve. Unlike Willis, though, there seems to be a sense that Johnston is always in control. His work is self-recorded, for starters, and his playing across a range of instruments, while rudimentary, is often beautiful. There is another key factor as well. While Willis was undeniably entertaining, his output was really a creative cul-de-sac. There is no sense of that for Johnston. It is easy to see how other musicians might be inspired to take his ideas to other places. Whether that be the pure melodicism of something like ‘Caspar The Friendly Ghost’, the lyrical sublimation of something like ‘Story Of An Artist’, or simply the D.I.Y. recording and production aesthetics.
It’s never really easy listening, but below the tarnished, flippant and, at times, plain adolescent surface of much of this music lie gems of inspiration, and music worthy of its own place.
Adrian Elmer
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