Dig!

The fickle nature of the music industry is well known. Most bands will try and flounder with a whimper; true visionaries will fail to find an audience or be deemed as too great a risk by the corporate machine; and the pretty but talent-free will strike it rich with one instantly forgettable tune after another. It's been documented in film before, but never in such brutal, in-your-face detail as Ondi Timoner's documentary Dig!. The cameras followed bands The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre for seven years, covering their friendship during the bright-eyed, let's-change-the-world beginnings to the bitter rivalry that formed between them as one made it big and the other struggled in infamy.

Both bands wanted to start a music revolution - one that would see artists take back control from the industry heads who ultimately lacked vision - by refusing to sell out. The Dandy Warhols' professionalism and willingness to bend as long as it avoided breaking meant that their star rose with increasing speed, before Bohemian Like You was snapped up by a mobile phone company and they became an overnight sensation, particularly here in the UK. This savviness is mistaken for bending over by BJM frontman Anton Newcombe, and soon Dandy lead singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor is receiving strange packages containing shotgun cartridges. Meanwhile, Newcombe's increasingly threatening behaviour towards everyone around him sees his band often struggle to make it through a set without brawling on stage. BJM were descending quickly from the next big thing to a circus sideshow.

Despite the chaos on screen, Timoner never loses sight of Newcombe's raw talent. His actions can be blamed on mental illness, egomania or copious amount of heroin, but he is the real deal, pouring everything into his work and banging out records at a miraculous rate (they released three albums in 1996 alone). The genius and madness meld together to create an image of a man worn down by his philosophy, someone who preached love but only ever gave any to himself. His descent is both tragic and funny, and every fight, argument and storm-out is captured by Timoner's ever-present camera. For a film ultimately echoing Newcombe's views on a corporate mechanism more interested in money than artistry, Dig! somehow forgets the music itself. The odd bar or snippet can be heard here and there, but it's usually interrupted by some act of self-destruction or other. Ultimately however, Dig! is a fascinating study of the idea of selling-out and a must-see for music fans, serving as a cautionary tale for anyone considering starting a band.

Back in the 2000's, The Dandy Warhols were one of my favorite bands. I may or may not have heard of The Brian Jonestown Massacre. I'm not that cool or plugged in. The Dandy Warhols formed in Portland. They befriend another unknown band called The Brian Jonestown Massacre. For them, the BJM are a bunch of fun guys from the big city who are way cooler than them. BJM's leader Anton Newcombe is a musical genius. He and Courtney Taylor-Taylor become the best of friends. They find comradery in their common leadership and as main creators in their bands. As the Dandys take off, BJM remains stuck in band infighting, and Anton's volatile self-destruction. The bands' friendship descends into Anton's unwanted rivalry and his desperate love-hate relationship with the Dandys.

Most music band biography deals with a famous band's rise and fall. It's a very familiar formula and one that can be stale. This one is different since it's about a band that never made it. The juxtaposition of the Dandys and BJM's different paths is really compelling. It is the world of 90's A&R, the arrogance of genius, the drug haze, and the obsession for fame. It never convinces me of Anton's genius. It only give glimpses of their songs. Their live sets are never that long before a fight breaks out. The difference between the two bands is actually quite informative. More than any other band biography, this shows the pitfalls. If nine tenths of bands fail, this is a more realistic story of an up and comer.

A documentary about two rocks bands, spanning a number of years. Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols. What makes it special is the examination of the complex contrasting personalities and the ironies of success and failure.

Anton Newcombe, the main man of Brian Jonestown Massacre, is widely recognised as a musical genius not only by his colleagues, his friends and rivals the Dandy Warhols, but also by record producers and most people who have worked with him. Sadly he and his band members are also incapable of integrating with the real world. Newcombe picks fights with band members on stage or with members of the audience (getting arrested at one point for literally kicking in the head of a fan). Newcombe knows no limits – he plays between 40 and 100 different instruments, writes and produces all BJM's music, can produce enough songs to fill a whole album in a single day, has a prophet-like obsessiveness with his own musical genius, but is also a heavy drugs user, flies into rages at the slightest compromise of his own artistic integrity, orders his band members about as if they are lower forms of life, and can blow deals as fast as he makes them. BJM go through a large number of record labels in fast succession – they sign them up as soon as they realise Newcombe's talents and let them go as soon as they realise he is totally uncontrollable.

