Having only found out about this on the day, I was surprised to see that it wasn't sold out and even managed to buy front row seats in the circle. First of all, the Troxy is an amazing art deco theatre with a huge balcony that has little booths with tables. Wish I'd got one of those. The first band on were a massively inappropriate group from Belgium who peddled dull, 'impassioned' singer-songwriter fare. It went down like a lead balloon. Then on came Jeffrey Lewis who played with the accompaniment of Fran from The Wave Pictures on what was possibly a ukelele. Jeffrey Lewis, in my experience, is never less than brilliant. He has a laconic, New York drawl I could listen to all day and his lyrics really must be heard. He did a song about Sitting Bull with home-made visuals and finished with a gangster rap about mosquitos. Superb, I implore you to go see him if you've not done so before. Daniel Johnston then took the stage alone and played three or four songs in his typical style then left the stage to be replaced by an 11-piece big band who played some weird cartoon jazz stuff without the main man for a bit. When he did re-take the stage they backed him in a variety of styles. With mixed results. Some of it sounded a bit of a mess, some songs, in particular the more croony ones, were just plain odd (if you've heard Johnston's voice, you'll know he's no crooner). The slower ones, where the band sounded more like a small orchestra, were most successful. His songs are good enough to stand up to such accompaniment and they did. It's hard to explain the appeal of Johnston to those who aren't familiar with his back story and sometimes I wonder if it's actually all about the back story. When he performs he visibly shakes throughout and twice asked what city he was in. There's definitely an element of the freakshow going on for sure. He can't play too well and his voice, of course, is as rudimentary a voice as you'll hear. But you don't go to see Johnston for technical artistry. His songs appear to me as 100% lacking in cynicism. There's not a drop of it there. And you don't hear that too often.
Note: This gig was mildly spoilt by a man who took exception to Johnston's band. He showed his displeasure by shouting "you can do better", "lose the band" and "we want more" so loud Johnston actually heard him. Most people around him took exception to him and told him so, which meant he changed his shouts to "CASPER...CASPER...CASPER" after every song. Twat.
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