An interview with Anton Newcombe
published on 9th May, 2012
Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre is a fast talking, extremely smart, extremely passionate dude. His boundless energy and quick mind are immediately impressive.
But a great thing happens sometimes when you’re talking to an artist of Anton’s stature. They vacillate between displays of the otherworldly talent that has taken them to such great heights – and can cow most of us ‘normal’ folks – and an endearing wide eyed naivety or slacker reticence that makes them just like all your funny layabout friends.
Anton is bringing his musical project Brian Jonestown Massacre to Australia over the next few weeks. The notorious malcontent talked to me from L.A. where they’re rehearsing, about their new album Aufheben, how his provocative nature was actually self-defense, and why you should never buy a car because of rock and roll.
Wilfred Brandt: The album artwork – is that the image that was sent into outer space?
Anton Newcombe: Yep.
WB: Have you heard the story about the artist from MIT named Joe Davis?
AN: No.
WB: There’s a really great documentary about him. In 1986 when that image was sent into outer space, he was so offended by the fact that the woman’s genitalia was erased, he sent a transmission into outer space – from MIT where he’s a research associate – of vaginal contractions from ballet dancers, to show aliens that women do have genitals and this is what they sound like.
AN: That’s great, absolutely great. What I did was, I added the German word Aufheben. I thought it would be funny, if you understand the concept of the word – it means to abolish or destroy in order to lift up and preserve. German culture, twice, they literally had to destroy their culture to preserve it.
I thought it would be funny if a German scientist had put on that schematic, ‘here we are, here’s a disc representing our phonetics of our language and greetings’ and put this word ‘Aufheben’ which means ‘all this must be destroyed to be preserved’.
One of my friends was doing the data entry for the SETI Project – they beamed 25,000 gigabytes of information in every single direction from the radio telescopes, files, movies, just like, data packets right? And we slipped in two Brian Jonestown Massacre songs.
WB: That’s awesome. Jonestown was obviously a religious cult, and a lot of the music you make, the aesthetic has ties to spirituality and religion. I wondered if you have any spiritual views that you live by?
AN: Yes. Absolutely. It’s more akin to a sufi type approach than some orthodoxy, and [it’s] based on spiritual understanding that I have of my own. I’m really into esoteric information. The cult thing – I just noticed early on that there was a similarity between cult figures and the cult of personality with athletes and musicians and actors.
The whole abrasive nature, my juvenile sense of humour, and provoking people or song titles, all that was just like this protectionery device that I thought about. ‘Cuz I knew that the industry is BS. Even if you were somebody that had so much integrity, like The Zombies, if you gave control away and it was not offensive, at some point you would be selling tampons too, whether you like it or not. It’s ridiculous, like rock and roll used to sell cars – I was thinking about this the other day. What qualities do you want in a car? You want safety, dependability, reliability (laughs) And rock and roll is like danger, not long lived, all my heroes are destructive (laughs). It’s exactly the opposite of all the qualities I look for in a car. I think it’s really odd that they choose to sell Cadillacs with out of control drugged and crazy Satanic bands or something.
Even how they market dangerous people that are actually safe. You see all these hip hop guys, and they’ve got all these guns, but all their lawyers are Jewish, they’re renting these Ferraris to do the videos and the film crew has two million dollars worth of gear, so how dangerous and thuggish are these guys really? (laughs) All that stuff really bugs the shit out of me.
WB: It’s definitely the image of something that’s dangerous rather than something that’s literally dangerous.
AN: I don’t know, there’s a lot of pitfalls in modern living. Sometimes I think about that, there’s so many potential ways to get caught up in stuff – your grandma could buy you a Playstation and boom, you’re lost forever, you’re a computer nerd. Or you could date this girl and she asks you to go to some fucking Kabbalah cult in L.A. and then boom we’ve lost you to David Lynch’s Foundation. There’s an infinite amount of these weird little modes that you can get into and I guess mine is being a Bohemian.
But I identify with different records at different points in my life, whether you’re travelling and there’s some music playing or whether you’re depressed in your room and you’re identifying with The Smiths. And that reaching out, that connection, I think is really cool. And a lot of times bands represent one mood, and I’ve always been trying to make it like a full spectrum somehow to input that so you can connect on different levels at different times in your life.
WB: The last couple albums seem less song-oriented and more groove-oriented. Was there a specific reason for that?
AN: I’m very interested in segueing at this point in my life, at least partially, towards doing soundtracks. Now that doesn’t mean placing my music in exchange for money on a soundtrack. I’m interested in something between an Ennio Morricone approach and a music director, where I could ask people that I wanna collaborate with to be a part of it.
There’s also a tribal aspect to music. I’m interested in sitar music. I’ve never been a big fan of bridges, so I get trolls literally lashing out at me, ‘this isn’t even fucking a song, this is an idea that, what, there’s no bridge?!?’ There’s a whole cosmology of expression where that isn’t even an issue. I really don’t think there’s any rules, when I go into the studio, I don’t have a preconceived notion. What I wanna end up with is the full spectrum of my moods or what I’m trying to say, rather than going, ‘hey, I’m really into Psychocandy, and I anticipate that there’s going to be social unrest in the summer, so let’s make an angry distorted record and I’ll buy a fucking leather jacket’. That’s not how I work.
WB: I feel like the last couple albums sounded more angry or more violent. And this one sounds nicely optimistic. It’s a cool change, I like it.
AN: Cool. I was trying to marry a concept because it’s 2012 and I know there’s a certain amount of social anxiety, and also, sarcasm about it – the Mayan prophecy and the end of the world, blah blah blah. I’m really into astrology and studying what other people think about their end time scenario, whether it’s Christians or Hindus. I’ve never cared about creating ‘singles’ per se, ‘cuz I don’t [understand] radio play the way other people do. It’s more about just trying to challenge myself with weird tricks, deceptively simple minimalism. I’ll challenge myself with some weird puzzle, and then we have to remember [how to play] this stuff. It’s nuts.
WB: I know you’ve been living in Berlin since 2007. How has that changed your perspective on American culture or American life?
AN: Good question right? Well in a lot of the western cultures there’s not only been a gravitation towards seemingly right wing governments, there’s a security thing. And that balance between, it isn’t just civil liberty and safety, it’s human dignity at a certain point. It’s getting pretty extreme in some of these countries. I don’t see that in Germany. Germany, because of the history, there’s a real sensitivity against things that look like or act like the Stasi, or worse, National Socialism. So there’s cultural safeguards in place, whereas the dialogue in the UK right now is like, ‘we’re going to record every web page visit, every text, every phone call, every communication, every email, period, that comes through England, because we can’. Now they can’t do that in Germany.
The other thing is I can’t participate in the politics there. But I feel like my voice is represented one hundred percent, my interests, internationally, globally, and locally. In America there’s a political dysfunction between the right and the left to the extent that it’s a laughing stock, they can’t balance the budget. I think national democracy, that’s an antiquated notion these days. In America, the main interest is not so much the general public, it’s the interests of finance and the military industrial complex.
WB: I’m originally from the U.S. and when I go back there, the bipartisan thing is so extreme where it’s not even about what’s good for the country it’s just about having your side win.
AN: It’s so weird, it makes you really want a Teddy Roosevelt type person – but someone more democratic – somebody that’s gonna stand up and say, ‘shut up everybody, we’re not having this dialogue’. Even as I support people’s life choices and orientation, the public dialogue shouldn’t be about whether marines can fuck each other, as males. Somebody should really say, ‘well this is an interesting conversation but supposedly we’re in the middle of a war’.
The other reason I’m enjoying living in Berlin is this other aspect to German culture – people do not intrude on other people’s lives. When you walk out the door in New York, life happens to you, you need a defense mechanism. You’re like, ‘oh I always keep to myself on the subway’ and you’re on guard. Germany’s not set up that way – it’s so great. I don’t speak the language fluently so I’m immune to the media and advertising onslaught that most of us in the Western world and elsewhere are victims of – you can’t avoid it. But to me, even the chatter on the street, all of it, it’s meaningless to me, so I can really focus on my life, and I really enjoy that right now.
WB: I’ve noticed on the last few albums you’ve had several songs sung in different languages; Icelandic, French, Russian, Finnish, some German. Can you explain why you chose to feature singing in all these different languages?
AN: There’s a lot of different reasons. With social media and peer to peer it occurred to me that I could reach out and make friends, connect with people who might be interested, in the Ukraine for instance, in my project, and go, ‘will you help me do a Ukrainian version of this song?’ It lets me focus even more on what I really like to do which is create the whole thing – I’m more interested in conceptual art than I am in being a singer, and I always have been. That’s why I’m interested in the recording process. I’m not really interested in craftsmanship to a level of like a guild master like some people really are.
To me, conceptual art, it’s about from nothing, creating an idea that somebody else sees something in. So first I’m making up something that I identify, ‘oh that’s interesting’, and then I share that. As long as that works on that level I’m satisfied, and then I look for it to be defined in a live context to make it mean something more. I thought it would be interesting to reach out using peer to peer, ‘OK I’m just gonna make up a song in Finnish, ask this person to help me do it’ and then boom, it’s out on YouTube. Then the next day it’s in blogs in Finland and then magazines are asking me, ‘why did you record a song in Finnish?’, and I’m like, ‘because I can, what’s your excuse?’ And then they’re asking us to tour there.
The Russian example, this guy was really into my music so I said, ‘I’ll fly you to Berlin from St. Petersburg, let’s work on something’. It occurred to me that I was the first person in the history of the Russian culture and language to make a song that sounds like that. Whereas me being from indie, experimental [culture], I’m just one of many people that expresses themselves in some weird psychedelic mode. I’m also interested in confronting people’s myopic perspective.
WB: It’s a nice change of pace if I listen to Serge Gainsbourg and I don’t know what he’s saying. It’s like, ‘well this is what the rest of the world deals with all the time’. Or I love it when I’m here in Australia and people go, ‘where’s Florida?’ I’m like, ‘oh good, I’m glad you don’t know where every fucking state is’. Because Americans wouldn’t know where every state in Australia is – a lot of ‘em wouldn’t know where Australia is.
I wanted to ask you about the influence of punk and hardcore.
AN: Absolutely. For me, the whole modus operandi of [my] project is more akin to a folk thing – folk meaning, ‘of the people’. I loved Jimi Hendrix since I was a little kid. And I never thought I could be a rock star because that was something more than just playing music in a folk context, y’know? But when I saw punk bands play – there was a garage thing happening in Southern California when I was like ten or eleven – witnessing that up close it became apparent to me that these people were idiots and this was within the realm of possibility. But if you’re looking on TV and it’s Jimmy Page or whoever, even John Denver, and it’s all set up for a TV show, there’s a disconnect of how you get there, y’know?
I think the whole punk thing, destroying that [need for] validation, the whole process of having someone discover you and develop your talent and promote you and everything, tearing that whole wall down was incredibly inspiring to me. But when I started getting into punk music and stuff, you could get beat up. If you were walking down the street with your friends a car would just slam on the breaks and then these guys would get out and chase you and beat you up. So very quickly I learned that the outward trappings of the punk thing wasn’t really what was essential to carry with you.
WB: So you dressed like a punk, had the whole punk look?
AN: For a little while when I was young, of course. But where I’m from, Newport Beach, the police would arrest you, literally, for not having an ID or being out at ten o’clock at night. Literally take you to jail just because of the way you look. So I learned really early on that I had no necessity for a look or a style, I should just be myself because it has nothing to do with who you are as a person, on the inside.
WB: How do you feel about rock mythology – the bands that you grew up admiring and also the mythology that’s evolved around The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Is that something that you are into or is that something that you wanna tear down?
AN: I definitely lean towards iconoclasm. I’m definitely into tearing apart a lot of that stuff. As much as I like The Beatles singing ‘Girl’, I hate the Beatles Machine. I hate that people will post ‘Imagine’ every year on John Lennon’s birthday on Facebook or something and don’t give a shit if we’re blowing apart a new country in Africa – they won’t say one peep about our next misadventure militarily, y’know? It’s just missing the point absolutely. But yeah, mythology – people love to do that y’know? It’s like in our nature.
WB: It’s part and parcel of romanticizing and loving an art form, but it can also be quite damaging. That’s why I’m interested in it.
AN: Sure I’m a victim of it… it all becomes really ridiculous. Hopefully it’s not going to stop me, my reputation. I’ve been doing these interviews ‘cuz we’re going to play in Israel for the first time. And somebody from JPost asked me about my reputation, and I was tempted to say, ‘look, reputation is like a vehicle depending on who’s driving or talking about it – like your own country has a mixed reputation depending on who you talk to!’ (laughs) Absolutely. So for this person from that country to ask that thing about my reputation is ridiculous, kind of.
WB: Thank you so much for your time.
AN: Thank you, I appreciate it.
WB: I look forward to seeing you guys when you’re out here.
AN: I’m really looking forward to that too. Cheers mate.
.But a great thing happens sometimes when you’re talking to an artist of Anton’s stature. They vacillate between displays of the otherworldly talent that has taken them to such great heights – and can cow most of us ‘normal’ folks – and an endearing wide eyed naivety or slacker reticence that makes them just like all your funny layabout friends.
Anton is bringing his musical project Brian Jonestown Massacre to Australia over the next few weeks. The notorious malcontent talked to me from L.A. where they’re rehearsing, about their new album Aufheben, how his provocative nature was actually self-defense, and why you should never buy a car because of rock and roll.
Wilfred Brandt: The album artwork – is that the image that was sent into outer space?
Anton Newcombe: Yep.
WB: Have you heard the story about the artist from MIT named Joe Davis?
AN: No.
WB: There’s a really great documentary about him. In 1986 when that image was sent into outer space, he was so offended by the fact that the woman’s genitalia was erased, he sent a transmission into outer space – from MIT where he’s a research associate – of vaginal contractions from ballet dancers, to show aliens that women do have genitals and this is what they sound like.
AN: That’s great, absolutely great. What I did was, I added the German word Aufheben. I thought it would be funny, if you understand the concept of the word – it means to abolish or destroy in order to lift up and preserve. German culture, twice, they literally had to destroy their culture to preserve it.
I thought it would be funny if a German scientist had put on that schematic, ‘here we are, here’s a disc representing our phonetics of our language and greetings’ and put this word ‘Aufheben’ which means ‘all this must be destroyed to be preserved’.
One of my friends was doing the data entry for the SETI Project – they beamed 25,000 gigabytes of information in every single direction from the radio telescopes, files, movies, just like, data packets right? And we slipped in two Brian Jonestown Massacre songs.
