the of mirror eye

* sparklehorse w/the flaming lips: go
* vic chesnutt: like a monkey in the zoo
* daniel johnston: go | like a monkey in the zoo
from the late great daniel johnston: discovered and covered

daniel johnston is an amazingly gifted singer-songwriter. his songs are so personal, so full of pain and lonliness, that you immediately feel for him…if you can get past his voice, the production on his songs and the story of his life. daniel johnston is truly diy. he does whatever he can to get his songs onto tape. and if this means pounding on a chord organ and recording onto a dictaphone, or not using instruments and just singing a capella with that wavery, almost falsetto voice of his, then so be it. his life story is also hard to get past. it’s a life filled with mental instabilities, obsessions and paranoia. if you can get past all of that you will be rewarded. his songs are incredible works of art.

i guess that, in a sense, daniel johntson is the godfather of lo-fi. m ward, eels, bright eyes, sparkelhorse, beck, calvin johnson… many of the artists on this tribute album wouldn’t be making music the way that do, unafraid of exposing their frailties for all to see, if it hadn’t been for daniel’s painfully bought lessons and hawked tapes during the early and mid eighties. above all, daniel proved that it wasn’t the quality of the recording that mattered, or whether there were mistakes or bum notes or out-of-tune instruments. what mattered above anything were the quality of the songs, and the honesty of the recordings. that quality would always shine through

(from the liner notes to discovered and covered)

the problem i have with a lot of tribute albums is that unless your’re incredibly familiar with the artist, there’s a good chance that you haven’t heard the original versions of the songs that are being covered. this one solves that problem by having the first disk be the tribute album and the second disk the original songs. and let me tell you, the tribute album really is a tribute. while i am surprised that they don’t have k. mccarty (the artists that first introduced me to the brilliant songs of daniel johnston) on here, the other artists almost make up for it. i almost had an eargasm when i heard the sparklehorse/flaming lips collaboration. i mean, on their own they’re can do some damage, but together they’re an invincible robot. vic chesnutt lends a great country/folk vibe to like a monkey in the zoo. but don’t just listen to the tribute songs. listen to the originals, ’cause there’s nothing else like them.

—–+—–

so, the other day i was taking an early morning (7am) rest on my couch when i kept hearing all these fluttering sounds. at first i thought it was my roommate until i looked into the kitchen and didn’t see him. but i kept hearing these sounds and they kept waking me up. then i saw something flying around out of the corner of my eye and realized that there was a bird trapped in my apartment and was trying to get out! how weird is that? how did it get into my apartment in the first place? at any rate. it kept bumping into the windows trying to get out and i finally was able to get it out of the open door…but that was really weird.