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.
.
[Chronique] The Brian Jonestown Massacre rêve du passé
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.
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
<<<< o >>>>
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.
<<<< b >>>>
Seven Kinds of Wonderful: An Evening with The Brian Jonestown Massacre
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.
* brianjonestownmassacre.com
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Artist LImelight: aNton Newcombe of Brian Jonestown Massacre
WORDS and PHOTOS by CYN COLLINS
Anton Newcombe, formed the Brian Jonestown Massacre
in San Francisco in 1990. Their music is an amalgam of genres including
psychedelic, electronica, folk, blues and experimental. Current members
include: Will Caruthers on bass, formerly of Spacemen 3
and Spiritualized; Matt Hollywood – guitar, bass, vocals. He was a
founding member from 1990–1999, then from 2009–present, and also founder
of the drone group Rebel Drones. Jón Sæmundur Audarson is on guitar and
does artwork, and collaborates with Newcombe on installations, videos,
and recording. He currently heads the DEAD clothing store in Reykjavik,
Iceland, as well as leading the drone/experimental group Dead Skeletons.
Henrik Baldvin Bjornsson plays guitar and collaborates with Newcombe on
recordings. He is also of the Icelandic bands Singapore Sling and Dead
Skeletons. Constantine Karlis plays drums.
Over more than two decades the very prolific BJM have released at least 20 albums and EPs. Their latest, excellent record, Aufheben, was released in May 2012.
Rockstar
Motel had the opportunity to interview Anton Newcombe on their tour bus
after their fantastic show at First Avenue, kicking off their East
Coast tour with Magic Castles of Minneapolis, (whose new eponymous double-vinyl compilation was released on Newcombe’s ‘a’ Label).
What do you recommend artists do in today’s music industry?
Anton
Newcombe: Do some stuff all of the time. Keep moving forward a little
bit. If you spend a $1,000 making a record, spend a $1,000 on
advertising, and you’ll get it back. Make it work somehow. Don’t worry
about sending out promos. Get your fans to make videos on youtube, just
for the sheer fun of it. Be like, “Sure you can make a video! I don’t
give a goddamn. Just do it.”
Try to engage that whole aspect.
Because if you say you have a new record on Bandcamp and go up to Warner
Brothers and say “I have a record on Bandcamp,” they’ll say “that’s not
a record. That’s the sound your profile on Facebook makes.” And
everybody makes it. That’s nothing. I don’t care if you f-cking made $34
last year on Bandcamp. You have to be like, “Well, me and my people are
making videos, we’re making some songs, we have a couple of projects in
the works, and we play with these other guys . . . “ Basically you’ve
got to show “I’m doing lots of stuff, I’m not just sitting on my ass.”
I’m
doing all kinds of stuff. It’s true. I’m not just selling my record on
Bandcamp. That would blow it. I use every f-cking thing. I’ve got a
lawsuit against Napster. But at the same time, I’m using everything on
the planet. It's ridiculous to come out against that shit. Until it
stops, you need to be for and against it. Use everything.
I work with Rockstar Motel . . .
AN:
I just saw the Magic Castles write-up there. That’s brilliant. It’s
really well done. I like how you noted it was a connection about the
music, that I got in touch with them after I heard their music.
I
put out their record, because of that one song. Because to me, that one
song on vinyl made the record worth owning, regardless of what they all
had . . .
In Germany, DJ’ing, I walked by this bar down below
my house – it’s a roommate’s bar. It’s the best one. I was like,
“Eddie, what is this f-cking song?!” Eddie’s like “I’m just playing this
song off YouTube. It’s these guys . . .” “Is this out? Is there a
record?!” He said, “You can’t get it.” I’m like, “How do I find them? I
really want to put out a record!” So I talked to Jason [Edmonds], “Look.
I don’t care what you make. I just want this one song. Why do you have
these records nobody in Europe can get, nobody knows about you. Why
don’t you just make a compilation, and it’ll just be what it is. I’ll
put it out in England, as a different release.”
Then he had this artwork that was so cool. It was orange and silver and this face.
I've known them for years, and their music is so good.
AN: Yeah, but it’s one of those things. It will take time.
The Beatles
went on tour and sold like 20,000 singles, and everyone went crazy. The
Zombies “Tell Her No” sold over a million records. And they were just
kids that won a contest. Everyone was like, “No. You’re just a band from
America.” They weren’t drinking or smoking weed or anything.
The
whole business is rigged. They always run their business just like
Coca-Cola. You’ll go into a supermarket and see 1000 2-liter bottles of
Coke. They don’t need those right there. They could have them in the
back, you could have them delivered daily. They do that to stop you from
other choices. You have limited choices so you choose Coke because its
right there in your face. And the Beatles - it's the same thing. You go
in an airport shop at Christmas and the Beatles are right there along a
whole wall. They do it to make the people buy them. And they do that
with the radio. They pay a certain percentage to get the radio to play
certain music all the time. I could DJ on the radio every day for a week
and play different music as good if not better, than the best Beatles song. And nobody’s ever heard these songs. It’s because of them.