The Warhols acknowledge their debt to Newcombe's creativity and don't even put themselves in the same exalted sphere of greatness – but the Warhols have something that BJM don't – the ability to integrate their talents with common sense, the real world, and their market – as a mixing pot of talent (even if much of it is distilled from guru Newcombe) and accessibility, they are the very definition of 'cool.' DiG! follows the parallel careers of the two bands with increasing poignancy. At one point, Newcombe pulls stunts designed to generate publicity by sending apparent death threats and hate messages to the Warhols (in a box containing live ammunition and insults like a bar of soap 'to clean up their act') – only he forgets to tell them it's a stunt and they get so paranoid they take out a restraining order against Newcombe. By the time the Dandy Warhols take off in Europe with hits like 'Every Day Should Be A Holiday' and 'Bohemian Like You', Newcombe is becoming increasingly isolated. BJM are stopped and the band breaks up when they are arrested for possession of marijuana – the Warhols get busted for drugs around the same time, let off with a warning, and even allowed to keep the grass.

The wider appeal of DiG! is that the lessons of genius versus accessibility go way beyond two bands or even rock music. The downside is that it is still a documentary, however intimate, and it will mostly only appeal to dedicated film fans or people who are already interested in the music of one or both of the featured bands. Newcombe may well be a largely unrecognised genius, and there are feint glimpses of this in the film, but to the unattuned ear there is little more than the assertions of the people interviewed to attest to this. In the words of one of the band members: "In every spiritual tradition, you burn in hell for pretending to be God and not being able to back it up." Newcombe isn't pretending – but numerically there are maybe still insufficient people to appreciate him in his own lifetime, and DiG! has an uphill struggle to rectify the balance in favour of a tortured but largely unrecognised genius.

Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor are friends, they both are the leads in their own respective bands; Anton with The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Courtney with The Dandy Warhols. What's interesting about their friendship is that they are rivals; its a love hate relationship. At times you both hear them praising one another, but the next second they are complaining at how stupid and self absorbed they are. While the Dandy Warhols went on the reach commercial success, BJM still was stuck in the underground scene; and for good reason why.

The focus of Dig! is more towards Anton and the BJM, as they have a lot more substance. They are the most dysfunctional band. During gigs they will fight and bash each other. Anton will hit other members if he feels they aren't performing correctly. With the amount of drugs an alcohol they consume, fight was always waiting to happen. You know how people go to car races just to see if a huge car crash happens; that's why people would go to their gigs, for the fights.

Anton is very unstable. Always thinking himself as a music messiah, he wants to change music and create a revolution, but he could never get out of the underground. He is a very talented musician, its amazing how many instruments he can play and with such skill. But his draw back is he cant escape the world he created; a prolific musician stuck in a black hole drugs, alcohol and depression. On the other side, the Dandy Warhols were having their own troubles. They didn't find much success with their first album and were constantly fighting with their record label. But they found huge success in Europe. But Courtney keeps being sucked back into the world of Anton. Its interesting that both Anton and Courtney both had what the other needed. Courtney always wanted to be musically talented as Anton, though Anton wouldn't say it, he needed the commercial success that the Dandy's had, to make his revolution.

Over the seven year course the film crew followed these two bands, there is a lot of footage. There is never a dull moment in Dig!. It is constantly moving along as it doesn't have time to slow down as it has to much to say, seven years of story telling in the 1h 45mins is a hard job. Ondi Timoner has done a great job of piecing together one of the best music documentaries that makes you always wanting more. Even if you don't like the bands it still deserves viewing; it transcends the music to reveal a great story of a successful failure.

You wont be disappointed.

I recently rented this doc, having remembered hearing about it from IMDb.com and being intrigued by the premise. I knew very little about either of these bands, but I do remember hearing "Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth" by The Dandy Warhols ages ago and enjoying it. That being said, this is my perspective on the doc:

One thing I found incredible about this film is there is no need to have any prior knowledge of either of these bands. The director (Ondi Timoner) wastes no time in engaging the audience and familiarizing them with the people in this film. I quickly became grooved to the lives both Anton and Courtney as well as their respective bands, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. I think that is part of what makes this doc so good, and what makes Ondi Timoner such a master documentarian.

I also loved how the "story" of these bands was told. Most of what you see is of the bands on tour. Both bands start out playing small venues and struggling to make it in the recording industry. Throughout the film, each band strives to remain unique and uncontrolled by the norm. However it is this that makes the two bands similar, and thus the brilliant perspective on how two bands of a feather can go in such different directions.

I would basically recommend this for ANYONE who likes film in general. You do not need to have a particular love for documentaries, or either of the bands. An appreciation for music helps, but the music itself takes a backseat to the love/hate relationship between The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols.