Daniel Johnston
He is quickly becoming one of my favorite singer guys. If you haven't already, you should follow the link that I have for him. This will take you to his official web page. From what I know he has never in his life used a computer so I don't know how much input he has in it.
Like most things it seems I came late to the Daniel Johnston party. The highth of his popularity was somewhere in the early 90's and they didn't really play him on the radio so I had no idea he even existed until about 6 months ago when a guy at work told me about him.
in the early 80's he made recordings of songs he wrote, in his basement with a standard tape recorder. One of those long skinny things with a huge speaker at the top and the tape part at the bottom. You all know what I'm talking about. He would prop this thing on his piano and play his heart out. About half of his early songs were about a girl that he was in love with that married an undertaker in his hometown. The other half are about the devil and leading a sin-free life. He suffers from pretty intense mental illness and seems like he teeters on the edge of reality most of the time. But I'm sure that's what makes him good. If I can swing it I will try and put up a song or two for download.
A movie entitled "The Devil and Daniel Johnston" was just released and I highly recommend it. It chronicles his life and really does a good job at showing just how mentally unbalance, but brilliant, he was.
Right around the same time I first heard about Daniel I went to the Official Fansite and as I was poking around I saw a link that asked you to put in a radio station near you and if you were the first one to list that radio station you would get a signed poster. I entered The Current, figured that someone had probably beaten me to it and never thought of it again. About a month ago I got the poster in the mail and it was indeed signed by Daniel Johnston. How cool is that.
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