taking sides: brian jonestown massacre vs. dandy warhols

So up to around 13 Tales In Urban Bohemia, BJM had been by far the more impressive band. The fact that after screwing around so much that DW's actually got that album out finally is almost equally impressive. Heck, 6 lps and 1 ep between 95 and 98 with only one being questionably subpar isnt too bad.

And if you think I rambled a long time just be glad Kate aint about at the moment.

If you like.

When I listen to BJM, I'm totally convinced that they're the greatest ever. Nothing can top them, it's absolutely lovely... hooray for Methodrone and Satanic Majesties (Their Best, IMO). There's never any doubt in my mind that the BJM are better.

Then I listen to Dandys Rule OK, and I'm like "What the hell was I thinking? The Dandys are sooo much better!". It's totally a mood thing, all the way. Dandy Warhols are summer days, windows down, doin 80 on the highway bobbin your head. The BJM is totally different. Not so much dicking around with pop, and much more serious.

I love the Dandys, I love the BJM. It's impossible for me to choose. They're both so spectacular.

This is a stupid argument. Love it all.

Anybody who thinks Anton is "living a rock and roll lifestyle" should know the truth. He's just a junkie, and junkies aren't cool. They're leeches who drain their souls out through holes in their arms and try to suck other people's souls in to fill the holes. Anton has a hell of a lot of talent but his main problem is that he thinks he's a rock star when he isn't. The whole silly idea of "rock star" is dead. Anton will be too if he doesn't get the hell off heroin. Even if he doesn't kill himself, he's well on the way to killing off any music career he might have.

Anton likes to think of himself as a 60s-era Brian Jones or Mick Jagger, but who he resembles most really would probably be Arthur Lee; a guy whose ambition exceeded his actual talent and whose self- destructive streak ultimately betrayed him in the end. The difference is that Arthur Lee and Love put out one indisputably good album, "Forever Changes." Anton and BJM haven't even come close.

I used to like BJM, that's why I'm such a hardasz on Anton.

As to Dandy Warhols, what kills them for me is the overall coating of IRONY and that whole "I'm sneering ironically at all of you and my music as well" attitude. I don't ask that all my music be "sincere," Goddess forbid, but I do ask that you at least ACT like you GIVE A DAMN. And they desperately need a real bass player. But give the Dandies credit, they can write songs when they have a mind to.

You see, while the Dandy Warhols are a pale, dull imitation of their
influences, BJM meet and even surpass those influences.
I mean, the Dandies have a few okay songs, but they're guilty
pleasure, catchy despite their stupid obviousness. Especially "Not
If You Were The Last Junkie." There's nothing wrong with being
simple, but simpleness, dumbness and smarminess and is NOT a good
mix.

BJM, OTOH, write songs that are in the same caliber as
Jagger/Richards, or better. Unfortunately, their last two proper
albums were not so great - the vocals were a bit grating and the
overall song quality was not as high. But _Take It From The Man_
and _Their Satanic Majesties 2nd Request_ are indispensable
classics, while _Thank God For Mental Illness_ and _Give It Back_
are nearly as stunning.

_Methodrone_ is an anamoly in their output. It's a distorted
messy shoegazing affair. Interesting, but not very listenable.

So BJM are the better band hands down. Though I can understand
preferring the Warhols if your taste for psychedelic only goes no
farther than psych-pop. BJM are the rawer and grittier band, by far.

Will this movie ever make it to the UK, do you think? I read somewhere that the BJM were going to be playing in the UK. I'm kinda scared to go. But I'm too curious not to go.

On the subject of this thread, I haven't commented (I don't think, can't remember all my psuedonyms sometimes) and I'm not going to.

Ned, go look at my psychedelic doodles. Sorry I couldn't actually scan the "floating heads of Sonic and Jason in a soup of psychedelic tentacles" drawings. Some day, honest.

(Though maybe I could upload the "BJM vs. the Dandy Warhols" comic strip that I worked on, once upon a time...)

Hm, that's a pity, last year they were great the times I saw them -- wonder if the lineup changed again (ho ho).

don't you have anything better to do with your time?you can sit around and talk shit about me or my art till the day you die.does anyone talk about you,and what you have done?thought so.
cheers,
anton alfred newcombe

p.s.total fucking tit.

