When BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE ringleader ANTON NEWCOMBE jumps on the steam train of opinion, the best MITCH ALEXANDER can do is try and keep up.
“Hold on a minute before we start, I was just getting all pumped up,
having a laugh,” says the voice on the other end of the line, belonging
to an excited Anton Newcombe – mastermind behind The Brian Jonestown
Massacre. “Ok, this doesn’t have to dominate the interview, but I wanted
to run it by you, being that you’re a credible journalist,” he adds.
Yup, ok, I’ll take that.
“[Long pause like he’s making a big announcement]… James
McCartney announcing that he’s going to have The Beatles: The Next
Generation. I just sent out a tweet saying ‘James, son, April Fool’s Day
was a couple of days ago, you fucking twat!’ That’s unreal, he must be
taking the piss to get some interest in his upcoming EP tour.
“It’s a horrible idea, but there’s an aspect of The Beatles that is
absolute marketing and commoditisation. They dominate, and I have a
problem with that. There were thousands of songs released in the ‘60s
that were as good as any Beatles song, period, but you will never know
that because [Paul McCartney’s] publishing empire seeks to dominate
market share at the expense of music fans.”
After seven or so minutes decrying the Apple Records and Beatles
nostalgia machine, Anton is concerned that the interview has already
gone off on a tangent. But honestly the ‘Beatles Babies’ story was an
icebreaker question I was ready to launch with. And after another
question intended as a lowball transformatively leaps from more cursing
at the ‘60s to pre-packaged boy-bands to the stealthy evolution of the
police state (“people fought the Nazis because they were an oppressive
totalitarian regime, but then we ask for CCTV and we want our whole
lives filmed … that’s crazy!” he says), I accept that it’s better to
just throw the notepad away and get into a conversation. ‘Get lost’ in a
conversation might be more accurate, as it’s all you can do to latch on
to the rapidly firing neurons of one Anton Newcombe. When it dawns on
us that very little has been said about TBJM’s new album Aufheben or the
band’s upcoming Australian tour, I shoot him some of the most
straightforward planned questions via email and he reciprocates
speedily.
Whatever the medium, Newcombe has opinions and he wants you to know
them. His Southern Californian inflection – punctuated by heavy emphasis
on every other word – may seem like aggression or arrogance to some,
but really it’s passion, and seemingly a struggle to get all the
thoughts in his head out to form words.
“People fought the Nazis because they were an oppressive
totalitarian regime, but then we ask for CCTV and we want our whole
lives filmed … that’s crazy!” *
The first thing you should already know about TBJM albums is that
they are like snowflakes; no two are exactly the same. Granted, they are
all indebted to ‘old music’ – psychedelia, country twang, acid rock,
folk and some shoegaze when the mood is right – but there’s a difference
between the early Dylan-esque acoustic shuffle of the Bringing It All
Back Home – Again EP from 1999 and the space-rock found on 2008’s My
Bloody Underground. You might search for clues from the latest album
title and deduce a Krautrock-influenced affair. You’d be half correct
with tracks early in the order like Panic In Babylon, but elsewhere
there are flourishes of ‘60s garage rock, more shoegaziness and the odd
instrumental freak out. But it turns out I was looking into the title
too deeply and going off in the wrong direction…
“The title refers to society, culture, mass media and humanity at
this point in time ... a radical rethink is in order I believe and
‘aufheben’ relates to the concept of ‘ripping it up and starting again’,
to abolish and preserve, to destroy to protect” writes Anton, his typed
thoughts as fast and excited as his spoken ones. “It’s complex, but
think about Germany and the 20th century and it makes sense ... they had
to destroy their culture twice and rebuild it to save it. I love the
concept.”
From the first days of TBJM’s formation in 1995, people have been
giving them six months to live, in the most part due to the band’s (and
to a larger extent Anton’s) onstage and offstage exploits. Their first
10 years of existence – the many line-up changes, rising and falling
favour with critics, and of course the fascinating relationship with The
Dandy Warhols – was captured extensively in the 2004 documentary Dig!,
although Anton goes to lengths to distance himself from the project,
arguing unfair representation. It’s interesting to note that numerous
reviews of both Aufheben and The Dandy Warhols’ latest release This
Machine made mention of the other band and spats (real or imagined), so
never underestimate the willingness of music journalists to revive
conflict that may or may not exist. You get the sense that such
accusations still weigh heavily on Anton’s mind, and occasionally cracks
are found on the surface of his rock solid self-assuredness, drive and
vision.
