Not If You Were The Last Band Reunited On Earth
Posted on | November 8, 2004 at 9:36 pm | 2 Comments
Last night, I watched the documentary DiG!, recorded from the Sundance Channel. (Which was strange, because I thought it was still playing in theaters.) For those of you who don’t know, it’s the 7-year story of two bands, The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, and their respective frontmen, Courtney Taylor and Anton Newcombe. It focuses much more on the latter, but is narrated by the former. It’s about the ups and downs of their careers, and the way that their bands intertwined over the years. It’s fascinating to watch, because obviously the director (Ondi Timoner) had total access to the personnel, and there’s some really raw and revealing footage. It’s also riveting to see the splintering of the friendship between the two bands and how it turns into a rivalry, especially as the DWs become more popular and well-known than the BJM. Newcombe is obviously a very talented guy, but he does have his issues and his journey is arresting. In some ways, I enjoyed this more than Some Kind of Monster, even though it’s more depressing. And it’s not just because I liked the music more. Recommended.
Bands Reunited returns for another one week run (the last, I think) on VH1, and the first new episode was today. It featured the band Scandal, a band whose songs I was familiar with, but whose albums I never bought. I had no idea that lead singer Patty Smyth is married to tennis player/talk show host John McEnroe. I think she looks hotter now than she did back in the day, maybe partly because I was never a big fan of 80s fashion. Anyway, it was an interesting episode, though somewhat low-key and without a lot of drama (no matter how much the producers tried to manufacture). Up next, Vixen and then Information Society (whom I do own albums by). And then a clip show, and then I guess that’s it. I’m guessing we’ll never see that Animotion reunion.
Back to my solo album. I’m still working on the first song. I’m a bit blocked because I stupidly wrote a guitar part on the keyboard and now I’m having problems playing it on the guitar. I’m just not fast enough. Thank God for the Loop-Record feature in Sonar, so I can keep playing it over and over without stopping until I get it right, with each iteration being written to a different track so I can pick the best take. Ain’t technology wonderful?
Latre.
Comments
2 Responses to “Not If You Were The Last Band Reunited On Earth”
November 9th, 2004 @ 2:49 pm
BR is calling it quits? I guess they were scraping the bottom of the barrel (I look forward to seeing Aamer say with a straight face, "I’m here on a mission from the fans of Information Society" — yeah, because there are *so many* of them around these days). I guess I always nurtured this insane hope that someday they’d do Game Theory. I just hope Aamer gets a good new gig…
November 9th, 2004 @ 3:02 pm
Yeah, where *do* you find Information Society fans?
I’m not positive that BR is ending, but that EW article from a few months did say it was likely the Nov eps would be the last. And since they’re really only doing three eps and a clip show this time, I’d say that doesn’t bode well.
Old broken-up bands probably gloomed on to the scam and have decided they’re going to reunite only for money, and I’m sure that’s not in the BR budget. Plus, once word got out about the show, that probably made it a lot harder to do the ambushes. Or at least to do them and have the ambushee be surprised.
I’m sure Aamer will land on his feet…