Looking Back on the Brian Jonestown Massacre

In honor of Dig! XX

I saw the Brian Jonestown Massacre at least a dozen times and never on purpose. Their beginnings and my live-music fandom intersected well in space and time—I was eager to see live music and had little money, and they were just starting out and playing the cheap venues. They played a lot. No, I mean a lot. Italics for importance. It was common when I went to see another band play that the BJM were also on the bill. The rumor was that they didn’t practice, they just played out almost every night, that they worked out their new songs right in front of us, leading to Anton barking his disapproval at everyone which became as common as KISS using pyrotechnics.

The movie poster for Dig! XX. Swiped from the internet.

I knew Anton socially from hanging out at the Horseshoe Cafe. We weren’t buddies, and I doubt he’d remember me, but I do remember him obsessively talking about music production and odd instruments and underrated musicians of the ‘60s. The Horseshoe was a de facto living room for all the transplants who were cramming the old Victorian flats of the Haight so tightly we no longer had living rooms. Everyone who hung out there considered themselves something creative—a lot of musicians, writers, and filmmakers. So many of us talked a good game, but most of them were slackers, drug addicts, and trustafarians and never really created anything. But I’m getting away from the story.

I also knew Joel but he didn’t know me. Joel used to work at Blondie’s Pizza on Powell Street. During my first month in San Francisco, I spent almost all my money moving in to my apartment before I found a job, and this is eight years before I got a credit card. I stood in line for their dollar slice, and he just gave it to me. He made it clear to all the tourists waiting for the cable car to turn around that he was giving me the punk rock discount. I ate it and he gave me another. The punks at Blondie’s fed me every night for the month when I was broke and I wish I remembered the rest of them specifically, but they have faded into the blur of beached hair and stick-and-poke tattoo ink.

I wasn’t really into the music at the time, but I appreciated they were doing something different and really trying. Most of the punk and hipster bands of the time didn’t try—that made you a sellout or a poser or just lame, I guess. And then there were the bands that were just walls of noise and if you said they were bad, you “just didn’t get it.” And I must throw in that a lot of San Francisco bands still wanted to be the next Primus and were slap-funking away on fretless bass guitars. There was also a lot of ‘70s party rock going on, strangely—the band Enrique was wildly popular—but the BJM were the only ones doing retro psychedelia, complete with old school light shows with an overhead projector and liquid gels.

But as Anton had his tantrums and a succession of bandmates learned you can’t separate the asshole from the artist, many people quit playing with him and started their own bands playing the same music. An entire scene oddly started from Anton’s inability to get along with anyone.

Furthermore, the on-stage breakup became a gimmick. If they didn’t fight onstage, people felt ripped off. I roadied for a band in 1995, and all across the country I heard “the Brian Jonestown Massacre were here two weeks ago. They broke up during the show.” In the spirit of kayfabe, I told no one that that was how they ended every set. In the pre-Internet music scene, this is how the band built a legend and kept people talking about them, and made bookers want to see what happened. It was as much a spectacle as GG Allin, but with no feces to clean up later.

Dig!

In 2004, when the documentary Dig! came out, that whole world of the past seemed like another planet to me. The first dotcom wave split the early ‘90s from the late ‘90s, and terraformed the city. There were still live bands and a subculture, but it was a decidedly different vibe. Local bands like the 4 Non Blondes had sprouted, blown up, had a hit, and become a nostalgic joke on “worst of the 90s” lists. Most of the bands from then were broken up and the members moving on with their lives with homes, kids, and jobs, some musicians were too badly strung out to play, and a handful like Green Day and Rancid were playing arenas. But the BJM were still out there, in some incarnation, on the road, gigging it out.

Honestly, I love the documentary. It’s a case, in my opinion, of the documentary itself being more interesting than its subject. In an indirect way, it’s the best thing the BJM has done. It’s the only way you can really see what the band is about. The individual recordings don’t do justice to the vibe of the band, what they are/were like to see live, and the constant teetering of Anton on the balance beam of genius and mental illness. I think, but I’m not sure, that I saw the film on DVD from Netflix and kept it longer to watch it again.

But I also have a memory of a DVD that came out later with Joel Gion’s commentary on a separate track. I don’t know where I got it or what release it was, but there was a lot of insight into Anton’s mindgames. Sadly, I don’t know where to tell you to find this.

Dig! XX

My beloved Kanopy is now streaming Dig! XX, a 20-year anniversary re-release of the film with additional footage and a better resolution. The picture and sound quality is noticeably better (or maybe it’s just my TV) and there is more footage and postscript notes. Somehow, Dave Grohl has Forrest Gumped himself into the one documentary that he wasn’t in. Overall, it’s a great update to the previous film.

But if the first one, ten years after my time seeing the band, made me feel old, the 20-year anniversary of the ten-year vision really did it to me. Immediately, I searched on the internet for information on the band. I thought I would find death notices, from cancer to drug overdoses to general chaos. Nope. Still fucking together, although in a German incarnation but with Anton still fronting.

There’s a full-circle journey artists make from relevancy to irrelevancy and back again, in all mediums. When you’re young, there’s an excitement about what you’re doing, and whatever industry you may be a part of checks you out. And without warning, you’re considered passe or too old to speak to the youth. Hopefully you last long enough to get a status of “influential” or “legendary” or the rare “seminal.” Depending on your medium, the “who cares” trough happens way too fast and lasts way too long.

I’m trying to keep this to the BJM but can’t help talking about myself, since both versions of the doc have made me very reflective of my own artist’s life when I saw them. I went from being asked to read poetry at Lollapalooza in 1994 to being rejected for a book release at Stories Books & Cafe in 2024 for not being cool enough. A few years ago I pitched a bunch of twenty-something agents and publishers a Ronald Reagan assassination attempt book and found out they didn’t know it ever happened and I felt like my dad telling me about odd-even gas rationing in 1973. Each specific moment revealing how uncool I am is like stepping on a rake.

So when I saw this new version of the film, and saw the continuing career of Anton and his band, I went from knowing who the band was to being a fan for the first time. To see a guy who has made his own success and also fucked up his career again and again who is still out there doing it is encouraging. For me, still trying to get where I want as a writer at the age of 56, it’s like watching the “gonna fly now” sequence from Rocky (another old guy reference). I just want Anton to win. God damn it, I want to win, too.