Was tonight your first night at First Avenue? How’d it feel?
AN:
It was my first time at First Avenue, ever. It was okay. I think, for
both bands . . . there are acoustical anomalies for our type of music a
little bit. There’s a lot going on.
I know, lots of
layers. What do you feel is the current climate for psychedelic music
like you’ve been working in for so long? Is it good, progressing . . .
or do you prefer the term neo-psych?
AN: That
doesn’t matter. To me, all that stuff means its mind-expanding. To
others to varying degrees, they can get totally retro. I think that’s
the kiss of death, when novelty, even if you’re somebody like the Hives,
or something can become a gimmick. Or the White Stripes even, became a
little self-suffocating as a gimmick, because it wasn’t real.
It’s very important when you’re building a crowd for yourself, to set the perimeters infinite.
So what do you look for, for your ‘a’ label?
AN:
I would like to . . . first I have to find the stuff. I don’t like
people bombarding me – “you have to check out this thing.” “You have to
check out this thing … “ It’s annoying. You have no idea how many people
I’m in contact with. But you can imagine if we’re playing 1,000 person
places or bigger every day, there’s a lot of people: “You have to listen
to my demo.” “you have to listen to my CD.” It's nonstop, on my email,
my twitter, my YouTube, every day. There’s no way . . . I can’t do it.
And I don’t want to. I don’t even want to tell people who’re like “I
really like your band, check out my music.” Because they don’t
understand . . . it doesn’t work like that . . .
I’ve
listened to Magic Castles for about six years, and always liked them.
They’re real. I like their authenticity. And they never really pushed
it, put themselves out. And you have Flavor Crystals, same thing.
Authentic, but they don’t put themselves out. They exist . . .
AN:
People are like, I’ve got this great job, and then I also play music.
It’s like Pink Floyd . . . they had to make a decision. It wasn’t like,
I’m working at this firm and I might go on tour. It doesn’t work that
way in real life. You have a hobby playing music, that’s fine.
Modern
society is like trying to insure against nature (laughs). It’s like
when you have your house insulated, and have all these backup plans,
right? Safety nets. Do some other shit.
I love your new record Aufheben. Are you working on your next record?
AN:
I go out and write music every day; I don’t share a lot of things. From
this record I shared 20 or more songs . . . you ever see those chord
organs, the plastic organs where you press a button and its with a
chord, you can do that with keys in your record . . . they can be slowed
down in the way your song might go between notes and it has a change . .
. you can stretch that concept of how a song would be. You can actually
make a song out of your record. It’s on a deeper level you’re
perceiving it and it becomes a piece of music, the whole thing, with an
effect from beginning to end, just like a song.
That’s heavy on a
deeper level. You don’t have to understand that stuff to have it work
for other people. You don’t have to know why you like something to like
it. Jackson Pollock, splattering paint and it being art . . . anybody
can splatter paint on a canvas, but he did it, and you didn’t and it's
art – it's aesthetically pleasing. There’s actually a flow.
What keeps you going, inspires you – you’ve been doing this for so long?
AN: I enjoy playing music. I’ve been playing music for a long time. We were making bands in my bedroom since I was like, 10.
What was the first record that made you want to play music?
AN:
It wasn’t really records. Until I started seeing people playing punk
music, I never realized . . . I’d see Simon and Garfunkel playing music
on a TV clip – they’re both exceptional. There’s nothing that leads you
to believe you could be them. But especially the Beatles.
They inspired so many people to play music. But they wanted the fame,
the effects of that – the girls screaming, the notoriety. There’s
nothing that Paul McCartney does that leads you to be Paul McCartney
because you can’t. And Jimi Hendrix especially – there’s nothing he ever
did that would lead you to believe you ever could become Jimi Hendrix,
because you cannot, ever. But you can become your own thing.
You
hear people you like, you bring them on. I know you have members of
Dead Skeletons from Iceland who are on your label, in your band. AN:
Katy and I made up their name. Henrik wasn’t a singer. He was an
artist. I said you have to sing, on this thing, when we were high. We
worked that out, and then just for the fuck of it I had him do Icelandic
curses on the stage at Glastonbury in public. But then he found out he
liked that, so he kept going on from there. We still work together, but I
have my own thing, and he has his. When we cross, we cross. Because
there are multiple levels. There’s a mystical, spiritual side to it and
an art side to it.
I read, you bring your spiritualism whether it’s Crowley or Sufism, or whatever you’re into now . . .