WB: That’s awesome. Jonestown was obviously a religious cult, and a lot of the music you make, the aesthetic has ties to spirituality and religion. I wondered if you have any spiritual views that you live by?
AN: Yes. Absolutely. It’s more akin to a sufi type approach than some orthodoxy, and [it’s] based on spiritual understanding that I have of my own. I’m really into esoteric information. The cult thing – I just noticed early on that there was a similarity between cult figures and the cult of personality with athletes and musicians and actors.
The whole abrasive nature, my juvenile sense of humour, and provoking people or song titles, all that was just like this protectionery device that I thought about. ‘Cuz I knew that the industry is BS. Even if you were somebody that had so much integrity, like The Zombies, if you gave control away and it was not offensive, at some point you would be selling tampons too, whether you like it or not. It’s ridiculous, like rock and roll used to sell cars – I was thinking about this the other day. What qualities do you want in a car? You want safety, dependability, reliability (laughs) And rock and roll is like danger, not long lived, all my heroes are destructive (laughs). It’s exactly the opposite of all the qualities I look for in a car. I think it’s really odd that they choose to sell Cadillacs with out of control drugged and crazy Satanic bands or something.
Even how they market dangerous people that are actually safe. You see all these hip hop guys, and they’ve got all these guns, but all their lawyers are Jewish, they’re renting these Ferraris to do the videos and the film crew has two million dollars worth of gear, so how dangerous and thuggish are these guys really? (laughs) All that stuff really bugs the shit out of me.
WB: It’s definitely the image of something that’s dangerous rather than something that’s literally dangerous.
AN: I don’t know, there’s a lot of pitfalls in modern living. Sometimes I think about that, there’s so many potential ways to get caught up in stuff – your grandma could buy you a Playstation and boom, you’re lost forever, you’re a computer nerd. Or you could date this girl and she asks you to go to some fucking Kabbalah cult in L.A. and then boom we’ve lost you to David Lynch’s Foundation. There’s an infinite amount of these weird little modes that you can get into and I guess mine is being a Bohemian.
But I identify with different records at different points in my life, whether you’re travelling and there’s some music playing or whether you’re depressed in your room and you’re identifying with The Smiths. And that reaching out, that connection, I think is really cool. And a lot of times bands represent one mood, and I’ve always been trying to make it like a full spectrum somehow to input that so you can connect on different levels at different times in your life.
WB: The last couple albums seem less song-oriented and more groove-oriented. Was there a specific reason for that?
AN: I’m very interested in segueing at this point in my life, at least partially, towards doing soundtracks. Now that doesn’t mean placing my music in exchange for money on a soundtrack. I’m interested in something between an Ennio Morricone approach and a music director, where I could ask people that I wanna collaborate with to be a part of it.
There’s also a tribal aspect to music. I’m interested in sitar music. I’ve never been a big fan of bridges, so I get trolls literally lashing out at me, ‘this isn’t even fucking a song, this is an idea that, what, there’s no bridge?!?’ There’s a whole cosmology of expression where that isn’t even an issue. I really don’t think there’s any rules, when I go into the studio, I don’t have a preconceived notion. What I wanna end up with is the full spectrum of my moods or what I’m trying to say, rather than going, ‘hey, I’m really into Psychocandy, and I anticipate that there’s going to be social unrest in the summer, so let’s make an angry distorted record and I’ll buy a fucking leather jacket’. That’s not how I work.
WB: I feel like the last couple albums sounded more angry or more violent. And this one sounds nicely optimistic. It’s a cool change, I like it.
AN: Cool. I was trying to marry a concept because it’s 2012 and I know there’s a certain amount of social anxiety, and also, sarcasm about it – the Mayan prophecy and the end of the world, blah blah blah. I’m really into astrology and studying what other people think about their end time scenario, whether it’s Christians or Hindus. I’ve never cared about creating ‘singles’ per se, ‘cuz I don’t [understand] radio play the way other people do. It’s more about just trying to challenge myself with weird tricks, deceptively simple minimalism. I’ll challenge myself with some weird puzzle, and then we have to remember [how to play] this stuff. It’s nuts.
WB: I know you’ve been living in Berlin since 2007. How has that changed your perspective on American culture or American life?
AN: Good question right? Well in a lot of the western cultures there’s not only been a gravitation towards seemingly right wing governments, there’s a security thing. And that balance between, it isn’t just civil liberty and safety, it’s human dignity at a certain point. It’s getting pretty extreme in some of these countries. I don’t see that in Germany. Germany, because of the history, there’s a real sensitivity against things that look like or act like the Stasi, or worse, National Socialism. So there’s cultural safeguards in place, whereas the dialogue in the UK right now is like, ‘we’re going to record every web page visit, every text, every phone call, every communication, every email, period, that comes through England, because we can’. Now they can’t do that in Germany.
The other thing is I can’t participate in the politics there. But I feel like my voice is represented one hundred percent, my interests, internationally, globally, and locally. In America there’s a political dysfunction between the right and the left to the extent that it’s a laughing stock, they can’t balance the budget. I think national democracy, that’s an antiquated notion these days. In America, the main interest is not so much the general public, it’s the interests of finance and the military industrial complex.
WB: I’m originally from the U.S. and when I go back there, the bipartisan thing is so extreme where it’s not even about what’s good for the country it’s just about having your side win.
AN: It’s so weird, it makes you really want a Teddy Roosevelt type person – but someone more democratic – somebody that’s gonna stand up and say, ‘shut up everybody, we’re not having this dialogue’. Even as I support people’s life choices and orientation, the public dialogue shouldn’t be about whether marines can fuck each other, as males. Somebody should really say, ‘well this is an interesting conversation but supposedly we’re in the middle of a war’.
The other reason I’m enjoying living in Berlin is this other aspect to German culture – people do not intrude on other people’s lives. When you walk out the door in New York, life happens to you, you need a defense mechanism. You’re like, ‘oh I always keep to myself on the subway’ and you’re on guard. Germany’s not set up that way – it’s so great. I don’t speak the language fluently so I’m immune to the media and advertising onslaught that most of us in the Western world and elsewhere are victims of – you can’t avoid it. But to me, even the chatter on the street, all of it, it’s meaningless to me, so I can really focus on my life, and I really enjoy that right now.
WB: I’ve noticed on the last few albums you’ve had several songs sung in different languages; Icelandic, French, Russian, Finnish, some German. Can you explain why you chose to feature singing in all these different languages?
AN: There’s a lot of different reasons. With social media and peer to peer it occurred to me that I could reach out and make friends, connect with people who might be interested, in the Ukraine for instance, in my project, and go, ‘will you help me do a Ukrainian version of this song?’ It lets me focus even more on what I really like to do which is create the whole thing – I’m more interested in conceptual art than I am in being a singer, and I always have been. That’s why I’m interested in the recording process. I’m not really interested in craftsmanship to a level of like a guild master like some people really are.
To me, conceptual art, it’s about from nothing, creating an idea that somebody else sees something in. So first I’m making up something that I identify, ‘oh that’s interesting’, and then I share that. As long as that works on that level I’m satisfied, and then I look for it to be defined in a live context to make it mean something more. I thought it would be interesting to reach out using peer to peer, ‘OK I’m just gonna make up a song in Finnish, ask this person to help me do it’ and then boom, it’s out on YouTube. Then the next day it’s in blogs in Finland and then magazines are asking me, ‘why did you record a song in Finnish?’, and I’m like, ‘because I can, what’s your excuse?’ And then they’re asking us to tour there.
The Russian example, this guy was really into my music so I said, ‘I’ll fly you to Berlin from St. Petersburg, let’s work on something’. It occurred to me that I was the first person in the history of the Russian culture and language to make a song that sounds like that. Whereas me being from indie, experimental [culture], I’m just one of many people that expresses themselves in some weird psychedelic mode. I’m also interested in confronting people’s myopic perspective.
WB: It’s a nice change of pace if I listen to Serge Gainsbourg and I don’t know what he’s saying. It’s like, ‘well this is what the rest of the world deals with all the time’. Or I love it when I’m here in Australia and people go, ‘where’s Florida?’ I’m like, ‘oh good, I’m glad you don’t know where every fucking state is’. Because Americans wouldn’t know where every state in Australia is – a lot of ‘em wouldn’t know where Australia is.
I wanted to ask you about the influence of punk and hardcore.
AN: Absolutely. For me, the whole modus operandi of [my] project is more akin to a folk thing – folk meaning, ‘of the people’. I loved Jimi Hendrix since I was a little kid. And I never thought I could be a rock star because that was something more than just playing music in a folk context, y’know? But when I saw punk bands play – there was a garage thing happening in Southern California when I was like ten or eleven – witnessing that up close it became apparent to me that these people were idiots and this was within the realm of possibility. But if you’re looking on TV and it’s Jimmy Page or whoever, even John Denver, and it’s all set up for a TV show, there’s a disconnect of how you get there, y’know?
I think the whole punk thing, destroying that [need for] validation, the whole process of having someone discover you and develop your talent and promote you and everything, tearing that whole wall down was incredibly inspiring to me. But when I started getting into punk music and stuff, you could get beat up. If you were walking down the street with your friends a car would just slam on the breaks and then these guys would get out and chase you and beat you up. So very quickly I learned that the outward trappings of the punk thing wasn’t really what was essential to carry with you.
WB: So you dressed like a punk, had the whole punk look?
AN: For a little while when I was young, of course. But where I’m from, Newport Beach, the police would arrest you, literally, for not having an ID or being out at ten o’clock at night. Literally take you to jail just because of the way you look. So I learned really early on that I had no necessity for a look or a style, I should just be myself because it has nothing to do with who you are as a person, on the inside.
WB: How do you feel about rock mythology – the bands that you grew up admiring and also the mythology that’s evolved around The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Is that something that you are into or is that something that you wanna tear down?
AN: I definitely lean towards iconoclasm. I’m definitely into tearing apart a lot of that stuff. As much as I like The Beatles singing ‘Girl’, I hate the Beatles Machine. I hate that people will post ‘Imagine’ every year on John Lennon’s birthday on Facebook or something and don’t give a shit if we’re blowing apart a new country in Africa – they won’t say one peep about our next misadventure militarily, y’know? It’s just missing the point absolutely. But yeah, mythology – people love to do that y’know? It’s like in our nature.
WB: It’s part and parcel of romanticizing and loving an art form, but it can also be quite damaging. That’s why I’m interested in it.
AN: Sure I’m a victim of it… it all becomes really ridiculous. Hopefully it’s not going to stop me, my reputation. I’ve been doing these interviews ‘cuz we’re going to play in Israel for the first time. And somebody from JPost asked me about my reputation, and I was tempted to say, ‘look, reputation is like a vehicle depending on who’s driving or talking about it – like your own country has a mixed reputation depending on who you talk to!’ (laughs) Absolutely. So for this person from that country to ask that thing about my reputation is ridiculous, kind of.
WB: Thank you so much for your time.
AN: Thank you, I appreciate it.
WB: I look forward to seeing you guys when you’re out here.
AN: I’m really looking forward to that too. Cheers mate.
Même si The Brian Jonestown Massacre
reçoit l’appellation de groupe, c’est surtout le projet d’un seul
homme. Ce monsieur, c’est Anton Newcombe, et beaucoup le considèrent
comme une sorte de petit prodige. Il maîtrise en effet plusieurs
dizaines d’instruments et en fait un usage ingénieux dans ses
compositions qui n’en sont qu’enrichies en sonorités. Sa musique se
déploie en un large éventail de genres explorés au cours des
différentes périodes du groupe, allant du rock ambient à la folk en
passant par le shoegaze. Aufheben, le nouvel album, pourrait quant à lui se classer plus aisément dans le rock psychédélique.
Avec la participation de musiciens comme Will Carruthers, Constantine
Karlis, Matt Hollywood, Eliza Karmasalo et Thibault Pesenti, Newcombe
est retourné vers ce qui avait fait autrefois le succès de The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Un son brumeux et enivrant, bien loin des productions précédentes (My Bloody Underground et Who Killed Sgt Pepper ?) qui avaient perdu pas mal de monde en route.« Panic in Babylon » et sa cornemuse ensorcelante lancent ce disque avec une classe imparable. Le ton de l’album est immédiatement donné et on ne peut être qu’impatient d’inhaler la totalité des effluves addictives de cette marchandise ô combien séduisante. De la folk-rock hypnotique aux ambiances troubles, des sons de contrées lointaines conotant très souvent l’Orient (« Face Down The Moon ») et des guitares souvent diffuses dans le flux sonore ambient, mais parfois possédées par des mélodies incisives (« Stairway To The Best Party »), provoquant chez l’auditeur un éveil des sens allant crescendo au fil de sa découverte de l’oeuvre : Voilà ce que nous offre Aufheben!
On oubliera pas non plus de parler des rythmes dansants, brillant par leur naturel et leur simplicité sur des compos comme « I Wanna Hold Your Other Hand » ou encore « Blue Order New Monday ».
L’effet hallucinogène que produit la musique de The Brian Jonestown Massacre a quelque chose de fascinant. Jamais on ne se sentira plus sous influence que sur le titre « Seven Kinds Of Wonderful », habité de voix planantes nous ôtant tout souvenir d’une quelconque réalité. C’est peut-être pour cela qu’Aufheben est si magique, peut-être du fait de l’impression d’évasion qu’il procure.
Anton Newcombe reprend ici une formule ayant au préalable déjà fait ses preuves, oubliant l’aspect expérimental de ses dernières sorties. Le bonhomme ravivera sûrement la flamme de ceux qui avaient cessé de croire en sa musique ses dernières années, tout du moins on l’espère.
Par Jefferson Grégoire
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Brian Jonestown Massacre
Exploding the Boundaries of Convention: The Full Interview
Anton Newcombe has always been a polarizing character and never been afraid to make headlines. With an initial salvo in 1993, his Brian Jonestown Massacre hit the ground running and released its next four albums in the span of two years, including two 1996 classics, the Rolling Stones-referencing Take It from the Man! and the more Dylan-esque Thank God for Mental Illness. For a while in the mid- to late-'90s, Newcombe and company received a great deal of press, more so however for the band's revolving door of members and outrageous behavior than for anything music-related. A fleeting stint with TVT Records for 1998's Strung Out in Heaven and a well-publicized feud with The Dandy Warhols' Courtney Taylor-Taylor were followed by a slow and steady return to relative indie-obscurity.
Interviewing Newcombe can be a complicated task. The songwriter, while kind and refreshingly candid, has a tendency toward philosophizing, stream-of-consciousness rants, which makes the Q&A a perfect vehicle for Newcombe to present himself in full force and glory. He spoke with Under the Radar from a Best Western on a tour stop in middle-of-nowhere Oregon.
