Modern Day Musical Psychedelia With The Dandy Warhols And The Brian Jonestown Massacre

Prior to viewing the 2004 Ondi Timoner directed documentary, DIG!, I had only heard of the band name The Dandy Warhols and had no previous knowledge at all of The Brian Jonestown Massacre. DIG! is a documentary of the two bands with footage that had been compiled over an approximate seven year span.

Since viewing the Palm Pictures film, I decided to “dig” up a few recordings of the two groups to get a better aural “picture” of the bands’ music since the film tends to mix the music with a lot of the dysfunctional visual aspects of the bands (primarily The Brian Jonestown Massacre, or BJM), often drawing attention away from the music.

In giving the music a true listening without the influence of the often drug and alcohol induced visuals portrayed by the film, I picked The Dandy Warhols’ 2003 release, Welcome To The Monkey House, and Tepid Peppermint Wonderland: A Retrospective of The Brian Jonestown Massacre catalog from 2004 with a whopping 38 tracks on two CDs to spin.

Both bands draw largely from 1960s musical influences with BJM’s music really sounding like the 1960s were simply transported into the 1990s and 2000s. BJMs sound has that clean electric and acoustic guitar sound with the popular 60’s reverb, the often present tambourine of on-again, off-again band member Joel Gion, and many times, just a real trippy, hippie, and sometimes lyrically incomprehensible way about the songs.  Anton Newcombe, frequently the band’s songwriter, has been looked upon as a musical genius by some but has also been known to be very difficult to work with and has created a live concert experience for his fans that leaves them guessing whether they will see a full show, or one song, a fight, and a walk out. The movie DIG! shows several incidents of Newcombe taking the microphone and scolding audience members or even his fellow bandmates to the point of violence at times, and then simply…just walking out. Newcombe’s eccentricities have in many ways cost BJM big commercial success.

BJM’s music invokes recollections of major 60s bands like The Beatles (”All Around You”), The Rolling Stones (”Straight Up And Down” - with a very Beatlesque intro guitar), Bob Dylan (”Ballad Of Jim Jones”), and “Too Crazy To Care” sounding like something between The Rolling Stones and The Stooges. Without a doubt, neo-psychedelic music is alive and well with the Brian Jonestown Massacre.

The Dandy Warhols, the more commercially successful friends of BJM, were also influenced by the bands of the 1960s, but their sound seems more modern. Welcome To The Monkey House was co-produced by Duran Duran’s keyboardist, Nick Rhodes who also adds his musical input on tracks like “We Used To Be Friends” among others. His bandmate Simon LeBon (lead singer of Duran Duran) adds backing vocals to the track “Plan A”. Even actress Parker Posey plays mandolin on the track “I Am Sound” (which sounds very David Bowie-esque).

The four-member Dandy Warhols (3 males, 1 female), also formed in the early 1990s, remain musically active with their most recent release, …Earth To The Dandy Warhols… having been released in 2008.

Both bands, while not as well known or represented on the charts as some, offer great music, especially for fans of the sounds of the days of some of the biggest bands known in rock and roll history. Both bands are a real tribute to music’s greatest and yet they do so in their own unique ways.

Both are well worth a listen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwSXoTNVvNE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AueGN0b_dGo

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