DIG! (XX) (2004/2024) (A) - Pure diligence pays off. Early in her career, filmmaker Ondi Timoner committed to years of embedding with two bands who were relatively unknown and who may never have broken through. Her aim was to tell their story in depth, as it unfolded over time.
Originally released (to great Sundance festival fanfare) in 2004 as "Dig!", Timoner celebrates the 20th anniversary with an update on the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre, filling out about a half hour of extra footage, now streaming on the Criterion Channel. It remains a fascinating character study of divergent approaches to the rock 'n' roll ethos, flashing back to the heyday of alternative music at the turn of the millennium. It is granular in its study of each band's creative forces.
While Portland's Dandy Warhols achieved a decent level of commercial success on the Warner Bros. label, it is their self-defeating rivals, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, who drive the narrative here. Led by their charismatic, drug-addled purist leader Anton Newcombe (above, left), psych revivalists BJM are an object lesson in shooting oneself in the foot, repeatedly. They refuse to make concessions to the music industry, and seem to pursue record deals merely to earn a big enough advance to fuel their drug and alcohol habits. (The TVT label took that sucker's bet during filming.) Still, there's no denying the trippy glee of their songs, like the heady "Mary, Please."
The band's secret weapon is tambourine player Joel Gion (above, right), the puppet-like court jester who shares narrating duties in the film, trading off with Courtney Taylor-Taylor, the suave lead man of the Dandy Warhols. (The narrative back-and-forth is an inspired choice.) At one point Taylor-Taylor tags along on tour with BJM, and the unspoken look on his face suggests eminent gratitude that his own band is not nearly as fucked up as Newcombe's.
Gion is the constant who holds the plot together, sticking by Newcombe's side when no one else would. (Co-founder Matt Hollywood eventually was driven out of the band, like the others. The drummer, though, stuck around a while -- not because of any great skills, which were questionable, but because his blond page-boy haircut closely resembled Brian Jones' mod coif.)
Gion is like the Flavor Flav to Newcombe's Chuck D -- not to insult the mastermind behind Public Enemy. Newcombe comes off as obsessed about his art, to the detriment of everything else in his life, including, oddly enough, his music career. Most of the time he is a greasy slob with wild eyes, spouting philosophical musings in a style not unlike fellow musician Charles Manson.
The Dandy Warhols are the yang to Newcombe's yin. They are four relatively clean-cut young adults who write more hooky numbers than opaque, droning jams. Taylor-Taylor obsesses over image as much as the sound, curating a style for the band through elaborate videos. The Dandys' biggest break came when the European company Vodafone used the band's single, "Bohemian Like You" (below), in a 2000 commercial, and the band has cultivated a savvy cult status to this day. Cohorts Zia McCabe (keyboards and bass) and Peter Holmstrom (lead guitar) exude charm and style, as well, bringing essential energy and chops to their leader's songs.
Timoner's camera -- which infiltrates every nook and cranny of each band's every facet of existence -- stalks both bands over the course of about seven years, from the mid-'90s to the early '00s. This was a leap of faith (or a wildly inadvisable career choice) at the time, never really guaranteed to show that either of the bands would make it big enough for an audience to care about the light-years of footage she shot over that particular life cycle. But her perseverance feels like a critical part of the overall narrative. This is a feat of endurance and devotion -- she edited the film in addition to writing and directing it -- and Timoner survives as an unseen and uncredited character tying everything together. It is partly her story.
If there is one nit to pick, it is that Timoner (who also directed 2009's "We Live in Public") never really does fair justice to any of Brian Jonestown Massacre's recordings. Everything here is snippets, and you wouldn't be blamed for wondering what all the fuss is about when it comes to their appeal. Maybe that was a strategy. Perhaps she is illustrating just how self-destructive Newcombe's methods were, as exemplified by the trickles of album sales. (The updated footage includes the band members brawling onstage with each other in Melbourne in 2023, torpedoing that tour.)
Feel free to not overthink things, and just wallow in the minutiae of the budding careers of a bunch of music lifers who continue to record and tour to this day. Never heard of them before? Who cares. You need not sign up as a fan; just turn black the clock to a Beatles-vs.-Stones 2.0 romp.
You might also quibble over the emphasis on the battle of the bands. Was there ever a true rivalry between the bands? Did one band's path prove more reliable than the other's? More people bought Dandy Warhols albums and saw their videos. But Newcombe is still slogging away. Both bands added Santa Fe stops to their fall tours this year. In late September, the Dandys drew a middling (but devoted) crowd. Brian Jonestown Massacre's show in November has been sold out for months.
BONUS TRACKS
No one mines "Nuggets" like Brian Jonestown Massacre. Here's a typical retro workout, "Straight Up and Down" (the theme to HBO's "Boardwalk Empire"):
"Who?"
The Dandys burst on the scene with their sophomore album that included a howl at the end of the century, the gender-affirming romp "Boys Better":
POST-SCRIPT
As luck would have it, we caught the Dandy Warhols' Santa Fe show. They flashed their own psych-rock jam-band bona fides, in addition to serving up the hits during the second half of the show. (You know you are an aging music fan rocking out to a 30-year-old group when two of the band members call a time-out in the middle of the show for a pee break.) One peppy nugget that stood out was the 2018 single "Be Alright":
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