Brian Jonestown Massacre has undergone a bit of a resurgence of late. After a brief hiatus following 2003's And This Is Our Music, the band returned five years later with the noisy and dissonant My Bloody Underground, followed by the more traditional Who Killed Sgt. Pepper? This year's excellent, Eastern-influenced Aufheben features original BJM guitarist Matt Hollywood, along with Will Carruthers (Spacemen 3, Spiritualized), Constantine Karlis (Dimmer), and guest vocals from Thibault Pesenti and Eliza Karmasalo.
[A much-shortened version of this interview appeared in the digital/iPad version of Under the Radar's Spring 2012 issue. This is the full transcript of the interview.]
Frank Valish (Under the Radar): How are you? It's Frank from Under the Radar.
Anton Newcombe: I'm okay. I was just thinking. I was outside having a cigarette, thinking about what would be said on this phone call and the other [interviews] I have to do today.
Is this your first of the day?
First of today.
Well you're in Oregon today, correct?
I'm exactly out by maybe, I think a horse track. I'm literally on the outskirts of nowhere-land. I'm not in the center of town.
Enjoying a little bit of time off between gigs I hope?
Well, it's important, the air in the Southwest and South is really humid or really dry. We just did the desert, and I was finding it a little bit difficult being in top form as far as my full vocal range. Because we play over two hours. It's just a difficult thing to do for any singer, but some people my age. It wasn't bad, but I'm looking forward to being back here in the nice, moist Pacific Northwest.
I just wanted to start out with a very general question. I was hoping you could tell me a bit about the where and when and how of this album's conception.
Okay, let me think about how to start. I'm an artist and I make records. I do that periodically. I own my own label. A real one. It's distributed worldwide. I like to put out other groups, but the way that I'm able to do that is because my records continue to sell, so they continuously want more stuff. I knew 2012 was coming, so I wanted to make a weird record, because culturally, I'm really interested in eschatology, which is the study of the end of the world in different cultures. Whether it's the end of the world or not, I don't really care, but I wanted to play around with that a little bit, for fun. I recorded it in Berlin. I have my own studio that I started at a place called Studio East. It was the media center for the former German Democratic Republic, this sprawling complex, an insane place, but then midway through that, the person from whom we were renting the studio, blocking it for two months, was like, "You guys got to get out of the studio. We're going to record this band." He didn't say, "I'm recording for three days. Come back." So I thought, "Screw this, I'm going to build my own studio."
I was going to ask how long you've had a studio in Berlin. So it's recent?
It's been about a year. I think I started just in 2011. It takes time to do that. I secured a lease to a two-story auto repair shop. The bottom is all the recording instruments and all that stuff and the top has accommodations where I can put a band, and there's a kitchen, bath, and living room-type relaxing areas, so it's really cool. Like an open plan, and it allows me to invite other groups to come there. It's not a commercial studio.
Do you spend a lot of time in Berlin these days?
That's where I live. I have since basically 2007.
Okay, I didn't know that.
I was spending several months at a time in Iceland, working on stuff, but their economy got weird and it became a strange situation, not having to worry about money. They have limits for their own citizens about how much they can withdraw. So it's a strange situation of like all of your friends and peers having monetary concerns because of that, and you not, so it gets really weird. If you can imagine. I'd like to help everybody, but it really cut into everybody's leisure ability. The kind of 'Fuck it' attitude, like, "Sure let's go out drinking, let's go to a show, let's do this, let's go out to eat." That's not most people's reality.
The new album seems, certainly in places, like it has more Eastern influence than some of your more recent Brian Jonestown Massacre albums. Is this something you feel you've gotten more into in the interim between Who Killed Sgt. Pepper? and now, or is it more of a return to an earlier muse for you? Because it's always been there to a certain degree.
There's nothing really conscious about what I end up with. When I go to the studio, I go in with no ideas, absolutely nothing, and I want to come out with something that sort of is a full spectrum of my emotions or moods at the time. Then I have like a toolbox of techniques and influences that all jumble together. So if you can think of Legos come in a space set or there's a pirate set, or you know, there's all these different sets of Legos. I've just torn up all the directions [to the different sets]. I have sets of wheels and I have rocket thrusters. I can build my own thing out of them.
Just depending on your particular headspace at the time.
Yeah. A lot of times when I'm writing or singing, I really like the shaman-, prophet-, holy spirit-infused kind of perspective. I'm really interested in writing from that perspective, so what I do is I go in and I'll make up anything. It could be just me writing. I could go in and base it on drumbeats. I could put on a YouTube of something, a really interesting groove, say like "Gone" by The Factory, from the '60s. It's just this slamming beat. So I might play that beat for a minute on the drums and loop it and write some music to it. Or I could have friends that are just around and say, "Let's play spy music or something. Let's make some really weird surf-y thing. Let's do something really angular, like The B-52's' first record." And then once I get inspired, it tends to take on a life of its own that's not derivative of any specific thing. So I'll end up with like 40 compositions. When I put the demos on YouTube, those are very much taken as a rough mix from what I've just accomplished a couple hours before that. So I'll just mumble or sing anything, just to put it in the spacing, to get a look at like a sketch of the song. And then it becomes pretty clear to me about the direction of an album. And then I'll go on to compose something additionally, maybe to fill in a spot, like, "Oh, it needs an acoustic thing or an instrumental interlude, or whatever it may be." But I never go in and go, "Okay, fuck, I've really been listening to this Can record, Tago Mago. I think I'm gonna knock that off," or something, like bands often do.
It's more free for you.
Yeah, I'm mostly interested that over the course of it that it touches on certain aspects of my own moods or personality, whether I'm feeling aggressive or surly or something, or if I'm at peace or longing for some sort of love, acknowledgement. I'll juxtapose a spiritual relationship with God and use metaphors about drugs, or vice versa, scrambling those things. If I'm singing about love, sometimes it isn't actually even about a real girl or something. It doesn't matter. To me, it's conceptual art. Once I discover an idea and it's tangible to me, since day one in the group, I've left it there and moved on, and left that up to people to decide. Everything is essentially a demo. And then I look at it like there's a possibility live to bring that to life, in a way that's much greater. It's really like a jazz philosophy almost. The record, there can be moments where it could be a brilliant jazz record or something, but it's basically more about us playing live and people can see that.
And the record's more of a framework.
The record's more of a document. Yeah, exactly. It's like some conceptual art that's waiting to be realized or interpreted or find its context.
It almost seems to me that your last couple of records have seemed more so in that fashion than some of your earlier stuff.
There was a conscious something that occurred to me. A couple times I've written songs that are to me as relevant and valid as anything that has ever happened within the medium, even if I was referencing folk on, say Thank God for Mental Illness or something else. I'll never get any acknowledgement about that from Mojo [magazine]. But they'll go on and on about Paul McCartney and Wings or some other bullshit, where it has very little to do with anything. And pop music in general. I don't take it so hard that I'm not respected or acknowledged, when they're putting Nicki Minaj on the Grammys for 20 minutes. Do you know what I'm talking about? And Clear Channel rules the airways. And everything is just crap. And how meaningless is a remix? And how temporary and disposable is all hip-hop? And just everything. What is MTV? I don't take it personally that people talk about Lady Gaga and Katy Perry and not my group or my music or my ideas, because I don't even want to be associated with any of that shit.