AN:
Well, I’m into a lot of things. I can’t imagine why I would need to
practice magic. I am magic. I don’t need anything to come between me and
God. I’ve no necessity to study the Kabbal. I don’t need to join the
Masonic Temple. I don’t need the fellowship of any of these things, and I
don’t need the Catholic Church. I’m as much a Sufi as I am anything
else. A lot of those things are similar to Sufism but I don’t need the
dogma. I’m interested in all kinds of things.
The way that
people get mixed up with dogma and everything is, its always been that
way, people and their dark arts, they don’t really understand a lot of
that stuff on a deep level.
I can’t even think of a practical
application of the science, of understanding, or even needing a point of
reference, with the symbolism that I can see anywhere, allegories or
anything.]
Is that a reason why your music touches people so deeply, reaches them? It feels like part of the psyche, to me.
AN:
It’s resonating on the full cycle of human emotions – it's going to
touch people at different points, wherever they are at, whether it's an
aesthetic feeling or a somber feeling. The feeling can be split, you
touch where people are at on their cycle, whether it’s a daily thing or a
lunar thing or the life cycle. It could be the whole life
consciousness. If you know about chakras . . . when you get to the
crown chakra, you go up and it radiates, it goes to all of them, up and
down. That’s seemingly why, when people understand this, they can master
things, whether it’s a relationship with plants and animals, and be a
scientist at the same time. When you’re like, “I can relate to all kinds
of things!” That’s what that is.
Because you’ve
done this for 22 years . . . so much music has existed and passed in
that time frame. How do you access an amalgam of genres and styles and
make it your own in a unique way?
AN: Look at Bob
Dylan’s collection. Its all something else, uniquely him. That’s folk
music. That would be like trying to say, “No, I own the air, I own the
rain.” It’s ridiculous. I don’t even operate that way.
We’ve got to leave, but you can email me anytime if you have more questions!
Keep up your work with the website. That stuff’s really good!
The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Magic Castles can be seen tonight and the next few nights at the following venues: · Wed Aug 22 Washington DC @ 9.30 Club
Artist Limelight: The Ballad of Magic Castles and the Brian Jonestown Massacre
August 16, 2012
Artist LimeLight: The Ballad of Magic Castles and Brian Jonestown Massacre
WORDS by CYN COLLINS
Photo by Zane Sprang
Magic Castles,
psych-folk band based in Minneapolis, now have the golden chance for
their mysticore music to be discovered in “faraway lands.” Their
eponymous double-vinyl was released in April via the Brian Jonestown Massacre
frontman, Anton Newcombe’s label ‘a’ Records. And, now, Magic Castles
are embarking on an East Coast tour with Brian Jonestown Massacre August
17 - 25, 2012.
Pivotal psychedelic band Magic Castles
formed in Minneapolis in 2006. Their new double vinyl is a compilation a
varied spectrum of songs from earlier self-released CDs: The Lore of
Mysticore (May 2008) and Dreams of Dreams of Dreams (May 2009) and the
more experimental cassette Songs of the Forest (Moon Glyph label).
Magic Castles’
phantasmagorical haunting music is a haunting, heavy hazy interweaving
of innumerable guitar tracks and vocals. Magic Castles song content is
surreal, mystical and fantastical – the stuff of dreams. “I try to avoid
doing therapy sessions through songs. I don’t want to hear someone’s
true story account of something. I do try to write love songs, sort
of...“ said Edmonds.
The mood of their music conjures the
sunshiny surf of “Big Sur,” to Farfisa drones and sweeping soundscapes
rife with dark lyrical matter coined “mysticore” - involving trolls,
golden birds, and other creatures “conjured from the lands of the
mushroomed mind” on their epic 7-minute “Ballad of the Golden Bird,”
the song which attracted Anton Newcombe’s attention, and his consequent
spinning their music while DJ’ing in Iceland, Berlin and more.
Magic
Castles lead vocalist/guitarist Jason Edmonds purchased his first The
Brian Jonestown Massacre record Give it Back! in 1997, inspired by his
first psychedelic music influences in the mid-90s such as Spacemen 3,
Galaxy 500, Spiritualized, and Stereolab. When Edmonds attended SXSW 2005, everything changed.
“When I went to SXSW in 2005, I saw Psychic Ills,
Gris Gris and Vietnam and a bunch of other bands. I was really into 90s
indie rock which I’ve lately been getting into again, I was listening
to Yo la Tengo.
That blew my mind. It had heavy reverb vocals and sounded like it came
from another planet and when I heard that I was like, 'shit, I want to
do that!'”
At that time, Edmonds was in an instrumental band
called Nymore with guitarist Jeremiah Doering and keyboards/vocalist
Noah Skogerboe. “I really wanted to sing, and have the vocals drenched
in reverb. That was the foundation for Magic Castles,” said Edmonds.