“I’ve been playing for so long, people are going to think what they
want to think about my age or my accomplishments or my sense of humour,
but none of it’s going to affect me,” he says towards the end of our
interview, the mere mention of such things suggesting he thinks of them
from time to time. “Sure, I used to worry about those things, but I live
by my music and I’ll continue to do that.
“I really want to create a soundtrack for a great movie, but short of
that I plan to write and be free. No pre-conceived styles or changes;
just be honest with myself and carrying on writing in other languages.”
His absorption, his utter commitment to what he calls ‘the concept of
music’ – presumably as opposed to the commoditised finished product –
reminds me of the last time I saw TBJM, several years ago at the Arena.
Two memories stand out. Number one is my ears ringing for several days
afterwards thanks to a clutch of guitarists draping the room in fuzzed
out chords and feedback. The other is Anton consciously stepping back
from the spotlight, kept company by his amplifier and multiple effect
pedals. Again, it contradicts the image of Newcombe as the messianic
bandleader demanding your attention – that role was aptly played by
sometimes member Joel Gion on this particular night – but it aligns with
his refusal to adhere to rock & roll stereotypes.
“I view our shows as being similar to a jazz concert, it’s about
being able to see us make music live and nothing else,” he writes. “It’s
not like it would sound better if I stood front and centre ... there
are no rules, I would prefer to focus on the music.”
That doesn’t mean that there isn’t some space left over for
self-promotion, mind you, as both our spoken and written liaison
concludes with a reminder that the band are playing very well, their
support act The Raveonettes are a ‘fine group’, and that they are all
looking forward to being back in Australia. Perhaps this story should
end with a quote from Anton that encapsulates the whole interview
experience. Equal parts assertive, frenetic and generous with a touch of
self-deprecation. Wasn’t expecting the smiley face though.
“I am sorry if this seems shallow or curt, I am at the airport and my
flight is delayed and my butt hurts from sitting on the floor so :)”. THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE play The Hi-Fi on Thursday May
24, supported by The Raveonettes. AUFHEBEN is out now through Shock. See
www.thehifi.com.au for tickets and www.brianjonestownmassacre.com for more on the band.
*that's not what i said to this person that wrote that artical.
Live Review, 5/11/12: Brian Jonestown Massacre Returns to the Fillmore, Attitude and All
Brian Jonestown Massacre The Blue Angel Lounge Friday, May 11, 2012 The Fillmore
Better than: An MTV reality show reunion special.
It's been eight years since documentary Dig! became our generation's GimmeShelter. A violent ride about the rise
of bands the Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols, Dig! is a shadow both groups have been crawling out from under ever since.
The bands' respective frontmen, Anton Newcombe and
Courtney
Taylor-Taylor, have both renounced the film, in which they fight like
spoiled
children over artistic achievements, fame, and piles of cocaine. It's a
low-budget reality show with an R rating, and Newcombe suffers the worst
of it, ending up depicted
as a drug-fueled madman and deadbeat musician. At Friday's sold-out show
at the
Fillmore, Newcombe continued to suffer, but gratefully, the music hasn't.
Since we're unlikely to see a post-Dig! "where are they now" reunion special, complete with chair
throwing and fist fights, I'll return to the Fillmore on Wednesday for The
Dandy Warhols' performance and tell you how they sound now.
By the end of Dig!,
it feels like Newcombe and The Brian Jonestown Massacre are over. Four albums
and three EPs later, with most core members back in the band including Matt
Hollywood, the buzz of the Fillmore show was Newcombe's sobriety.
The set began with a sedate Newcombe sitting and playing
guitar in the darkness of stage left, making light and friendly banter between
songs -- so light and so friendly that a longtime fan standing next to me
exclaimed: "Oh god, he is sober."
That tone didn't last long. By the middle of the set, with the band jamming loud and
loose, Newcombe rose from his chair and grabbed the mic, drunk off his own
music and ready to rant.
"I remember being in this very room talking about Third Eye
Blind. Yeah, I loved their 15th album. At least the Dandys are still
making records. All these new bands say yeah, put me on Saturday Night Live. I
don't want to see some dumb bitch singing about video games. She might as well
write a song about doing laundry. At least I can relate to that."
He then moved from his distaste for Lana Del Rey to America
itself, which he left for Berlin in 2007.
"I don't even live in your fucking country anymore. It's a
fucking police state."
Still, the band that revived the city's psychedelic sound
when it formed in 1990 seemed happy to be home -- at least until Newcombe began yelling at
the sound engineer, the mixer, and the Fillmore itself.
"You want to be a dick tonight? We're supposed to be at a
world class, professional venue... fuck you."
The crowd cheered, like this was what they came to see, and
the other band members ignored Newcombe, wiping the sweat from their foreheads and looking
bored with this final and most contrived-seeming outburst. After another few frenetic
rock songs, Newcombe settled down, as did the two-hour set, and the band went back into the cerebral
instrumental songs found on its latest album, Aufheben.
Newcombe could have delivered an equally rousing set, if not
better, had he remained in the shadows of the stage, his mouth coupled up to a harmonica.
The sorrow and anger that made him an addict clearly still haunt him, and so too
does the persona we saw in Dig!.
Critic's Notebook
Overheard: "I hear Anton's been sober for the longest ever."
Random detail: Kudos to the woman who managed to jump on
stage in the middle of the set. I don't know how she had the energy or arm
strength to do it.
New term: I'm told "aging hipster" isn't nice and we need
another term. Middle aged hipster = Midster?
The mega-prolific Brian Jonestown Massacre have
attracted a lot of adjectives over the years – whether it be cries of
musical genius or the dismissal of being too volatile to function. These
days, however, the good ship Brian Jonestown Massacre is sailing on
relatively calm seas, a trend which is consolidated by latest record Aufheben –
one which continues a surprising run of consistent quality. Though
having something of a rotating lineup over the years, uninhibited
mastermind of operations Anton Newcombe has maintained a geyser-like
rate of output. In the process of conducting a sociological experiment
in globalisation, Newcombe lets us in on what many call the mind of a
genius.
“It's the last track from the record, I was just
messing around,” Newcombe states when I enquire about the sounds I hear
in the background. “Yeah I was putting it to YouTube and giving it a
name from a foreign language, seeing how long it will take that culture
to find it on YouTube, using crazy tags in their language. When I did
the song in Finnish, it took a day and a half and it had 3,000 people,
then it was in four blogs in Finland and all of a sudden way more people
were listening. It took something like five days for 25,000 spins. I
find myself in a world with many different ways to express myself and
entertain myself. Not entertain myself in a Brave New World way
with some little distraction. It's more like Russian Facebook or
something, where I make a song in Russian and put it out, use
BitTorrent, YouTube – any of this stuff – just as another medium.”
Success, as we all know, can be painfully subjective at times. Raking
in pageviews from a manner of different cultures is an equally
meaningful contextualisation of success than that of sales or chart
placings, Newcombe contends. “Recording in other languages – Google has
made that possible. I try to go in the opposite direction of what band’s
tend to do in those cultures. Like a French band who is influenced by
The Stone Roses or my group are going to come out and sing in English,
and not very well for the most part. Or a band like Air are going to
come out and sing about nothing, like ‘Sexyyy boyyy’, and do really
well,” Newcombe dismisses. “I thought it was interesting to go in the
opposite direction, using social media or whatever technology is
available, I can ask people to do stuff because there are no rules. A
perfect example is when I was recording in Russian and I did that type
of song, not only was it unique as far as independent music, it’s the
only song that’s ever been like that in the history of Russian culture.
In thousands of years, nobody’s ever written a track like that. It’s
more interesting to me – that’s going to exist forever,” Newcombe
explains.
“Artistically, it gives me a lot of opportunities to mess around and
do something that I think is unique. To be more clear about it, I feel I
can do anything now and it will be just as valid as anything else. Say
the sales/volume/dollar thing that people find so important. The bar has
been lowered so far it’s just meaningless. You hear, ‘One Direction,
these five little sex robots that Simon Cowell has created, they’re
bigger than The Beatles!’, or ‘Lady Gaga has released an internet single
and done something The Beatles have never done!’, it’s just completely
meaningless. People tend to get caught up in that. Even the numbers
aren’t financially that impressive, compared to like how Mark Zuckerburg
just bought fucking Instagram for a billion dollars. These two
26-year-old guys just made a billion dollars in one dialogue. The
financial scope of that in terms of society is far more impressive than
Paul McCartney amassing a wealth of 765 million dollars over the course
of 40 years. See what I’m saying? If you reduce it to the
sales/dollar/volume it’s completely meaningless.”
The engrossment in modern outlets such as social media and torrents
is juxtaposed with an adherence to a more traditional musical approach.
