Dig

The year was 1998 and I was digging my way through stacks of used and cut-out CDs at a record store when I came across an album with an interesting cover by a band I’d never heard of. It was Strung Out in Heaven by The Brian Jonestown Massacre. I bought it and, man, was I hooked. Big time. So much so that I started buying everything by them and going to their live shows whenever I could.

Led by Anton Newcombe, The Brian Jonestown Massacre burst onto the West Coast music scene with an enthralling mix of late-1960s psychedelia, shoegaze and rock influences that was as fresh as it was retro. Taking his band’s name from The Rolling Stones guitarist who was considered the most creative force of the Stones in its early days, Anton’s incredible musical output made him a kind of pied piper of inventive, vibe-expanding cool rock. Listening to the five often brilliant albums that he and his band recorded in just three years in the mid-1990s, many other West Coast bands were seduced, influenced and drawn to the genius of Anton’s sound.

One of those bands was The Dandy Warhols, led by frontman Courtney Taylor. The terrific 2004 documentary Dig is a record of Anton and Courtney’s friendship, their tumultuous careers as struggling musicians, and ultimately their rivalry and chaotic split from each other. The film is an incredible fly-on-the-wall perspective of two bands swimming upstream, trying to make it in a ruthless music industry at a time when the programming of music videos on MTV was dying and the world of music on the internet was about to explode.

Dig is like being on the BJM tour bus as it skids off the road and plunges down a rabbit hole of music greatness and madness.

While The Dandys are seen as hardworking and stable, by comparison BJM—as their fans call them—are a shocking and wildly dysfunctional family. The anarchy that swirls around Anton is stunning. Some of it is fueled, no doubt, by the band’s heavy drug use, but most of it is caused by Anton’s nightmarish, self-destructive behaviors. His habit of snapping while onstage and engaging in violent fights with audience members as well as with his own band members is legendary. Watching Dig is like being on the BJM tour bus as it skids off the road and plunges down a rabbit hole of music greatness and madness. While both The Dandys and BJM took issue with how they were portrayed in the film, Dig won the Grand Jury prize for documentaries at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. And its reputation as a great music doc continues to grow, so much so that a 20th anniversary of the film is on the way. Called Dig 20, it includes 35 minutes of new footage. I give the original Dig four out of four stars.

Psychedelia, shoegaze, with a Brian Jones-era rock vibe! Sounds like heaven to me!