So,
in 2005 Edmonds began home recording on his 4-track. At the time,
“there was a lot of powerpop in Minneapolis. A few people were doing
70’s power-rock. There wasn’t much trippier, softer shit on the radio. I
wanted to make the music I wanted to hear, to fill that gap.” Edmonds
added Doering and bassist Paul Fuglestad, who was also into ‘90s
psychedelic and shoegaze music. A rotating cast of players and friends
joined them along their six-year journey, including Skogerboe, featured
on the new self-titled double-vinyl.
When Anton Newcombe heard
an early Magic Castles song via youtube in 2010, he was excited about
it, and put it on his Ustream.tv outlet, Dead TV, an
experimental social media phenomenon. Newcombe remembers, "The song that
introduced me to Magic Castles was ‘Ballad of the Golden Bird.’ I
really think it is special, so much so, I decided to ask the group if I
could release this record through my label, ‘a’ Records.”
Newcombe
contacted Edmonds directly in Fall, 2010. “Talking with Anton was a
surprise. He was like, “Hey, let’s make records!” I said, ‘Alright,
let’s do it!’ When I first got his emails I was really excited. It
wasn’t anything I’d ever tried to seek out. For me to have all this
happen because of music, means a lot to me because music is what it’s
all about.”
Edmonds comments on the film Dig! which
portrayed largely negative views on Newcombe, and working with him over
the past two years. “Paul and I had been going to BJM shows for years
before Dig! came out. Once that movie came out, we were able to
read between the lines of the slanderous bullshit. There’s a lot more
to Anton than that movie portrays. He’s not an asshole, he’s brilliant.
He got a bad stint from that movie - people think he’s psychotic and
crazy, but he’s not.”
Newcombe called Edmonds inviting them to
tour with The Brian Jonestown Massacre in late summer. Along with
Edmonds, Fuglestad and Doering, are newer members, keyboardist Alex
Pennaz (of The Flying Dorito Brothers) and drummer Scott Weller, (of
Fire in the Northern Firs).
Magic Castles members note Newcombe
and the BJM organization have been very supportive since he first
contacted them in 2010, then producing Magic Castles and releasing it
through distributor Cargo Records in March, 2012.
It’s going
around the world, he’s introducing us to his fans and there’s a lot of
them. They’re really receptive to this kind of music, obviously. The
time is now. We’re going to go on the road and just kill it, hopefully,”
said Edmonds.
Album Cover Photo by Summer Badawi Album Cover Design by Dan Black
The album cover photograph was from Summer Badawi. I worked
with her at the Birchwood Cafe. She’s a master gardener in
Pennsylvania. She took photos of her garden with a Holga camera. She had
photos of lily pads too. There’s a bunch of pictures I saw of hers I
wanted to use as a collage. We gave it to Dan Black to design the album
cover. He did the font too.” – Jason Edmonds
The Brian Jonestown Massacre w/ Magic Castles tour dates:
· Thu Aug 16 Minneapolis MN @ First Avenue *
· Fri Aug 17 Milwaukee WI @ Turner Hall *
· Sat Aug 18 Chicago IL @ The Metro *
· Mon Aug 20 Atlanta GA @ Variety Playhouse *
· Tue Aug 21 Carrboro NC @ Cats Cradle *
· Wed Aug 22 Washington DC @ 9.30 Club *
· Thu Aug 23 Philadelphia PA @ Union Transfer *
· Fri Aug 24 Boston MA @ Royale *
· Sat Aug 25 New York NY @ Webster Hall *.
Interview
Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Anton Newcombe
Ever since his misbehavior became the stuff of rock legend—as chronicled in the documentary Dig!—Brian Jonestown Massacre’s
Anton Newcombe is frequently described as one of music’s reigning bad
boys. Coverage for his band’s music? Not so much, but it’s not because
he’s undeserving. His act’s latest, Aufheben,continues
Jonestown’s tradition of mind-bending psychedelic oeuvres, despite the
fact that the famously hard-living songwriter has been clean for a few
years. Before his show Friday, Aug. 17 at Turner Hall, TheA.V. Club had a magical mystery tour of a chat with the mercurial vocalist-guitarist. The A.V. Club: Aufheben has a straightforward psychedelic feel. Was it a deliberate shift away from the rhythm- and groove-based songs on your Who Killed Sgt. Pepper? album? Anton Newcombe: I personally needed to reset the clock artistically for me, in a way [on Sgt. Pepper].
I haven’t been fairly treated by the lazy journalism in the history of
the project, like people saying, “He just likes The Rolling Stones, he
fancies himself in the ’60s.” You know what I mean? It’s never been just
that. I consider it psychedelic, but it’s in the broadest sense of the
term. It’s not wearing psychedelic clothes, or something like that. It
has to do with anything can be a part of it, mind-expanding crap. In the
way The Rolling Stones, or bands of that era, could play cello music or
tea party jazz or some Indian sitar music or a ’50s-sounding song—it’s
like, “Oh, he’s on marimba. He’s playing a sitar. He’s playing rhythm
and blues.” That’s the part of psychedelic things that I like.
I felt like it was important for me to reset the clock, basically
blast out something really random and get fucked up, then not get fucked
up anymore, just to be really, truly free. AVC: Do you think that approach on Who Killed Sgt. Pepper? changed the way people look at Brian Jonestown Massacre? AN: At some point it occurred to me, today people go on a
talent show and they’re waiting for validation. It’s like permission to
be famous or something. Nobody ever gave me permission in my life. A lot
of people walk around with those little accolades, and they feel like
they have permission to have attitude and everything that comes with it,
right? At some point, I was like, “I’m so fucking legit. I own a LTD,
which is a corporation. I have 14 employees. I go all over the world. I
have my studio in my apartment.” At some point I just said, “This is who
I am.” AVC: That seems like a punk-rock attitude toward the world. AN: I grew up in the punk rock [scene] in California, which is
totally different than the New York Dolls or the English thing. The
people in the West definitely have a more freer attitude, more
pioneering-leftover kind of thing. The people in New York, it’s the
immigrant thing about making it in the evils of the city. In California,
it was like, “Fuck you, we’re going to do what we want. We don’t want
your Ronald Regan bullshit,” or whatever. The reality of the yuppie
world that we live in, it was a reaction against that, with the freedom
and youth culture. That’s in me as much as anything else. AVC: You mentioned that people always call Brian Jonestown
Massacre a ’60s-based band. While there are those elements in it, you
never seem to have tried to be a revivalist act. AN: We were very, very lucky that way, because I used that as a
point of reference, and also used montage and post-modern techniques; I
used reference points to the ’60s. I used ’60s instrumentation. I’m
influenced by the music of the ’60s. It’s a mishmash of everything. To
me, psychedelic can be all the way to a DJ. House music can be very
psychedelic. Flying Lotus is very psychedelic. Even though it’s urban and technological, it’s also mind-expanding, anything-can-go mishmash. AVC: These days, you live in Berlin. Why did you choose to become an expat? AN: I am a bohemian person. I don’t speak German, and I live
in a foreign country where all the signs are in German. I did that
deliberately. I’m like a ghost. AVC: You’re deliberately out of place living in Berlin? AN: Look at how much media and advertising you’re subjected
to, this mindless chatter of advertising—and even people talking around
you. I just block it out so effortlessly because it’s all a foreign
language to me. It’s really a good thing for my head, living in Berlin. AVC: That’s an interesting way to go about avoiding advertising in
the public sphere. Banksy’s criticism of public advertising is that you
have no choice but to be subjected to it. AN: You’re a victim of it. I love him. He likes me, too. We’re kindred spirits in a lot of ways. AVC: Have you ever met him? AN: Well, who would know, right? Yeah, he just changed the oil
on my car last week. [Laughs.] He touched base with me on MySpace, back
in the day. I used to do this stuff called Billboard Liberation Front
with these people, these characters in San Francisco. We used to jack
billboards all the time, all the ads. We’d just climb up and change
them. These guys, like John Law, would literally do the neon on the
Camel sign, just change the words completely, with real neon tubes. He
did that as a day gig. He’d just fuck up these things. You can find the
evidence of it in the Survival Research [Laboratories] publications.
It’s so amazing.
I’ve always been a fan of that kind of destruction of corporate
property occasionally. Even graffiti. A funny example is one time I was
in a riot in San Francisco, on the edge of it. Some anarchist guy with a
bandanna on runs by with a spray can and sprays “Fuck shit up” on the
wall. A policeman was standing right next to me; I literally walked up
to it, pulled [out] my Sharpie pen, and just changed it with little
lines to “Buick shut up.” The policeman just laughed. It was so cool,
because the spray paint said “Fuck shit up,” and I was like, “Okay, I
will!” AVC: Speaking of unrest, the word “aufheben” has several meanings
that don’t translate directly from German, and many are used in the
context of protest movements. Which definition applies to the album? AN: If you’re an environmentalist, global warming, you’re
going to learn about this word, “aufheben.” It means to abolish or
destroy, or to pick up and preserve. Basically, the concept of tearing
something apart to save it. If you apply it to German culture of the
last century—not only the DDR with the Stasi and all that stuff, and the
Communism—Germany and the culture, they had to completely destroy the
culture to elevate it and to preserve it.
Hegel was using the word even before National Socialism, even a
modern expression in what we saw, not just with the Holocaust, but with
culture and race, across the board, whether it’s Gypsies or Russians or
whatever. They completely had to destroy that. Everybody’s house? Puff.
If you look at [Aufheben’s] cover, it’s the Carl Sagan diagram
from the Voyager program. They sent that plaque on the two spaceships
out of our solar system with the concept of reaching out to send a
signal looking for intelligent life. It says, “We’re humanity. We’re
humanoids. This is binary information. Inside this ship is a record
player, and this is how you work a record player.” I thought it would be
funny if a German scientist put the actual word aufheben on the plaque.
