• Number of albums by The Dandy Warhols I have owned: 3
• Number of albums by The Brian Jonestown Massacre I have owned: 0
And in part, the reason can be found in the scrappy rockumentary Dig!, a funny, sad, warts-and-all, good-cop/bad-cop portrait of two bands on the rise — and one’s fall — over seven years’ time and captured by the camera of Ondi Timoner (We Live in Public).
In the mid-’90s, our nation had not heard of The Dandy Warhols or The Brian Jonestown Massacre, no matter how hard those puns tried. But that was soon to change. What begins as a friendly rivalry between the bands’ respective leaders (Courtney Taylor and Anton Newcombe) devolves into outright jealousy on the Massacre’s part when the Warhols taste some major-label success — and, to their credit, apparently with relative levelheadedness.
Newcombe, meanwhile — due to either mental illness, drug addiction or just plain stupidity — sabotages each and every chance of his band achieving the same. By the film’s midpoint, he seems to expend more energy trying to badmouth or crash the Warhols than he does working on his own music. And perhaps that’s because he keeps beating them — and the occasional audience member — up during shows, some of which become riots.
Personally, The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s music never has done anything to perk my ears, while several of The Dandy Warhols’ power-pop cuts stuck in my brain like spilled soda — and this was before knowing the backstory of either. But as one watches Dig!, which is entertaining even when your heart aches for Newcombe’s ravaged soul, it becomes clear that Newcombe has talent. It’s just buried under a lifetime of painful memories, self-destructive behavior and a general unwillingness to do something about it, making this tale all the more tragic. —Rod Lott