OCTOBER 18, 2024 — A special collector's edition reissue of 1991's Artistic Vice by the late singer, songwriter, musician, and artist Daniel Johnston arrives today via Eternal Yip Eye Records / Thirty Tigers (available for purchase now HERE). With remastering by Johnston's friend and producer Kramer, the 33-year 2-LP collector's edition of Artistic Vice includes heartfelt words from his EYE Band bandmates, a specially designed lyric booklet with rare photos, colored peach and light blue vinyl, and an entire second record with Artistic Vice outtakes, rehearsals, and previously unreleased songs that were meant for the original album in 1991—including single "All Good Children Got To Die," which was highlighted last week by SPIN, Pitchfork, The New York Times, Stereogum, BrooklynVegan, Consequence, NME, and more.
Artistic Vice was the first album on which Johnston fronted a band, and it's a testament to his innate musicality that the songs so perfectly lend themselves to the casual accompaniment heard throughout the set. They remain direct, honest, hook-laden, and imminently coverable, as they shift easily from quiet country balladry to punkish rave-ups.
Widely considered one of the most significant figures of the lo-fi and alternative music scenes to ever live, Johnston's work still resonates in the highest reaches of pop culture with his music and artwork recently featured in two of the biggest Hollywood films of 2024: Joker: Folie à Deux and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
Daniel Johnston & EYE Band
Photo by Bill Johnston (retouched by Daniel)
About Daniel Johnston:
Daniel Johnston spent the last 30 or so years of his life 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. 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. 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.
Daniel was born in 1961 in Sacramento, California, the youngest of five children in a loving Christian home. He and his family soon moved to West Virginia, where his father, an engineer and World War II "Flying Tiger" fighter pilot, landed a job with Quaker State. Drawing for a long time before he took up music, Daniel grew to appreciate such artists as 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."
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 were 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.
Daniel Dale Johnston died in his home outside of Houston, Texas on September 11, 2019 from natural causes. He was 58 years old.
The torch has been passed to his brother, Dick Johnston, who - along with a growing team of workers and volunteers - continue to evangelize Daniel's message of hope and love through his songs and art.
