Daniel Johnston's private show & the Man Man vegan dinner

May 24, 2007

There was no way I was going to pass up a big vegan dinner cooked by Isa Chisandra that included an open bar and a Man Man show (true – I’m not the biggest man man fan, but still). That was until I found out I could instead catch a short set by Daniel Johnston – and still have time to see Man Man on top of it. The Daniel Johnston show was in this loft-office-production-company space in SOHO that fit about 125 people. Luckily there was free food there too, but sadly it mainly consisted of cocktail weiners and macaroni & cheese – aka nothing I could eat. On the way there I passed Fred Schneider of the B-52’s going into the Antony-Nico Muhly-Final Fantasy $600 Kitchen performance that Lou Reed was also at to honor his wife/girlfriend Laurie Anderson. Kitchen co-sponsor and Daniel Johnston fan David Bowie was at neither performance.

Daniel played for about 30 minutes – an acoustic set with Brett Hartenbach (who also played with him acoustic at Warsaw). The whole thing was being taped – part of some new series for something (not totally sure what). I was also supposed to interview Daniel after the show – hopefully to clear up the air, but that ended up not working out. Maybe there’s nothing to clear up (Interview still might happen though). Happy, and moved, yet conflicted and disappointed, I left and walked over to Man Man. It was just a few blocks away in Chinatown.

It was around 9:15, and Man Man was going on at 9:30….WRONG – a big sign on the door said that Man Man doors weren’t opening until 10:00. After killing some time in the area while simultaneously getting tireder and tireder, I came back a little after 10:00 to find that doors were still not open, and there was a huge line going in two different directions. I gave up and went home.