Brian Jonestown Massacre

Vanguard - August 18, 2005

Live Review by Daniel Brody

In Ondi Timoner’s documentary DiG!, Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Anton Newcombe is portrayed as a crazed genius, just as likely to write a beautiful song as he is to beat up an audience member. Newcombe has disavowed this portrayal as exaggerated and inaccurate, but his band’s performance at the Vanguard presented a frontman every bit as frustrating as DiG! asserts.

On record, BJM are pleasant enough, performing psychedelic nuggets with a darker edge than the similarly-minded Elephant 6 bands. Catchy numbers like “Who?” came across well onstage, especially when coupled with the hallucinogenic color patterns on screens behind the band and the Vanguard’s flashy dance club lighting system. But, all too often, the songs descended into extended feedback jams running ten to fifteen minutes. The first time it happened, it felt cool, as if the spirit of the Fillmore was back, but then it happened several more times, sounding the same way every time. Any musical virtuosity was buried beneath layers of formless noise, with Newcombe’s soloing rendered inaudible. With each launch into a new jam, the crowd noticeably thinned.

Now that all the annoying music stuff is out of the way, let’s get to the real reason the Vanguard was packed: Anton Newcombe, the vaudeville act of verbal abuse and unintentional comedy. He spent nearly half the show ranting on a variety of subjects: his apathy towards man-on-dog marriage, his amount of love for the crowd (which was ample) and, above all else, the liquor he drank onstage, which he said tasted like the semen of baby Jesus. The tirades lasted for ages, and got uglier as the night went on. Stopping once in the middle of a song, he screamed at the drummer for playing too fast. Later on, the crowd, restless and obnoxiously looking for some DiG! moments of their own, began heckling and throwing things onstage. Newcombe, of course, seemed to answer every time, singling out one unlucky jerk for an audience chant of “Fuck you! Fuck you!” The band, no doubt used to this by now, mostly stared off into space during these frequent breaks.

It is difficult to say what was more pathetic: the hurtful, lost Newcombe, or the sneering, disingenuous crowd that went to the show only to push his buttons in the hope that he lost his mind. Entertaining? Yes, but the entertainment had nothing to do with the music. For the reality television generation, music is incidental to petty dramas and personality tics. A Brian Jonestown Massacre concert brings the unpleasant sight of the ironic and the postmodern getting their elitist jollies watching the emotional wreckage of the less self-conscious.