dig dug

Last night I picked up a documentary I'd been meaning to see since its release, sometime either last year or earlier in this one called Dig! It's essentially a tale of two bands if you will, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and their long time pals The Dandy Warhols. One rife with internal conflict & seering genius, the other a bunch of major label dandies with barely an ounce of stomachable creativity (clever cloggery aside - the band names provide us with extremely accurate insite into their inner workings). Admitedly, I really didn't have much previous experience with either band. I do remember distincly when the Dandy Warhols hit the scene with their major label debut years back, and I couldn't for the life of me imagine what the fuss was all about. My experience with the BJM was that I had an opportunity to see them perform, with the original incarnation mostly intact, but something suddenly came up and I never gave it another thought until just now. So perhaps it was this unknown, Anton, portrayed as an enigmatic muse that was more easily palatible than his major label loophole buddy, Courtney, that fronted a band I had already written off years ago. Just to make sure, I aquired full discogs of both bands later that night, and gave them mostly thorough listens today. My percieved potential of personal enjoyablity held form - the contrived complacency of the DW could barely hold a flame to the reckless proficiency of the BJM. I recommend deciding for yourself, because from what I've gathered, most that are fans of one, also enjoy the other. Whatever the correlation may be for you, this is a great documentary (you could very well dislike both bands - who knows). I suggest waiting a day or two, if at all, to watch the bonus dvd worth of material shot after the original theatrical release. Like most other "bonus" footage, it tends to have a bit of a sobering effect on the grandiosity of the main feature.

disc 1 - two thumbs up.
disc 2 - skip.

-tambourine man, neph-