Yes, this is who we are and what we are. It needs to be destroyed to be
preserved. AVC: Was that what you were trying to do with this record? Start fresh? AN: No. I’ve been a fan of esoteric information, ghost
stories, since Leonard Nimoy and beyond; whether I believe in them or
not, I enjoy them. I knew that 2012 was coming and people are freaking
out about the Mayans. I’ve been thinking about making a 2012 record for a
long time, sort of the soundtrack for that time period. I wanted to be
ready. I wanted to make sure I had a band. AVC: Like a soundtrack to the paranoia leading up to the end of the world, or the apocalypse itself? AN: The apocalypse. I’m really interested in eschatology. You can look that up on Wikipedia.
It’s the study of end times. Whether you’re Jewish or Islam, they all
have this rapture or tribulation type [of story]. If you’re from India,
they believe that Kali is going to come, and there’s going to be a great
battle. It doesn’t matter what culture. I’ve always been into that
stuff.
You think of Daniel Day-Lewis getting into a role; he’ll become this
character and just fucking live it, even when he’s off camera, until
he’s onto the next thing. I like to do that, too. I think it’s really
fun to sing from the perspective of a shamanistic, Ezekiel-type
character. You’re getting the Holy Spirit, or a spirit in you, and
you’re going to confront the thingy-wingy, the all-seeing thing. I like
to get that in my head and write from that perspective. So when I write
songs about love, I use a literary device where I might be singing about
God, even if I’m talking about drugs. AVC: You’re sober these days. Does that affect how you approach music? AN: I want to emphasize something. It’s not sober as in
AA-sober. For whatever reason, I had broken my arm, and I became
addicted to opiates. This is years ago. I had to stop doing that. Then I
started drinking. I liked being buzzed all the time, like a mellow
drunk, ’50s style. Like maybe Frank Sinatra, you know what I mean? It’s
in your blood, and it takes a month to get there, but then you’re
rolling for the rest of your life. Not getting in fights or slurring
your words, but obviously being lit and having that lifestyle.
For me, drinking a liter of vodka every day, my intention was never
to commit suicide by drinking and drugging or misadventure. It became
time for me to stop. The only way you can quit drugs or booze is truly
to quit. It isn’t like the sobriety thing; if you’re buzzed or stoned or
on Prozac all the time, it becomes the way that you see things. It
becomes a filter. The bottom line is, I would really like to work on
soundtracks, and drinking and drugging isn’t going to help that in any
way. A three-martini lunch isn’t going to get me a gig doing a
soundtrack for a movie. It’s not necessary for what my real goals are. AVC: Does that change the way you go about making music? Everyone still talks about Jonestown being a totally drugged-out band. AN: Yeah. It becomes intimidating. One thing: Alcohol changes
your hearing. I quit before last tour, and I was like, “Everything
sounds so fucking weird the way you guys are playing.” [Alcohol] thins
your blood, so your hearing isn’t the same. My whole relationship with
music, with recording, had been based on the way I had been hearing
sounds with a light buzz on for my adult life. That changes, and now I
have to work with somebody until I develop another method of operation
of understanding what other people will be listening [to]. AVC: Does being sober help with your reputation? You’ve been known as a firebrand since the days of Dig! AN: I was doing an interview with the JPost [The Jerusalem Post] because
I was doing in a show in Tel Aviv. They were like, “You have a bad
reputation.” I’m listening to this journalist, and I’m thinking, “Do you
know anything about Israel and your own reputation? It’s a mixed bag of
tricks, too.” I didn’t bring it up because I’m not trying to wind
someone up, because they are very defensive about that. The analogy that
I used with him was—I’m not bagging on him—I just said, “You could say
that the Hell’s Angels have a bad reputation, then you talk to a biker,
and he’s trying to join it. It just depends upon who you’re talking to
about reputation.” AVC: Once it’s established that you have a bad reputation, it’s
almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, with everyone approaching you
differently. AN: People try to provoke stuff. Most journalists just get
into a holding pattern, and they wait until someone throws something out
that’s just ridiculous, and they run with that. They really don’t have
any knowledge of the recordings or any interest in it. They’re just
going through the motions of their journalistic function. I’ve done
interviews with Entertainment Weekly and everybody that you can
think of, and I understand how people approach the stuff. Some people
are familiar with it, and some people aren’t. It’s obvious to me, [from]
how people approach questions, whether they’re thinking.
Since the release of 2004 documentary Dig!, Brian Jonestown Massacre's Anton Newcombe has been dogged by public perceptions.
Bring
up Anton Newcombe to anyone familiar with the mid- to late-'90s Bomp!
