New Daniel Johnston Live Album:
ALIVE in NEW YORK CITY
Due Out 1/19/24
Full Performance from 2000, Recorded Live by Kramer in NYC +
Never-Before-Heard Telephone Demo’s
Pre-Order Available Now via Shimmy Disc
Recorded and live-mixed by Kramer in April of 2000, the long-lost tape was found by Kramer 20 years later, marked solely with the words “NYC April 2000”. So despite best efforts (and adding to the mystery behind the origins of this recording), we are unable to determine with 100% certainty the actual venue at which the performance took place, since Daniel played several gigs in NYC at around this same time. The LP contains one brilliant Daniel Johnston performance in its entirety, unedited, unaltered, and unforgettable, concluding with a brief excerpt from a street interview Daniel gave in New York City that was recorded during the same explosively creative period in his extraordinary life. It’s a real time-capsule for Daniel’s fans, and a real tear-jerker… “You’re never really gone”, he says.Perhaps the most exciting feature of this amazing live LP is the fact that it contains TWO SONGS that appear on no other Daniel Johnston release, making it a priceless addition to Dan’s catalog. The recording captures him at an unusually happy point in his life. We are given a rare, uncensored glimpse into one-night-in-the-very-real-life of Daniel Johnston, wherein the physical rendering of his lyrics transcends the music and works as a beacon into the tender soul of a genius.
We hear him grappling LIVE ONSTAGE with his enduring struggles of how to love himself and how to find his place in the world, as he experiences it. In his songs, Daniel shows us that it is a universal struggle shared amongst all of us. He reminds us (as perhaps no other artist ever has) that we are all just human, and that the only hope we truly ever have in finding Love, is to just keep trying.
He articulates these feelings perhaps best of all in the two previously unreleased songs; MEMORY OF LOVE, and SUPER LOVE. These two stand-out tracks are sure to become classics in Daniel’s posthumous repertoire, and they make this “LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY” LP instantly indispensable to both fans and collectors alike.
Shimmy-Disc is proud to present this new LP to the world along with 18 minutes of FREE digital-download-only bonus material comprised of some of the rarest audio treasures from the Daniel Johnston Archives – a series of ‘Telephone Demos‘ created by Daniel specifically for sending over the phone to friends, fans and radio stations worldwide. As the consummate self-promoter, Daniel loved the telephone, and he used it the same way Ernie Kovacs used the TV, gleefully experimenting to his heart’s delight. It was very often his creative medium of choice during his early formative years. These little teleplays from Daniel’s pre-”1990” days have never been heard before, so his most devoted fans will surely go wild with joy over this newly discovered and precious cargo from the young mind of this universally beloved, one-of-a-kind artist.
In addition to the beautiful 12″ x 36″ LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY poster included in each LP, the Limited-Edition pressing of 555 hand-numbered LP’s on black vinyl will also contain a very special gift for fans – a high quality FULL-COLOR FINE ART PRINT of one of Daniel’s drawings, hand-picked by Kramer especially for this very limited-edition.
NOTE: Only the 1st pressing of 555 will contain this unique art print, and it’s available ONLY via Mail-Order online. There’s also a Limited-Edition of 999 LP’s on ‘Ghost White’ vinyl for fans to choose from, along with an additional pressing on “Invisibly Clear” vinyl for stores and retail. Cassette collectors will also be happy to know that they will be able to purchase the music from this LP on their favorite format, including the “Telephone Demos” (a full 56 minute analog tape, designed to recreate the look and the spirit of Daniel’s original home-made cassette releases from the 1980’s).
This wondrous LP drops a few days before what would have been Daniel Johnston’s 63rd birthday; on Hi How Are You Day, 2024. We can’t imagine a better way to celebrate this very special day. Some people weren’t fortunate enough to have seen Daniel perform live. Now they can hear it and experience it, on vinyl, in all its awe-inspiring beauty. We love you, Daniel.