I wanted to ask about your reputation. You've been releasing Brian Jonestown Massacre records for almost 20 years, and certainly a lot of the press, at least at one time, surrounded some of the more unsavory aspects of the band. You got a lot of press at one point for some stuff that was apart from the music...
That's fine. You think about rock 'n' roll, and that's completely fine. At the end of the day, I didn't blow my brains out, like Kurt Cobain. Or worse, I didn't stab my girlfriend, like Sid Vicious. Or even look at what Johnny Rotten has become, a butter salesman, in 20 years since PiL was maybe relevant. It's really funny. At one time, you've got Iggy [Pop], with this dangerous lifestyle, and then he's marketing car insurance. Or you've got rock and roll selling automobiles, when the qualities that I want in an automobile, which have to do with safety, reliability, and all that shit, are the antithesis of rock and roll values, or things that you uphold. So to a certain extent, everything is really upside down. I purposefully wanted the project to have this thorny outside that was not commercial, because I really cared about what I was doing. Now the business, all my peers get eaten up and shit out. And it's like, even when they're pseudo-edgy, like Primal Scream or something, they can't get arrested in America. And the other thing is, if I would have signed, say like The Flaming Lips, whatever magic deal they have with Warner Bros.- I don't understand how that band that doesn't sell gets to be on the label and every single other group that does sell gets dropped and their label is defunct. Maybe they're blowing somebody or they're related to somebody they're blowing. But what I want to say about it is that I've outlasted everybody who ran those labels or even the labels or imprints themselves. So people can talk about my unreliability or this or that or the other. It gets really weird. People say, "Oh, he's been through 40 people or more" and all this stuff. Well, you know what, some of those people, like Peter Hayes, after I taught him to play guitar, the deal was that I was helping him get his sea legs to prepare for the project that he wanted to do with Robert [Turner, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club]. It wasn't that he would be my forever collaborator at all.
But isn't it kind of irrelevant anyway?
No it isn't. I just think it's weird that people write about my instability, while I've shown everybody is that I'm actually more stable and more productive. But the value judgment, I'm not saying that I'm better than somebody else. When I met those guys [one supposes he's talking about The Flaming Lips], I was like, those kids have a really good attitude and they're embracing the machine. I was like, "That's cool for them." But for me, I know I would be nowhere. Look at all the #1 artists that have been on major labels since the '60s and how many of them can you even find their music these days. The music industry isn't perfect. In fact it's dead. It's dying. So it's nothing to seek after for some kind of shelter. I don't know. Why don't you refocus me?
I wondered whether you wished that perhaps the press hadn't focused on some of those things and made them the centerpiece of your band in public perception so that now when you're doing an interview, somebody asks you about your reputation, which is really irrelevant to the current record or even the last five or six records you've made?
I don't know. I don't place that much merit in music journalism in general. I followed NME magazine since I was 10 years old, and I'm 44. And looking at everything they praised and thought was noteworthy, none of it even exists anymore. All of it failed. All of it was perfectly well-adjusted and did everything it could to win favor. So if you look back at their records, everything they said was great, it turned out to be not so great. So we live in some kind of a reverse world. I don't know what to say.
It sounds like you're happy with the niche you've carved out for yourself.
It's just a mixed bag of tricks. I would rather be honest and get tarred and feathered for it, but I'm not going to shut up about my criticisms of society or my government, or other governments, or this that or the other. I'm not going to stop talking shit about stuff. To me, it looks like the West is headed into this new kind of corporate fascism, and it sucks. I don't look up to Mark Zuckerberg, and I'm not fooled by any of that shit. Society is crap, basically. Or it needs to be looked at, at least. So whatever. At the end of the day, I'm not killing people or anything.
Do you read your own reviews?
Yeah, I like to check things out and share them with other people, like reTweet them or whatever, you know what I mean?
Getting back to the new record, and I just have a couple more questions, I wondered if you could tell me two guest vocalists you have on this album, Eliza and Thibault.
Okay. Friederike [Bienert, who plays flute on Aufheben] is in a band called The Rockcandys in France, and I traded them a recording trip to my studio if they'd help me do something in French. I wanted to make a statement. There's a lot of French bands that decided they really liked to be American indie. There's a part of French culture that really identifies with outsider and outsider arts and outsider intellectualism, versus conformity. You know, the Serge Gainsbourgs and everything, they really love that. But at the same time, these French groups, they try to sing in English. They love The Stone Roses and they want England to accept them on that level, and that's never going to happen. They don't understand that England is a business and has no use for anybody that's not from England. They're promoting English art and music. They don't give a shit if you're Elliott Smith. I was amazed, because I asked Elliott, "What was it like when you did a Peel session?" And he's like, "I've never done a John Peel session. It was like a party I was never invited to." And it occurred to me at that time, when that happened, because it was like, "Yeah the English media is not going to talk about us because they just discovered us after having six albums out that are better than all the bands they are doing." We can't be offended by that stuff. So I wanted to encourage [the French bands] to do something for their culture. To that end, it wasn't a marketing thing, because we were really big in France. We played very big shows, like as big as Nirvana ever got there while they were alive. We played very big things, and a lot of them. But I wanted to go like, "There's no rules." I can use Google translate and use social networking and all these different things and just make up stuff in different languages, and just express myself. So when I record in Russian or something, I'm the first person in over a thousand years of Russian culture to ever approach a song like that, stylistically. Because there's no Velvet Underground in Russia. Or there is no whatever I was doing on Who Killed Sgt. Pepper?. So 'Rike and Thibault helped me do the French parts. Now for the Finnish stuff, as I record and am writing these songs, I keep trying to do versions in other languages, and it's slightly a different thing. I don't keep the subject matter. I'm not transliterating or translating. I'm just trying to make something that's interesting in those things and put it out. So I asked my friend Eliza, because I knew that she was half-Finnish and I've never been to Finland—we do great in Scandinavia and that part of Europe, but I kind of wanted to go check out Helsinki—"Will you try to record this idea with me?" And she was like, "You want me to sing in my baby tongue." And I'm like, "Yeah." "About what?" I'm like, "Let's make it weird." So we worked on that, and then I put it out on YouTube right after the session, the first take. And in two days there was 2,500 Finnish—you can use Google analytics—views from that country. And then it was in blogs and the newspapers. And then they were like, "We want to send a photographer to your studio. Why did you do this?" And I said, "Because it occurred to me that I can do whatever I want. So I'm making songs in Norwegian and all different languages, and I just happened to do this in Finnish." And the next thing, they invited us to go. Within a few days, there was like 12,000 people from Finland listening to it and sharing it. I want to set an example for other people to try different things and something slightly different. When Bowie did his "Helden" version of "Heroes," that isn't a sly marketing gimmick in the way that The Beatles did "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" recorded in other languages. That song is great for that culture for all time, and I very much want to follow in those footsteps if I can.
I have two last questions for you. First, I wondered if you can tell me a bit about where you head was at with the My Bloody Underground album. You had not released an album in four years and came back with an album that was quite noisy and dissonant...
Unlistenable.
At times a bit difficult, yeah.
