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Dig! (2003)

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From Time Out London

In 1995, Ondi Timoner started filming two fledgling West Coast groups who collectively promised to revolutionise the music scene: the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols. The fruit of seven years’ observation, ‘Dig!’ is a resonantly structured compare-and-contrast piece, presenting the Dandys’ rise from next-big-thing to all-conquering festival headliners as a relatively smooth ride, while the Jonestown boys, despite their prolific and widely touted talent, emerge as perennial bridesmaids, staggering dysfunctionally from one abortive, squabble-ridden gig to another, constantly on the verge of implosion – thanks mainly to the volatility (and heroin use) of frontman Anton Newcombe. It’s a compelling if somewhat simplified dynamic. The fact that Courtney Taylor, lead singer of the Dandys, narrates the film, while Newcombe has publicly disowned it as ‘Jerry Springer-esque’ can’t help but suggest a certain stacking of the cards, and Timoner certainly privileges conflict over music. Still, as on ‘Jerry Springer’, no one emerges untainted: Newcombe’s erratic behaviour – from messianic pronouncements to rollerblade stalking to kicking a fan in the head – speaks for itself, while the Dandys often come across as well-heeled tourists in urban bohemia. At one point the self-declared ‘most well-adjusted band in America’ turn up to co-opt the aftermath of a Jonestown house party as the location for a publicity shoot.Timoner’s declared intention to use the bands’ fortunes to illustrate the workings of the record industry doesn’t quite come off: Newcombe is so plainly unsuited to any institutional framework that few lessons can be drawn from his experiences, while the Dandys’ reservations tend to be expressed through Taylor’s occasional griping rather than constructive argument. As a portrait of a relationship, however, the film is terrific, tracing the bands’ – and particularly their singers’ – transition from mutual adulation to wariness, resentment and recrimination. That the subjects are witty, charismatic exhibitionists doesn’t hurt, of course, but it’s the off-hand moments that work best: not many brawls end with someone staggering away muttering, ‘Fucking broke my sitar, motherfucker.’

Author: BW

Time Out London Issue 1819: June 29-July 6 2005

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