Daniel Johnston
ALIVE IN NEW YORK CITY
TRACKLISTING:01. Frito Lay, Sweetheart
02. Frustrated Artist
03. The Spook
04. Love Will See You Through
05. Silly Love
06. Live And Let Die * (McCartney)
07. You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away * (Lennon-McCartney)
08. Casper The Friendly Ghost
09. Memory Of Love
10. Bloody Rainbow
11. Super Love
12. Kool-Aid Medley / Funeral Home
13. Folly
14. Interview (excerpt)+ The Telephone Demos
(Digital Download & Cassette Only)
Credits
“The Spook” from Daniel Johnston “Alive in New York City” (Shimmy-2020)
Release Date: January 19, 2024
Live Mix by Kramer 2000
Video by Kramer 2023
Archival video footage of Dan in NYC shot by John Tripp
Special Thanks to Don Goede, John Tripp and The Daniel Johnston Estate
An American singer, songwriter, musician, and artist, Daniel Johnston has spent the last 20 or so years exposing his heartrending tales of unrequited love, cosmic mishaps, and existential torment to an ever-growing international cult audience. Initiates, including a healthy number of discerning musicians and critics, have hailed him as an American original in the style of bluesman Robert Johnson and country legend Hank Williams. A number of artists — among them the Dead Milkmen, Yo La Tengo, the Velvet Underground’s songs. And he as collaborated with the likes of Jad Fair (a founding member of Half Japanese, who’ve also done Daniel’s songs), the Butthole Surfers, Bongwater/Shimmy-Disc guru Kramer, and members of Sonic Youth. Daniel gained his widest public exposure to date when, at the 1992 MTV Music Awards, Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain (who constantly touted Daniel in interviews) wore a Johnston T-shirt.
Surprisingly, the bulk of his considerable acclaim snowballed from a series of homemade, lo-fi cassettes which Daniel started recording and handing out to fans and friends alike in the early 80s. Eventually, the independent label Homestead re-issued some of these tapes on CD, and Johnston recorded a few new albums in almost-proper studios.
Daniel was born in 1961 in Sacramento, California, the youngest of five children in a Christian fundamentalist household. He and his family soon moved to New Cumberland, West Virginia, where his father, an engineer and World War II fighter pilot, landed a job with Quaker State. Drawing for a long time before he took up music, Daniel grew to appreciate such artists John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Bob Dylan, David Bromberg, Queen, Neil Young, the Sex Pistols, and especially The Beatles. “When I was 19, I wanted to be The Beatles. I was disappointed when I found out I couldn’t sing.” That Liverpudlian quartet continues to inspire Daniel today, who sings, “My heart looked to art and I found The Beatles / Oh God I was and am a true disciple on Rock ‘n’ roll/EGA.”
While it would be years before Daniel committed his first songs to tape, he began composing at an early age. “When I was a kid, probably nine, I used to bang around on the piano, making up horror movie themes. When I got a bit older, I’d be mowing my lawn and I’d make up songs and sing them. No one could hear me ’cause of the lawn mower.” As a teenager, Daniel and his friends began to record their own tapes and trade them among themselves. After high school, he attended an art program at a branch of Kent State near his family’s home. This was a prolific period of his life. Unemployed, and attending classes sporadically, he began to spend most of his time in his family’s cellar, writing and recording. The tapes he made there included “Songs of Pain” and “More Songs of Pain,” which both centered around his unrequited love for a woman named Laurie who ended up marrying an undertaker.
The aspiring cartoonist — whose playful, symbol-heavy sketches have graced the covers of may of his releases, including “Fun” — moved to Texas in 1983. First he went to Houston, living with his brother and working at Astro World, while also recording the seminal tapes “Yip/Jump Music” and “Hi, How Are You?” on a $59.00 Sanyo mono boom box. These recordings featured such classics as “Speeding Motorcycle,” “Sorry Entertainer,” and odes to everyone from”Casper the Friendly Ghost” and “King Kong” to “The Beatles.” From there he moved to San Marcos, TX, and even joined a traveling carnival show for a spell, selling corndogs. “It was like a movie all the time. Everybody around me was a great story that never stopped, and for the first time, I realized how much freedom you have to do what you want.”
Throughout his career, Daniel’s songs and drawings have been informed to some degree by his ongoing struggle with manic depression — lending an added poignancy to his soul-searching times. His five-month stint with the carney left him in Austin, where he decided to stay. In the midst of that city’s mid-eighties music scene, Johnston was a definite iconoclast. While he continued to hand out his tapes for free, Austin record stores started selling them; in fact, the became best-selling local releases. Soon, a camera crew from MTV’s seminal “Cutting Edge” show came to town and all the Austin bands suggested they feature Daniel.