Well, I feel like no matter what I do, it's never going to be viewed objectively, so I very much wanted to cleanse my own mental palette and tap into something that was improv over a few days. I used to have the same management as Echo & the Bunnymen and was at that studio in London when I started the record, and my intention was to record there. It was really weird because, in front of both my English managers—you know, this is the place where Oasis recorded Definitely Maybe and all that stuff—and I'm sitting there and all these people, from Bunnymen and everybody, is sitting in the studio, and I go, "Watch me. I'm going to record this song right now" and I made up "Bring Me the Head of Paul McCartney" right in front of them. And their jaws dropped. I was like, "Okay, I'm going to write lyrics." We all walked outside. I'm telling Will Sergeant and Pete Wylie and all these guys, "Now this is how you make up lyrics. Watch this. Follow me. Start walking at a brisk pace." I'm talking to myself and then in one second, I go, "Everybody back in the studio!" And we ran back down the street, up the stairs, and I start singing that, just as it was. And it scared the shit out of them. They ended my relationship with them. Immediately. Like I was on the next flight out of that hotel and studio. They were just terrified. Like, "Oh my god, this guy's fucking out of his head." So then I was like, "Fuck it." I had to go someplace. So I was like, "I'm going to go to Iceland." It's kind of weird, even with people in a room, to think that somebody could just go, "Okay, start playing the drums." Wham. This is what I just came up with, out of my head right here. No talking whatsoever. No nothing. Just do this for one second. Bam. Press record and look at what things are. And I sort of just wanted to cleanse my palette that way. And then the record after that was partially about, I was interested in the function of rhythm. Like if I took a Michael Jackson track that was a 40 million selling song and had the best drummer in Iceland—he's had #1 hits before, from the '80s—I just put it on the YouTube and said, "I want you just to play this whole song from the beginning to the end, no punch-ins," of like "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" or something. "Just play it, exactly like it." And then I went in the other room while he's doing that, just playing acoustic guitar, recording totally different music. I'm not listening to Michael Jackson. He is. So creating a song completely different on top of that. I wanted to see what would happen. So the one with the heavy metal, the engineer is like, "Anton, there's this song that I really love. It's 'Ooh La La' by Goldfrapp. What would you do with this beat right here?" The minute I heard it, I'm like, "Make a heavy metal song, because I never made one before." I would make some kind of new hybrid of that Icelandic screaming craziness. So that's what that was about.
Okay. Well thank you.
I'm sorry if this has been awkward.
No. I hope it's not been awkward for you.
It has been. Because I notice flows of how people interact. And I think I'm kind of subpar in my lucidity today, for some reason.
I think it's fine.
Okay cool.
I just wonder whether you feel that there are any misconceptions out there of your band, still, and if you even care.
I really don't think it matters. I just don't believe it matters. Western civilization is being very much in the mode of Brave New World these days, with a splattering of 1984 just to terrorize the population into submission. Any way you want to crack that nut, I think, that stuff is more important to me. Because you see we're only going to be fascist for a while to get through this period and then we're going to go to greater democracy or we're going to care more about the safety net or the social contract. It never happens that way. As they let these things in, it goes either one of two ways. Either it collapses of its own will, of mistakes and hubris, or people throw some sort of revolution or another army kicks the shit out of you. But to me, anything that anybody ever says about me pales in comparison to our loss of civil liberties and loss of respect for people and how America's social contract with people is to build bigger prisons. That's their safety net, to incarcerate people. And it just goes on and on. Like reading every single email in the U.K.? Reading everybody's website visits and texts? Strip searches for any time you're taken into a police station now in America. I mean, your mom? If her insurance just lapses, they can look in her hoo-hoo? Cavity search for your mom, just because she made a mistake? All this stuff is unacceptable to me. That's what I care about. I could give a shit what people think about me, because I'm going to continue to be an artist. I want to do soundtracks. I'm going to help other bands out. We've done several other bands' albums recently. So I'm going to carry on. And I'm really interested in also setting an example for people who just want to be mature artists and play some live concerts and make records. Because the fixations with teeny-boppers and youth and all this other crap in the media, I just think it's irrelevant if your mindset is more of a folk artist person, or even if you're playing rock. But for some reason, other people have problems with that. Or everybody gives up, or something. It becomes kind of absurd if half of the U.S. population is over 50 but the only thing that's being marketed on TV and the radio is Justin Bieber, who is 18 but hanging out exclusively with 12 year olds, which qualifies him as being a suspect of being a pedophile. It's really all screwed up now. I think there's a few people, like Neil Young, he's going to come out probably with another record one of these days and his integrity is going to be intact and it's going to fit perfectly in the body of work. We need more people like that, and I would like to be one of those people, rather than, "Hi, I'm Kurt Cobain. I can do whatever I want. Now I'm dead. That's what I want." "I'm your hero. Your hero is dead." Or some bullshit.
www.brianjonestownmassacre.com
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Brian Jonestown Massacre’s “Aufheban” reminds us that Anton Newcombe, a functioning genius madman has been releasing consistently great psychedelia since there were dandy warhols. Recorded in Berlin, BJM’s psych meets krautrock.
2. The Brian Jonestown Massacre – Aufheben
Psych veterans BJM are
now twelve albums into their career, and are still finding ways to sound
fresh and original. Aufheben is more electronic than anything these
guys have attempted before. The final two tracks, “Waking Up to Hand
Grenades” and the hilariously titled “Blue Order/New Monday,” are the
album’s crowning achievements.
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Seven Kinds of Wonderful: An Evening with The Brian Jonestown Massacre
September 4, 2012 By 1 Comment
THE BOMBER JACKET writer RCE with Joel Gion from The Brian Jonestown Massacre.
Amazing.
Spectacular.
Perfect.
It is impossible to articulate what happened last weekend. No one word can truly describe the whole experience. Seeing The Brian Jonestown Massacre play at Webster Hall
in New York City and in full effect for the last show of their new
tour was a mind-blowing, inspiring experience. Getting to actually meet
some of the Massacre after the show took the experience to a whole other
level, where words are reduced to mere gibberish.Let’s start at the beginning. What turned out to be one of the most glorious weekends of my life didn’t start out so great. The rental car we booked to take us up to NYC was late getting to the drop, due to the roads around State College being crowded with thousands of students moving back into town to start school, laptops and empty liquor bottle collections clutched in their sweaty hands. Thanks to the car being late, a chain of events occurred that ended with us having to rent a car the day of the show and drive to NYC in the morning. Determined that nothing was going to stop us from seeing The Brian Jonestown Massacre play live, we pushed through, and ended up having a lovely drive into the city.
When we arrived to New York, the first amazing event of the weekend happened: We found a free parking space across from Tompkins Square park, right in front of a house the jazz great Charlie Parker once lived in. Blown away by finding a free space to park the car in the city, we took out everything we needed and left the car there all weekend without incident.
Once we were actually at the venue, reality finally started to sink in. We were going to see The Massacre live! Anton, Joel, and Matt Hollywood playing together again. I didn’t even think I was going to be able to make it to the show, but two good friends of mine chipped in to get me a ticket for my birthday. Best gift ever. Now here I was, at Webster hall at 8:30 p.m. (what an early start, right?) to see one of my favorite bands–one I’d never seen live before this. So how was the show?
Fucking incredible.
