Archive for Anton Newcomb

Two Data Points On The Brian Jonestown Massacre

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on November 21, 2010 by johnbuckley100

I don’t know about you, but when the BJM’s “Straight Up And Down” plays as the theme song for Boardwalk Empire, my pulse quickens.  It seems simultaneously to reaffirm Martin Scorsese’s hipster credentials and the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s greatness.  Not that either were ever in doubt.

But then last night, I watched Dig! for the first time in a while, and it was a reminder of just how tenuous Anton Newcomb’s hold on — what? everything: his music, his life, his sanity, his work — was for so many years there.  As he spirals down, as the band flounders, you could forget, for maybe a moment, just how extraordinary is the BJM’s contribution to the rock’n’roll canon.

(The most telling two lines in the movie come when a) Courtney Taylor-Taylor, having been brutal to Anton for much of the movie, states that just when he thinks he/the Dandy’s have caught up, he hears something new by the BJM and it takes his breath away, b) Anton, in one of his typical ego riffs states, quite accurately as it were, that when they started out, Pearl Jam was the biggest band in music, but how many PJ imitators are there now, versus how many BJM imitators?  Brilliant insight.)

The whole film is a reminder of what was, and we can compare it to the live output of the past two, three years.  We don’t much care for the Icelandic recording sessions that have found their way to the public, but having seen BJM three times since the Summer of 2008, it’s clear that Anton has found some measure of stability, and surely the band today is a glorious machine, as Anton hangs on and just plays one great song after another.

And so we gear up to watch another episode of Boardwalk Empire, knowing that “Straight Up And Down” is as oddly well matched to be the intro theme as “Gimme Shelter” was to be the soundtrack to Casino’s denouement.  Knowing just how great it is, and how close things came to Anton’s never having survived to hear his music reach this level of popular culture acceptance and veneration, is one of today’s many reasons for gratitude.

Leave a comment »

Brian Jonestown Massacre At the 9:30 Club Was The Eye, Not The Hurricane

Posted in Music with tags , , on June 10, 2010 by johnbuckley100

Lord knows The Brian Jonestown Massacre have had their share of tumultuous shows, but last night at Washington’s 9:30 Club, they were an island of calm amidst a sea of chaos.

Consider: coming home from a dinner out before heading to the show, a deranged driver of a pickup truck shot across four lanes of avenue traffic and headed directly for our car proceeding up one of Upper Northwest D.C.’s narrowest streets.  We pulled over as the truck shot by going upwards of 50, and it just barely missed us moments before it drove over a curb and through a hedge, its brake lights never glimpsed.  Or this: an hour before we arrived at 9:30, three young men were shot right in front of the club, which was then surrounded by police and crime-scene tape.  Think of it: the Brian Jonestown Massacre played a locale surrounded by police and crime-scene tape, and it had absolutely nothing to do with them.

They played a calm, ultimately moving, pretty glorious set, turning the set lists from the 2008 and 2009 tours inside out.  Instead of opening with “Whoever You Are,” the band followed Anton into “Super-Sonic.”  “Wasted” was the third song of the night, and with its chugging refrain of “I want to know,” the band kicked hard, but were as impassive as jurors settling in for a long trial.  Sure, Joel Gion got worked up when Matt Hollywood sang “Got My Eye On You,” and the drumming, as always, was an artful pneumatic drill, but when you think about the way the BJM live meld three and four strumming guitars against Anton’s methodical leads, it’s a speedball combo of the constant and the virtuoso.  Thick layers of six- and twelve-string guitars, powerhouse drumming, an emollient organ, and Anton plinking his notes, one at a time, putting in Sterling Morrison fills, and singing, shyly.

Calm as they were, as professional as they are, the impression should not be conveyed that they failed to produce a big ruckus. “Not If You Were The Last Dandy On Earth” had the whole, nearly sold out crowd singing, and it was just a practice run for a raucous “Who?”  I’d never heard them play “Going To Hell,” and it was an up-tempo delight.  Something was slightly off in the mix, or the tuning, for “That Girl Suicide,” but this is a mild kvetch.  With the exception of “Hide and Seek, ” “Straight Up And Down,” and “Nailing Honey To The Bee,” they played all the songs you’d want them to (and they may even have played those, but after almost a two-hour set, we braved the D.C. streets.) “Servo,” and  “Vacuum Boots” and “Anemone” were all quite fine.