Records roster and you'll hear about the unheralded genius of one of the
most talented musicians of the last two decades. Unfortunately, the
majority of people didn't form an opinion about the Brian Jonestown
Massacre leader until the 2004 documentary Dig!, watching as he
struggled with substance abuse, became physically violent to his band
members and the audience, and even sent a bullet to on-again, off-again
musical cohorts the Dandy Warhols. Many have questioned the integrity
and nonlinear storytelling of the film in the eight years since its
release, but Newcombe, who brings his psych-rock ensemble Brian
Jonestown Massacre to Royale next week, is still dogged by its
not-so-flattering portrait.
"I think
when you're externally looking at another person that you only know
from what other people say, you're only responding to what other people
are talking about, you're already pretty far removed from reality and
you're commenting on comments about a person," Newcombe said last week
from Berlin, his home since 2008. "People forget that human beings
aren't very static, and whatever you're commenting on may have been only
reflective of a moment and not the big picture. I don't dwell on it as
much as other people."
One of the more bizarre examples of the Dig!
fallout, according to Newcombe, is that he has been banned from Canada.
"It is absolutely ridiculous," he says exasperatedly. "You would think I
would've been banned from Israel or someplace weird right, like
Switzerland or something, where people are uptight. 'We don't want you
in Sweden; we've got our shit together — you don't,' or something like
that. But it's not the case; it's fucking Canada of all places. But
since I've got it all out in the open, man, I don't like their fucking
government either. So, so what? It's not based on reality. I don't have a
police record. It's based on the perceptions of their über-hipster
fucking customs people."
Part of
Newcombe's take on politics and governmental hypocrisy has been
emboldened by his time overseas. He spent time in Iceland in 2007
recording the Brian Jonestown Massacre's acclaimed My Bloody Underground, and this spring dropped the brilliant Aufheben,
recorded in his Berlin-based studio. "I think I'm the type of person
that likes to set goals and try and do different things," Newcombe says.
"I'm not really attached to any one place; I like it [in Germany]. I
don't want to be distracted by my gut feeling of how society is going in
the United States." He laughs before adding, "I try to just get on with
my work."
The California native
brings up, as an example, the recent tragedy in Milwaukee, where a
gunman shot up a Sikh temple, killing six before taking his own life.
"In America they should be able to talk about what it means to be able
to acquire a firearm, without it being, 'Oh, it's an attack on our
Second Amendment,' and try to stop the conversation," Newcombe says.
"[People] never get around to the reality of having that many guns in
America. You can't drive without a license, but you can acquire a weapon
regardless."
Further cementing just how far removed he's become from the Dig!
portrayal, Newcombe casually brings up "a small remix project" he's
been working on for the Dandy Warhols, whom the documentary painted as
bitter rivals with the BJM. "It's for 'The Autumn Carnival,' from their
new record," he says of the remix. "I did a total like, Depeche and
Kraftwerk — but no samples; like '70s-style, just getting weird. Any
chance I get to turn somebody else's band into Bronski Beat I take,
pretty much."
BRIAN JONESTOWN
MASSACRE + MAGIC CASTLES | Royale, Tremont St, Boston | August 24 @ 6 pm
| 18+ | $20 adv./$23 doors | 617.866.8933 or boweryboston.com
Brian Jonestown Massacre is back, and frontman Anton Newcombe
-- still best remembered for his wigged-out personality in the
rockumentary "Dig!" -- is reiterating his good taste by bringing the
Twin Cities' own hypnotic, psychedelic drone-rockers Magic Castles
along for the wild ride. Newcombe just released the Castles' eponymous
new album on his label, A Records. BJM also has a new one to promote,
"Aufheben," another mad swirl of guitar-driven psychedelica. (7 p.m.
Thu., First Avenue. $20.) Riemenschneider
On Friday, The Brian Jonestown Massacre will play its third show in
as many years in Milwaukee, visiting Turner Hall for a 7 p.m. gig.
It's hard to classify this band, but having seen their last two shows
in Milwaukee, I can safely say that BJM is one of my all-time
favorites.
Newcombe is touring in support of the band's new record, "Aufheben."
The album is reminiscent of BJM's earlier work, but it also sounds
distinctly different from the vampy, guitar heavy, almost surf-rock
music you'll find on its two-disc retrospective, "Tepid Peppermint
Wonderland."
Interestingly, BJM has been a little more visible lately, as its 1996
song, "Straight Up and Down" is the theme song to HBO's "Boardwalk
Empire."
If you saw the 2004 documentary, "Dig!," you'll know that the band's
front man, Anton Newcombe, is a very complex, albeit brilliant,
musician. So, distilling a 15-minute phone conversation with him into
one interview, in which we talked about everything under the sun, wasn't
easy.
From his home in Berlin, Newcombe said he likes playing in Milwaukee.
"Turner Hall is right next to a German beer garden, right?"