Though delightfully experimental, Newcombe sticks to using more organic
instrumentation. So don’t expect to see him hunched over a Macbook
onstage anytime soon. “That's all utterly disposable, like when a DJ is
just into the newest fucking shit. All the music is just disposable. I'm
interested in something else that isn't revolving around that. I was
laughing because one of my friends, a very successful photographer in
Los Angeles, she had tweeted something about this DJ 'killing it right
now', with this photo of some guy with one hand on his laptop and one
hand in the air. Just think, if you stole that laptop and could operate
iTunes, you could be ‘killing it right now’ too,” he laughs. “I'm
interested in all kinds of things, I try to touch on those minimalist
bases when I'm writing too, but I'm can never be that one-dimensional.
That's why I can't answer when someone asks what my favourite song is,
or what my favourite movie or book is. I'm not a housefly. My favourite
things are eating, fucking and shitting. That is a housefly, I can't do
that.”
BY LACHLAN KANONIUK
THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE will be performing with support from The Raveonettes at The Forum on Saturday May 19. Aufheben is out now through Intertia.
Anton Newcombe will bring the Brian Jonestown Massacre to Australia
this week, and to celebrate we have a full stream of their new album Aufheben for you to listen to below. Aufheben, the German word for ‘abolish’/'preserve’ is the super-anticipated follow-up to 2010′s Who Killed Sgt. Pepper?.
The Album, which marks the turn for original member Matt Hollywood, was
recorded at frontman and creative dictator Anton Newcombe’s personal
studio in East Germany.
Newcombe discussed the album in an interview
with NME saying: “I love the concept of having to destroy something to
preserve it – rip it up and start again. It makes sense with clay and
sculpting, you don’t throw it away, you start again. I feel the same
thing is true about society on many levels”. True Anton rhetoric!
Newcombe also discussed his thoughts on the return of Hollywood to
the collective: “He’s a very creative person, even if he’s playing a
piano part or something. It’s strange how we both understand each
others’ ideas, and also contribute unique things, i.e. since we taught
each other to play music, we both have the same approach to writing and
playing and at the same time, and end up with totally different ideas to
contribute. The best of both realms”.
This news comes with details of a combined Australian tour with Danish indie rock duo The Raveonettes in May. The Brian Jonestown Massacre 2012 Australian Tour with The Raveonettes Thursday 17th MAY- Sydney- METRO THEATRE www.ticketek.com.au Friday- 18TH MAY-Canberra- ANU REFECTORY www.ticketek.com.au Saturday-19TH MAY – Melbourne- FORUM THEATRE www.ticketmaster.com.au Sunday-20TH MAY- Adelaide- THE GOV www.moshtix.com.au Tuesday-22ND MAY – Perth- ASTOR THEATRE www.bocsticketing.com.au Thursday-24TH MAY Brisbane- HI FI www.thehifi.com.au Friday- 25th May Newcastle- LEVEL ONE-NEWCASTLE LEAGUES CLUB www.oztix.com.au The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Aufheben is out on now through Inertia The Brian Jonestown Massacre Australian touring party – Anton Newcombe, Matt Hollywood, Joel Gion, Frankie Teardrop, Ricky Maymi, Rob Campanella, Dan Allaire and Collin Hegna. Listen: The Brian Jonestown Massacre – Aufheben
C'est toi qu'on devait envoyer dans l'espace, c'est ça ? Anton Newcombe : Ben ouais ! Et puis avec des robots serviteurs. Au moins, on devrait pouvoir vivre sous la mer.
Donc tu feras jamais un album pour enfants ? Anton Newcombe : Ah si, tiens, j'y pensais hier en
marchant dans la rue. Drôle que tu me demandes ça. Ca sera un album
excellent, avec des refrains imparables.
S02 Ep05 (1 of 1) - Living in a reverse world with Anton Newcombe Special Guest (Audio) get up or get down -Mr. Anton Alfred Newcombe
is a free thinking intellect, passionate communicator, and
singer-songwriter & multi-instrumentalist for the band The Brian
Jonestown Massacre. I contacted him by phone at his residence in Germany
and got to have one of the most interesting and intense conversations
I've had with an artist yet.
We talk about religion/spirituality, pitfalls of the music industry,
the vinyl record industry, and topics from Rev. Jim Jones, to popular
culture and onwards. He talks about his new album, Aufheben, the concept
behind destroying something in order to preserve it and he even gives
me a perfect example (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's use of the term.)
He's an amazing guest, great musician, and fascinating interview.
When BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE ringleader ANTON NEWCOMBE jumps on the steam train of opinion, the best MITCH ALEXANDER can do is try and keep up.
Special Guest (Audio) get up or get down 