I seem to have found a way to deny it.

BJM-wise, I actually owned a copy of Strung Out in Heaven which was sent to me as a promo way back in the day. Listened to it once or twice and it never moved me, so I sold it. After watching "DIG!", though -- and enduring all that talk about Anton's visionary muse -- I picked up a copy (used) of Tepid Peppermint Wonderland, the retrospective, just to see if I was really missing anything.

Y'know what? I'm not. I so do *not* understand why so many people lose their shit for these guys. I mean, it's not *bad* music -- some of it's quite good, but it sure as fuck ain't "genius: (if Anton Newcombe is a genius, then Tod [A]shley of Firewater is a fucking deity). I mean, I applaud their adventurous streak, but I've heard many bands do it better. The slow motion car crash that is their live show is entertaining, but don't talk to me about the BJM being the epicenter of any revolution, `cos it just sounds like retro-drone-rock to me. Which is fine, but y'know, whatever.

Anton's vocals ain't much to write home about either, to say nothing of his deplorably affected ersatz Brit accent (at its worst on "All Around You").

First off, great film, really well made, really well done. It did encapsulate and skip over a lot of material, but I did think that it presented everything quite fairly, in terms of *no-one* came off as the hero. (Except maybe Joel - but that was always kind of his job. Whenever Anton was at his most harrowing and intense, Joel would provide a bit of comic relief.)

It was weird watching it, considering how much I used to really idolise those bands. And now the glitter has rubbed off, I've got some kind of perspective on it, and the overwhelming sense was one of nostalgia, almost of homesickness - like, there was this little slice of my life from 1996 to 2001. I miss a lot of the people involved
even though I knew them mostly only through email and strange alcohol fuelled road trips.

Heard lots of music I hadn't listened to in ages. I must confess that I get out the Dandys records more than the BJM lately (probably only Monkey House any more, though, really) - and I was surprised that the BJM seemed to stand up more than the Dandys. But then again, I always thought the Dandys were bubblegum, they were supposed to be disposable.

I don't know. I bought the new Dandys album as well, this weekend. First one that I've ever heard that didn't really grab me. It got better on a few repeated listens, but the overwhelming impression was that it was just kind of dull. Not popppy enough or psychedelic enough, just hippie noodling. I never thought I'd say that.

Overall, despite everything, I still just kind of want to give Anton a hug, and maybe a hot bath and some dinner. But then again he's always had that effect on me. Must be the sideburns. Read an email from him a few months ago, still angry, still fierce and intelligent but unfocused, about how one-sided the film was, like his life ended at its lowest point, when he's pulled himself back up and got himself back together. I hope he has.

13 Tales and Monkey House are both killer in places as well, but neither matches the overall majesty of ...The Dandy Warhiols Come Down.

Well he ain't feelin' good today, I have to say -- he posted these on Myspace early this morning:

---

Subject: ALERT!!
Body: sorry to say the stupid-fucking-assholes that work with me had all of our equiptment

stolen.

hey,it's not like i can call my mom and get more.

cheers'

anton alfred newcombe

p.s.i hope you burn my gear...because you will be dead if anyone ever sees you playing any of it...no really,it's all one of a kind.

dead.

---

Subject: let me explain.
Body: baltimore?

nope.
no van.
no trailer.
no gear.
no show.
no way home for the guys.

no bullshit.

Anyone else witness this spectacle last night?

http://www.laweekly.com/music/music/highway-65-revisited/7107/

---

Highway 65 Revisited

By Chuck Eddy
Wednesday, February 4, 1998 - 12:00 am
So I get this 12-inch record in the mail; front cover proclaims "Not if You Were the Last Dandy on Earth!" The vinyl itself has no artist names or song titles or words at all on its white label. The A-side does appear to be an actual song, but the B is this seemingly endless psychedelic mastermix collage - droning guitars, "Highway 61 Revisited," a talked thing apparently called "Lou Reed," "Manic Depression," Donovan's Eastern-undulating "Hurdy Gurdy Man," repetitive Arabic chanting giving the rave-up a Velvet Underground feel. In the forefront, a smug voice monotones half-awake about guys from his scruffy rock band happening upon a more spiffy band playing at a party full of beautiful Mod kids who never heard of the Small Faces. At the time, he says, his own band was better known. But these new guys hypnotized him, so he helped make them famous. Then they snubbed him.