But seriously, "Wisconsin, despite recent events, is a progressive
state," said Newcombe. "I like salt of the earth, normal people, and I
also like its progressive politics."
For an unbelievably prolific band that was seemingly recording
nonstop in the late '90s and basically received no radio airplay, BJM is
also an incredibly experience live.
"I think you'll enjoy this trip, because we've been out for a couple
of months doing Europe and the West Coast and Australia. I think the
band's playing pretty good," he said.
So how is "Aufheben" both different and the same as the band's other work?
"I like to see things evolve, but also stay true to whatever traditions and theories are involved," said Newcombe.
I asked Newcombe if "Boardwalk Empire" has opened his music up to new fans.
"I'd like to think that's true," he said. "But I think it's a
combination of so many different factors all at once. If I do a Google
search on my band's name in the last week, all sorts of people are
name-dropping me as a point of reference. That's kind of cool, because
one of my goals was to enter the popular lexicon.
"Music is a really strange medium, because when you think about it,
in the really big picture, mediocrity disappears. You have to force
yourself in your craft if you want to hang in there. All of our
recordings are conceptual art."
After interviewing the Dandy Warhols' Courtney Taylor-Taylor this spring, I was almost afraid to ask Newcombe about "Dig!"
Taylor-Taylor is still furious about the film, but Newcombe is much more at peace with it.
"I don't think the movie was very fair to (Taylor-Taylor),
specifically. I made it very clear from square one when I saw what they
were trying to do with the finished product, that it wasn't OK."
Still, Newcombe acknowledges that the movie showed that average people can follow their dreams.
"It's one of our primary goals, to reinforce that folk notion about
what it is that I'm doing, that kind of environment. It's like a
marketing strategy.
"If you watch the Beatles, except for playing guitar, there's nothing
that they do that you could. Those kind of guys influence people to
seek fame, but if you're watching Jimmy Page play, there's nothing that
he'll show you that leads a person watching to think that they can
become him.
"I'm more interested in folk music that's so natural, that maybe
you're watching your grandma sing. If ("Dig!") inspired people to do
stuff, then that's what I'm really interested in."
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
MAGIC CASTLES (REVIEW)
Magic Castles (A Records)
Listing The Velvet Underground,
Spacemen 3 and Galaxie 500 as influences can go either way for a band;
as all three bands are incredibly influential and held with major
regard; the listener is immediately set up for delight or
disappointment.
Fortunately for fans of well-crafted,
well-written and performed psychedelia, Minneapolis' Magic Castles
delight and don't disappoint, and it's pressed up on high quality 180
gram vinyl to boot housed in a lovely gatefold cover.
The magnificent opener "Death Dreams" sets the tone from a swirling
jangly bed capped with clear vocals and excellent harmonies.
Fortunately, the mix doesn't bury the vocals as many bands within the
genre are inclined to do. The ending guitar freakout manages to be
freaky enough but soothing and groovy ala "What Goes On". The second
track, "Now I'm A Little Cloud" certainly wears a strong Galaxie 500
influence on its sleeve, yet while Galaxe has not aged well for me
(sorry), this track showcases once again the above-average song craft of
the group highlighted by some vivid imagery in the lyrics. I really dig
how this track gets a bit more out-of-tune sounding as it drifts along,
yet still remains so pleasantly whimsical.
A standout track is
"Imaginary Friends", which takes the opening chord progression from the
Velvets "Femme Fatale" and somehow turns it into something unique thru
the creative melody and unexpected chord progression change. Beautiful
Sunday morning music, suited for coming down or waking up.
Spread
out among four sides for maximum sonic impact, side two begins with the
gorgeous "The Ballad Of The Golden Bird" which sets the mood with
soothing feedback, organ and more of those pretty vocals that are
reminiscent of the dark, bad trip side of Smile. Once the band kicks in
just under the two minute mark we're treated with a lovely,
unforgettable guitar break followed by more incredibly triply lyrical
imagery on top of a melody that reduces me to a puddle. An extraordinary
track, one which is the focal point of the entire record. As "Ballad"
drifts off into the ozone in a psychedelic haze, the song cross fades
into "All My Prayers", which follows the drone all the way into pure
drug-free tripping. Here we are, five songs into the album and each song
breathes its own personality and each is also a fully realized vision.
This is an album in the truest sense of the word. The man can say the
album is dead, but as long as visionaries such as Magic Castles walk the
earth the album lives on, and I thank them for that.
On to side
three and through sequencing that is downright genius, the group lifts
off again with "Songs Of The Forest", which motors along with the most
gentle (though mind melting) groove this side of Easter Everywhere.
I'm
hoping by this point in my rambling you have stopped reading and simply
bought a copy of this masterpiece for your very own. I could write
about the rest, but I've already written too many words. This record is
essential. A big thanks to Magic Castles and Anton Newcombe (the A
behind A records) for this remarkable release.