I’m sure many folks in the audience were expecting chaos to erupt at some point. Many fans of The Brian Jonestown Massacre discovered the band through the documentary “Dig!,” which makes it seem like every BJM show must end in a fistfight, band breakup, or a kick to the skull. I admit the film was my first introduction to The BJM too, but I’d been a fan for years now since seeing it, and knew they were much more than “Dig!” made them out to be. Knowing Anton is sober now and getting it together, I didn’t think anything crazy would happen, but I guess I was still a little worried. All my worries faded away as soon as The Massacre took the stage. Once they started playing, there was no room for worry or questions or any other mundane things. All outside “things” and “thoughts” were obliterated, blown away by The Massacre’s wall of psychadelic love magic and pure musical intensity.
They started with “Stairway to the Best Party in the Universe,” one of my favorite songs off their new album, Aufheben. We were only a few rows back from the stage, and ended up getting blasted full force by a catchy thud of the opening song. They followed it up with “Vacuum Boots” and “I Want To Hold Your Other Hand,” and kept the hits coming for nearly two hours. They played a good mix of newer material off Aufheben along with many of the “classic” BJM songs we all wanted to hear, like “Who?” “Anemone,” and “Not If You Were The Last Dandy On Earth,” which Matt Hollywood completely nailed. I’m a big Matt Hollywood fan, so it was great hearing him sing a few songs. He even played bongos for a song. Though The Massacre will always be Anton’s band, Hollywood is a key member and a great frontman in his own right. If Anton is the Mick Jagger of The BJM, Hollywood is its Keith Richards. Joel Gion, lead tambourinist and all-around charmer for The BJM, sang a song during the show as well–”There’s A War Going On.” That was a great and unexpected treat. Did you know Joel has a solo album out, and another on the way? More on that later.
As I looked around me, it was easy to tell the crowd was full of true BJM fans. Every face was smiling, laughing, cheering. The sweet smell of ganja filled the air, from nowhere and everywhere at once. Couples embraced and danced together, phones and cameras filled the air, strangers hugged strangers in pure joy. Being at a show where the majority of the crowd is as excited about the band as you are, is rare and transcendent. I’ve never gotten into so many random conversations at a show with complete strangers. As someone who’s gotten used to lame, jaded crowds at many shows, all this was incredibly refreshing. Not every band can conjure this kind of reaction from a crowd.
For anyone who would question how good The Brian Jonestown Massacre really is, seeing how much joy they bring their fans and hearing how powerful and diverse their sound has become should be proof enough that The BJM are the future of music, the nucleus of a small but talented group of bands making “real” music, putting their hearts and souls and blood into the music they make. Not music to sell platinum records or Mountain Dew, but music that truly speaks to the most fundamental parts of the listener–challenging and emotional music that can take you on a wild journey to places you didn’t even know were inside you the whole time.
The show ended all too soon with a 12-minute version of “Straight Up And Down,” so good that everyone in the front row had to get pregnancy tests. There was a moment that stood out in this last song, when Anton and Matt Hollywood were facing each other, wailing away on their guitars. The two were in pretty close proximity to one another, and putting together an incredible jam. It really felt like the two occasional adversaries were totally in sync, melding together to form the cosmic organism that is The BJM. I took this as a great sign that The Massacre is a complete band once again, and is through with much of the drama from the past. Anton and Matt were absorbed into the music pouring out from their guitars, oblivious to everything but the next chord. It’s shows like this that will stop all the “Will anyone freak out again?” discussions, and rev up the “Why aren’t these guys more well known, and where can I get their albums?” discussions.
Speaking of albums, the first thing we did after the show was head to the merch table to buy some vinyl. My friend Jason scored Aufheben on blue vinyl. I grabbed Her Satanic Majesty’s Second Request on bananna yellow vinyl. I would’ve grabbed the last copy of Joel Gion’s solo album Extended Play, but the guy in front of me in line grabbed it right before I could (my only disappointment of the whole night).
As we leave the merch table, who do we see on the concert floor, but the one, the only Matt Hollywood, just chilling out by himself. I couldn’t believe no one else was flocking to him, so Jason and I went over to say hello. We ended up chatting for a little while, and got our albums signed. We thanked him for the great show, shook his hand, and told him how happy we were that he was back in The BJM. Matt Hollywood was a total class act, quiet but very kind, totally handled our ridiculous enthusiasm very well. It was great getting a chance to tell Matt how much we enjoyed his music.
We then left Webster Hall to head down to the afterparty at Cake Shop, where Flavor Crystals was playing, along with some other bands. It wasn’t long before a few more members of The BJM trickled down to hang out.
Frankie “Teardrop” Emerson was the second BJM member I got to chat up. Many fans don’t know who Frankie is even though he has been in the band for 13 years because he was cut out of “Dig!,” apparently to make the narrative flow more smoothly. Needless to say, he wasn’t too thrilled about that, and you shouldn’t be either, because Frankie is pretty awesome. He was very chill to talk to, and he told me a bit about his other project, The Situation. He signed my vinyl as well, and really seemed to appreciate our love.
When Joel Gion made his way to the downstairs of Cake Shop, a buzz went through the room. It took us a while to talk to him because he was surrounded by starry-eyed girls most of the time he was there. He was very relaxed about it all, smiling his Joel smile and doing his best to give each one a little of his time. We approached him in one of the rare moments when he wasn’t surrounded in a wall of adoring female fans, and he was just as friendly and personable as one would imagine. Joel told me he was heading back to Portland after the tour to work on his second album, which is good news for everyone who enjoyed his first one. Not content to just have “the best job in rock ‘n’ roll,” Joel wants people to know he can do much more than play the meanest tambourine in rock. Though some may see what he does in the BJM as ancillary to the main sound, the fact is The BJM never feels quite right without Joel Gion and his tambourines. One could argue he’s the most important tambourine player in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, despite his exclusion from the prestigious Tambourine Players Hall of Fame. But that’s for future rock historians to decide.
Tired from the long day of driving, rocking and drinking, we were ready to call it a night and head to our friend’s apartment to crash. Who do we run into on the way out but keyboard and guitarist Rob Campanella! Rob and I ended up talking for longer than I would’ve expected. We got to tell him how great the show was, and how much we appreciated the band’s music. He told me about some bands I should check out, like The Quarter After, the Lovetones and Asteroid #4. Rob also wanted me to make sure I told everyone about the Committee to Keep Music Evil, a website started by Anton, Greg Shaw and Bomp! Records to “beat The Man at his own game.” If you’re a fan of The BJM, you need to go to this site and bookmark it ASAP. You can pick up albums from great underground bands, as well as special BJM releases only available through the website. The forums are full of fans who post up setlists from shows and trade MP3s of live recordings. It’s an innovative way to change the relationship between fans and bands, and is something I’d like to see propagate in the future.
By the end of the night, I knew I had enjoyed a truly special evening. Getting the chance to actually meet and talk to members of one of your favorite bands is an incredible experience I hope every one of our readers gets to have in their lifetimes.
As we were driving out of the city, hungover and still buzzing over the crazy show we’d just seen, we witnessed our final miracle of the weekend. As we were approaching the Chelsea Pier, and I was resting my eyes in the passenger seat, my friend startled me awake by yelling “Holy shit! It’s David Byrne!” I opened my eyes, and there he was, biking past us like a unicorn in a meadow. He was completely white: white shirt, white pants, white hair, white bike, white headphones. It was a magical moment, watching David Byrne glide past us, whiter than the Republican convention. I like to think a single sunbeam followed him all around the city. All I know is, it was the perfect end cap to what was one of my best weekends ever, and one of the best shows I’ve ever been to. Thank you, BJM, for helping save the music industry from itself. As long as these guys are still making music, there may yet be hope.
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