His target, I later figured out, is Portland's Dandy Warhols, who last summer had an alt-rock novelty hit called "Not if You Were the Last Junkie on Earth," about how heroin's not trendy anymore. The song aimed for sarcasm and achieved only radio-ready preciousness, but its rhythm twisted with infectious energy, and its kitschy drug- scare video had syringes dancing a Busby Berkeley floor show. The Warhols look like decadent Lower East Side beatniks from the Velvets era, one with his hair sliced into an Andy Warhol shag. The ballsiest moments on their major-label debut, Come Down (following one indie album), have punchdrunky garage riffs and '60s organs underneath, managing to sound simultaneously grounded and stoned while deep Arthur Lee-like vocals quaver about how girls and boys better beware of each other and how if the singer makes it to "Minnesoter" he plans to rock some girl like a doctor and jack off when her shirt's off. The inner sleeve shows the band's female bassist with her shirt off, and I can empathize.

There's also a Breeders parody about how Kim Deal is more cool than smart, and "Every Day Is a Holiday" could be an electro-wah-wah version of "Legs" by ZZ Top. But half of Come Down is mired in eternal spirals of swirl and clank. Kraut-fuzz tapestries wobble back and forth while shoegazing mumblers loop "I love you" mantras into boringly pleasant head-music sculptures and feedback hums on and on, like My Bloody Valentine trying to dance. Capitol Records rejected an earlier draft of the CD for not having any real songs on it.

Here's what the A-side of the mysterious 12-inch single in my mailbox said about the Warhols: "You look so groovy/And the chicks all scream/It's like a '60s movie/you know the one I mean." Progressing from ba-ba-ba bubblegum into more-manic-than-depressive Joy Division, "Not if You Were the Last Dandy on Earth" eventually turned up on the current Give It Back! CD by San Francisco's almost-as-dorkily-named Brian Jonestown Massacre, which disc otherwise consists of in-one-ear-out-the-other '60s cruisin'-revivalism, coming alive only when the Massacre let on that they live in the '90s. The Dandys diss is rivaled by BJM's 1996 statutory Stones stomp "13" as their most rocking track ever. And in "This Is Why You Love Me," a "Here Comes the Sun" melody turns "Hey, come out and play" Offspring fightin' words into a seductive plea to a gal pal.

Absurdly prolific, the guys have put out six albums since 1995, with a seventh supposedly imminent; they even tend to tack epic noodling excursions onto the end to stretch CDs toward 70 minutes. A Brief History of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, a promo-only cassette their new label, TVT, sent to critics this fall in a white cigarette box, is an edifying overview, but their only consistent album is Thank God for Mental Illness (1996), also their most committed to slavering R&B and minor-key Appalachian melancholy. Their lesser sets feature isolated standout stabs at raga exotica ("In India You"), eight-mile-high soaring ("That Girl Suicide"), Hunky Dory fop-folk ("Since I Was Six") and what might've happened if Humble Pie had sounded Black Lebanese in "30 Days in the Hole" instead of just singing about it ("Monkey Puzzle"). Liner notes have been known to list didgeridoos, French horns, glockenspiels, Mellotrons and "weird fucking Chinese shit."

Which somehow doesn't prevent the Massacre's music from usually being so limited to mere nostalgic competence that, like Oasis, they obviously feel the need to drum up nonexistent controversies to divert bored fans' attention. Frontguy Anton Newcombe even claims he mailed each of the four Dandy Warhols a shotgun shell with his name on it. And that was before his group got edged out by them in my Battle of the Bands!

THE DANDY WARHOLS/Come Down/(Capitol)

THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE/Give it Back!/(Bomp)

"NOT IF YOU WHERE THE LAST DANDY ON EARTH!"/(unlabeled 12-inch single)

Joel won this round among some friends tonight who I showed Dig! to.

DiG! was pretty great. "Boys Better" is still the only Dandys song I can fuck with.. and maybe "Bohemian Like You."

The best part about Dig! (which I agree is pretty great) was when Harry Dean Stanton just showed up at one of the parties playing the bongos.

Yes that was AWESOME

If anyone has a netflix account I streamed it there last night.. just fyi.

It was just completely WTF? and amazing at the same time.

oooh - good to know