Anton seemed stronger than he has the last few tours: still hidden behind a burka of forelocks, saying virtually nothing, standing as he always does playing to the stage, not to the crowd.  But his voice was strong, and he’s still with us.  As are those three guys shot out on the street just before the show, and since we haven’t heard otherwise, the driver of that pickup truck terrorizing the leafy interior suburbs of the Nation’s Capital.  Whowouldathunk that The Brian Jonestown Massacre would be the steady counterpoint to the chaos of the streets, or even that in 2010, they’d still be around and kicking hard against beautiful songwriting strummed in perfect unison.

Leave a comment »

The Brian Jonestown Massacre Slayed All At Terminal 5, July 25

Posted in Music with tags , , , , on July 26, 2008 by johnbuckley100

Months ago, when tickets went on sale for the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s only U.S. show this summer (at New York’s Terminal 5), I said to someone I was trying to persuade to go, “This could be a complete disaster, or it could be transcendent.”  Those are the poles they swing between: the train wreck or the sublime.  And of course, with the news from London last week that Anton Newcombe had been arrested for allegedly knifing guitarist Frankie “Teardrop” Emerson, the odds seemed to tilt toward disaster.  Five minutes into the opening song, “Whoever You Are,” we had the answer to what was in store for us: The Brian Jonestown Massacre were transcendent.

“Whoever You Are” has a slow loping, “Tomorrow Never Knows” mid-’60s feel, and the tone for the evening was set: bright and shimmering guitars in layers — sometimes three guitars, sometimes four — an emollient, occasionally droning organ, and Daniel Allaire kicking the living bejesus out of the drums.  Anton Newcombe, fragile, his back to the audience most of the time, stayed on the edge of the action that he thoroughly controlled.

Like so many others, I got a sense of the BJM’s stage mayhem only from watching “Dig!”  — Program note: “Dig!” is available below via a widget from SnagFilms.com; you should watch it, snag it, and put it on your own site.   Now it was clear what role Joel Gion plays: we already knew he doesn’t sing, he *just* bangs the tambourine, but he holds the center stage that Anton, for a complex brew of reasons, can’t or won’t.  Anton seemed frail, and even as his guitar gathered strength, his singing was tentative.  You had the feeling you were watching a version of Syd Barrett with both a bark and a bite: a savant who simultaneously exuded reticence and a very sharp edge.  But Anton could afford to stand just outside the glare of the stage lights, for inside them, the band was magnificent.  It all revolved around his songs, his guitar, his singing.  BJM circa 2008 isn’t quite Anton’s backup band, but you get the sense they know the reason they can lay claim to greatness is because of him.

When they played “Who,” the band all wailed their “Whos!!!” like they were auditioning for Jean-Luc Godard’s “Sympathy for The Devil.”  It was 1966 and Brian Jones was out of it, but the San Francisco scene hadn’t taken its inevitable turn toward Jonestown, toward Altamont and the long morning after. Donovan was still wearing shaggy vests and putting flowers in his hair.  And bands played these long sets with guitar lines searching for space like jungle lianas fighting for light.

I think it’s true that “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the first Velvet Underground album were released the same week, and if so, last night represented some kind of mash-up between those two Albums of the Week.  There’s no actual connection between the music of “Sgt. Pepper’s” and what these guys do — their “psychedelia” is closer, perhaps, to a jam including John Phillips and Skip Spence and Keith Richards in some farmhouse in the Cotswolds. But their music is a capsule dug up from such times.   And while last night the band bore little resemblance to Lou’s ensemble — there’s an optimism and a brightness to the guitars, a lack of cynicism to the whole effect — if there was a musical God standing offstage, it was, no doubt, Sterling Morrison.

We could have stood not having Anton and Frankie Teardrop leave the stage for a long smoke while a subset of musicians noodled, wasting time.  We could have lived without having some guy who strutted like Roger Daltrey and sang like Keith Moon come on as a guest for a song.  By the time they closed with “If Love Is The Drug, Then I Want To O.D.” it was clear just why it was Music’s loss that the careerist Dandy Warhols, not the screwed up genius of Anton Newcombe and his band, were the “winners” in “Dig!” The Dandy’s are bohemian like you.  The Brian Jonestown Massacre break on through to the other side, at great cost to themselves, no doubt, to their career aspirations certainly, but to the delight of anyone lucky enough to get to see them.

9 Comments »

%d bloggers like this: