Dig! (2004)

If you are a fan of The Brian Jonestown Masacre and the Dandy Warholes or either, there is no doubt you will like this. Possibly my favorite music documentary, Dig! explores the gritty rivalry between Anton Newcomb and Courtney Taylor-Taylor as there success polarizes and tensions draw between them. Raw and insightful, Dig! gives a deep look inside the not so glamorous view of the music business and the backstabbing and the internal band fights involved. Good for fans but non fans may find little point in viewing, but who cares. Fans will have a blast with this little masterpiece of a film.

At first I thought someone had pulled a "I'm Still Here"/"This Is Spinal Tap" on me, laughing at the amazingly over-the-top pretense of the Brian Jonestown Massacre's front flame-out Anton Newcombe (not to mention the antics of the rest of the band), and the dead-pan enthusiastically reverent BJ that all of their hipster critics gave the BJM throughout the film (yeah, that means you too, Courtney-Courtney)... Then it got sad with poor Anton's family BIOGRAPHY, and then got a little better with the revelation that Anton is STILL (as of '04) kicking ass-- despite his history of treating his band mates like fertilizer; and yet the ever wonderful Portland, Oregon's Indie darlings The Dandy Warhols just keep chugging along, charming the world. Overall review? Meh. Brian Jonestown Massacre are/were a retro piece of merde, wanna-be psyche band (newsflash-- THE GAL-DERN SIXTIES ARE O-VER)... meanwhile, I still kinda dig the Dandys (hey, I'm from Portland-- and have gotta support the home team even tho' they do not decimate PDX venues).

Shot into car from through the windscreen, someone is playing someone else their latest song, someone else didn't react, according to the voice-over. I just wonder how that came to be made. There were too many scenes in this movie that I wondered about how come a camera was there. If the scenes shot where the Warhols descended on a BJM post-party are true then that was inexcusable exploitation to the max, if not, then it was a total fabrication, either way it made me uncomfortable, if that was the purpose? All the way thru this movie I kept wondering how the footage came about. Taken at face value, a nice portrait of the (tortured) genius we all believe ourselves to be.

Excellent documentary, ostensibly about the friendship and subsequent rivalry between two West Coast retro rock'n'roll bands: The Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. What it actually turns out to be is a portrait of a borderline psychopath - Anton Newcomb - and his tortured relationship with the rest of the world. Interestingly, for a music documentary, there is hardly any music. What there is - snatches of songs, more often than not aborted by the performers - is incidental rather than central. Although the protagonists are musicians, the story is not about music but rather about a particularly American version of a British myth of a cartoon lifestyle, ie, one where nobody has to take responsibility for behaving like spoiled adolescents on a full-time basis. Tantrums, drugs, violence, grossly dysfunctional attitudes, egomania on a truly epic scale - all of this is excused or positively encouraged because it conforms to some collectively held idea about what rock'n'roll is about. As a film this is a first-class documentary but it raises more questions than it answers. For example, why is Anton's music so conservative? For someone so wild and outrageous (and he IS wild and outrageous) his music never seems to have progressed beyond the most obvious derivations of his 60s idols (The Stones, Velvets etc.) For someone who claims to be able to play 80 instruments he has never bothered to learn to play any one of them beyond the most rudimentary level. Similarly, the Dandy Warhols burning ambition is based on a vision of rock'n'roll which is astonishingly fossilised in 1969. Nothing wrong with pastiches, of course, but surely there's more to musical life than perpetually acting out a cartoon from the late 60s. Why don't they take some risks with their music - in the way that their role models did? Because, one suspects, this is not about music. Music is just an accessory, a prop, or an excuse, to lead completely dysfunctional and irresponsible lives. But why? In the Dandy Warhols case, the answer is obvious: to make lots of money and be famous. Big deal. Anton Newcomb's case is more interesting. He is obviously very talented, but every time he is given an opportunity to reach a wider audience he sabotages it, usually in the most dramatic way possible. He is terrified of success, and at the same time, deeply resents anyone else who has it - especially his former friends the Dandy Warhols. Fascinating movie. Highly recommended.