Well, I expected DIG! to be a lot funnier than it turned out to be. I also expected The Dandy Warhols to come out of it a lot worse than they do. Wrong on two counts straight away. It’s a much darker piece than I imagined, quite depressing actually. Never having been a fan of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, this sort of underpins all of the shortcomings I figured their records had. Of course there were flashes of accidental sonic brilliance but ultimately this paisley underground with a shot of Altamont never really hit any spot for me. There’s a part in the movie where Anton Newcombe goes to disrupt a DW’s gig wearing rollerskates and a Davy Crockett-type bunnet. He looks ridiculous and he cannae go his skates. Actually he looks like Mike Nesmith on The Monkees. No dis intended. DIG! is worth seeing but couldn’t exactly be filed as entertainment. Jonestown is like Primal Scream with a performance artery bypass. I don’t feel that it’s kosher. Whatever modicum of talent Newcombe possesses, the destructive aspect towers over it. Anyone who has had to deal with an addictive personality will recognise that. The Dandys’ on the other hand went the corporate route and it seems to have worked for them. They’ve enjoyed a little more than the designated 15 minutes. Whether they deserve it is neither here nor there, they put in time at the office and made the compromises. The dying embers of the music industry, desperate to hang on to former glories can be felt choking all through the movie. It doesn’t make pleasant viewing or bode well for its future.
2 comments:
I agree with you 100% about Anton & BJM. However, I thought that the Dandies came off pretty bad as well, to folks familiar with the music industry and the mistakes bands make. Even though they have had a modicum of success, they yearn for the "indie cred" that BJM have. The Dandies are portrayed (shown as?) total sell-out and poseurs, specifically the bits about having David LaChappelle directing their video and then doing a photo shoot in the BJM house. The interview at the end of the movie with the (I think) the Dandies bassist, talking about how they've "outsmarted" the record company and used the money for their video to make a party house/modern day factory just smacked of the lie he tells himself to get to sleep at night after his blowjob from a teenage runaway.
Yeah but whatever cred the DW's crave isn't gonna fly. They became some short-lived commodity which as we know has nothing to do with music. The shelf life of them as an act will amount to nary a blip in the vista of "success".
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