Songs of Pain: Early Recordings Volume 1 [Original recording remastered]

Daniel Johnston | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 20, 2003)
• Original Release Date: 1980
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Dualtone Music Group
• ASIN: B00008W2PF
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #59,575 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Grievances

2. A Little Story

3. Joy Without Pleasure

4. Never Relaxed

5. Brainwash

6. Pothead

7. Wicked World

8. Lazy

9. I Save Cigarette Butts

10. Like a Monkey in a Zoo

See all 20 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Phantom of My Own Opera

2. Man at War

3. Only Missing You

4. More Dead Than Alive

5. I Will

6. Poptunes

7. You Put My Love Out the Door

8. You're Gonna Make It, Joe

9. Never Get to Heaven

10. Follow That Dream

See all 17 tracks on this disc

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unbelievably great, October 10, 2005

By 

Mike Smith (Albuquerque, NM) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Songs of Pain: Early Recordings Volume 1 (Audio CD)

Daniel Johnston is one of the world's undiscovered treasures. If things were perfect, his songs would be as widely covered, his life would be as intensely studied, and his work would be as revered and celebrated as the songs and albums of Bob Dylan.
Seriously.
Bob Dylan's voice isn't exactly conventionally good, but people have slobbered over him for decades. And Daniel Johnston's voice...well..you could say it's not conventionally "good" either, in the same way that Dylan's isn't, but like Dylan's, it gets better with every listen, and like Dylan's, it contains more real emotion, more real humanity, and earns more feelings of sympathy and love than any of the lame, slick, polished Michael Bolton-type voices that can hit every note exactly as their voice instructors taught them to.
At times, I've sworn off all music but Daniel Johnston. Nothing has seemed good enough in comparison. His piano is inventive and rockin'. It's a heckuvalotta fun. His use of television as an instrument, his sampling of TV evangelists ("This is an ELECTRIFYING(!) time...for believers!") and of his mother yelling at him, his occasional spooky organ, his blithely unconventional rhyme schemes, his wide (yet obsessively focused) range of topics, his whining and cracked little voice, and above all his lyrics, his lyrics, his lyrics, make him, and these two CDs in particular, classics for all time and space, for all humanity everywhere.
Daniel Johnston is a diagnosed manic-depressive with delusions of grandeur, and his highs and his lows show in these songs. He's also spent much of his life obsessed with a girl who could have cared less about him and who later married a prosperous undertaker and (I've heard) filed a restraining order against Daniel Johnston despite all the great songs he had written about her.
In one song he tells the girl that he'd die without her love, and she says "Too bad about that."
In another, the terrifying "My Baby Cares for the Dead," he sings about the girl marrying the undertaker and about the only way she'll ever care for him (Daniel Johnston) again.
"I know someday my baby
Will care for me.
She'll bleed and dress me, Momma,
Real fancy....
And she'll lay me
In a coffin,
Put marbles in my eyes...
Eyes!
I know someday my baby
Will care for me.
I know someday my baby
Will care for me.
I know someday my baby
Will care for me.
My baby...cares...for...the...dead."
These songs are absolutely genius. They're funny, dark, sad, twisted, happy, joyous, and wonderfully human. You will feel that Daniel Johnston is your friend, as if he's opened himself completely to you, and he has. The recordings are lo-fi, but at times that lo-fi quality even accents and helps the songs: high piano notes are transformed into a different instrument entirely just by the recorder being placed right next to the keys. The barely noticeable background hiss (and the genuiness of the songs themselves) gives the music an old-time folk feel. And Daniel's mother occasionally bursting in while he's playing...well, that's just hilarious.
If you like music, you will probably like this album. This is music for people who love music, who love the way that music sometimes skips the brain completely and goes right to the heart, right to the soul. This is what music was supposed to be: unique, heartfelt, real, and exciting.
Daniel's influence on modern music--on Nirvana, The Flaming Lips, Neutral Milk Hotel, A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Tom Waits, The Butthole Surfers, Beck, and others--is immeasurable, and he could have an immeasurable influence on you as well.
If you let him.
You should let him.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unbeatable!, July 23, 2003

By 

RS Wayment "rswayment" (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Songs of Pain: Early Recordings Volume 1 (Audio CD)

Be careful! This is the real stuff. It will break your heart and make you smile. More! There's at least 10 more CDs worth of 80s Daniel Johnston out there. Buy this so they will release more. There is no way you will regret it. Low-tech in recording quality. Pure in emotional expression.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Five stars aren't enough., June 5, 2003

By 

William D. Mcgregor (Fort Worth, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Songs of Pain: Early Recordings Volume 1 (Audio CD)

I've been a huge fan of low fi and indie music for years so I've known of Daniel for a long time, and I do have his album Fun in my collection. But I'm ashamed to say I never delved into his early stuff. Always meant to, but didn't, and now availability is (stupidly, unbelievably) a bit of an issue. But I jumped at the chance to see Daniel perform in Denton, Texas a couple of weeks ago and I bought this collection at the show.

What can I possibly say about this music? It's inspired and inspiring. It has emotion, insight, and humor. It couldn't be more raw, but at the same time it's wierdly refined. Maybe most of all it's surprising: there's hardly a note or lyric that comes out of Daniel quite the way you expect. But none of what I've just written really means anything, because I'm using words to do a job that they're not all that well suited for. Something else, something that has nothing to do with language, gets a hold of music for us. If I believed in it, I'd say it was the soul. Then again, after hearing Daniel, maybe I do believe in it....

Do I sound inspired? I'm inspired. Buy this music and listen to it.