Review of The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2006) by Kevin R — 05 Aug 2009

A couple of years ago, a work colleague introduced me to the music of Daniel Johnston by posting 'The Story of an Artist' as song of the week on our intranet. I was immediately hooked, but only to that track - most of Daniel Johnston's other tracks wern't so immediately accessible to me.

Then a couple of weeks ago, I started listening to some of Daniel Johnston's music on Spotify and found a couple more tracks that just drew me in ('Some things last a long time' and 'Funeral Home') and this lead to scouring the web for more .

.. finding 'Like a monkey in a zoo' to be my absolute favourite song discovery of the year (? well probably, the year ain't finished!). Anyway, I then bought 'The Devil and Daniel Johnston' off Amazon (as a lot of YouTube clips I'd seen were taken from it) .

.. and I watched it for the first time tonight. I came very close to tears, not really of sadness (although some of the story reminds me of my own experiences of unrequited love) however, I see such beauty in his art that it makes me want to cry with joy that the world hasn't labotimized it out of him to make him 'normal'.