Talent vs. Genius, Round Two, or Bad News Bear Hug:

As I’m sure you remember (right!), last year I wrote about the Dandy Warhols and in particular their album Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia, which I liked a lot.

I was prompted to get it because of the documentary “DIG!”, which was about the friendship/rivalry between the Dandys and their idols, the Brian Jonestown Massacre. One couldn’t help but be interested in both of these bands.

As 13 Tales confirmed, the Dandys were the professional ones, who were maybe a little more balanced and career-focused. And indeed, part of the tension between the two bands comes from the Dandys eclipsing the supposedly more talented BJM.

And what about BJM? As you can tell from their name, they’re bad news twice over. Worshipped by the Dandys, they were brilliant but mercurial - drugs, fights, breakups, all usually taking place right on stage - led by genius/megalomaniac Anton Newcombe.

In my younger days I would have immediately gravitated to this obviously misunderstood, greatly maligned gift to Western Civilization, but I’ve since come to believe where there’s smoke there’s fire. So I went for a surer bet - The Dandys - and 13 Tales turned out to be one of the best records I got in 2014.

Plus, the BJM made lots of records. And if I were younger I probably would have jumped into their catalogue head first, getting each one of them. But now I’ve got to be more selective with my time, and I’ve learned that geniuses are prone to inconsistency so why wade through all the records they made on their off days?

So I decided to hedge my bets by getting their 2 CD retrospective. Which, since xgau trashed it would be a hell of a hedge if it turned out to be awful. So it took until my birthday, and an excuse to get someone else to potentially waste their money, for it to be time to jump into the abyss.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre: Tepid Peppermint Wonderland

And people, let me tell you It. Is. Just. Great!  

In what is becoming an increasingly rare occurrence, this record hit me on the first play. Each song - all 38 of them - had something to offer.

Review the Review:

How could something so obviously good have been trashed so thoroughly? So I went back to the xgau review.

“… Newcombe gets a no doubt small, no doubt excessive cash advance to prove his genius…. the world passed on the first time. The world was right, and will be right again every time Newcombe revives.”

Well xgua clearly dislikes this guy. Not just the music. The guy. He’s probably right. (Please watch DIG! to form your own opinion.) He never did have much use for drug people. As the former roommate of one, I can sympathize.

So they’re not role models. But I suspect that many of my heroes wouldn’t stand close scrutiny, either. Gandhi was a great man but I wouldn’t buy any of his records.

In terms of consistency and of how often I want to hear it, this is hands down, the best record I’ve gotten in 2014. The fact that it’s a best-of is the only thing that kept me from putting it at the top of my album list.

But deep down, I suspect I’ve been conned. These guitars may only sound so good because they’re so familiar. But if they’re so familiar why do I keep playing them?

So, back the the xgau review:

“His recombined riffs rarely break the shambolic surface...“

To me, those riffs sit real pretty right there on that surface. Plus I really like the riff, so when it gets recombined, I like that one, too. And I prefer the BJM’s shambolic to the Dandy’s commercial sound.

“and whenever two consecutive lines of lyric grab and hold, they complain.”

Well, yeah. Drug people are like that. Everyone’s against them, all the time. It’s never their fault. Newcombe's voice is nasally whine, so it’s actually pretty well suited to the words, which he's not really emphasizing anyway. Plus, I was never a big word guy, either, especially when the music is this good.

And finally, xgau goes on to contrast the Dandy’s “panache and professionalism” with BJMs (Newcombe’s, really) “heroin and lies”. Harsh, yet true. I really did hate that roommate by the time he moved out.

Did He Hear What I Heard?:

I heard these lovely, echoing guitars. Retro but you can’t tell from where (most of the time). It may be the best “lost sixties album” ever. When you were fifteen, if you ever half-heard a song on the radio and never found out who it was you could do worse than to get this record to make up for it.

On the other hand, when you do eventually track those obscure records down, they rarely live up your recollection. And in a couple of years I may look back on this record with some embarrassment. But for now, I’m basking in that shambolic, druggy, whiny, retro, probably-non-as-good-as-it’s-pretending-to-be record.

Like the Warhols, the BJM aren’t above, ahem, “borrowing” things, but where the DWs grab actual riffs and run, the BJM prefer to just wear the general aura of sixties on their sleeves. I should object on principle, but I just smile.

How many 2 CD sets (38 songs!) can you put on and listen to all the way through?

Brian Jonestown Massacre vs. Dandy Warhols: A Technical Decision:

So, who wins? Well, BJM, but it’s not really a fair comparison. This is a compilation afterall.

It’s also sit around and get high music. If you don’t partake, it’s probably sit around and get depressed music. Or be mad at the world music. Teenage music. Music for losers.

Derivative. Morally wrong. But I’ve never been able to resist music that I shouldn’t like for some theoretical reason.

When things got really heated between the bands - BJM did a song called “Not If You Were the Last Dandy on Earth” and the Dandys threatened to write a song called “You’re Not Sixteen, But Your Girlfriends Are”. So does this mean Newcombe’s a pedophile, too? I prefer to not think about it. The guitars help me do that.

Sixties style guitar rock is right up my alley, so God (along with James Brown, Art Tatum and Monteverdi - the other compilations I got in 2014) forgive me, this is the one I keep playing. Three months after getting it was still going strong. A

When to Listen to: When you’re in kind of a dark place and might otherwise take drugs. This will substitute.

When NOT to Listen: When your roommate has just stolen your rent money to buy drugs.

“Servo”

“Prozac vs. Heroin”

What Could Be Simpler?

Again trying to make up for my pathetic year-behindness (ie, rarely getting music from the current year), and patting myself on the back for my explorations of different genres, I quit while I’m ahead and come running back to some simple rock n roll.

And it's hard for it to get any simpler than this:

Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold (2013)

Most of the songs begin with the simplest of guitar riffs which is then wrapped up snugly with a perfectly complementary bass line and beat. The yelping is right out of early Meat Puppets.

My copy also includes their EP Tally All the Things That You Broke, and I’ve been too lazy to figure out where one ends and the other begins because it’s all of a piece. (Okay, the EP starts with "You've Got Me Wondering Now"). 

Rough and powerful, it’s the complete opposite of the Dandy Warhols - nothing smooth or commercial about it. They keep things moving, changing tempo just enough to keep you from getting bored. And I’m not! Not in the least.  You’re up to track 10 before even you know what hit you. A

When to Play it: After you’ve had your coffee.

When to Not Play It: When you’re around any adult whose respect you crave.

And By the Way, How’s the Year Going So Far, Jaybee You Ask?

Something like this:

1. Light Up Gold/Tally All the Things You Broke - Parquet Courts (2013)

2. Thirteen Tales of Urban Bohemia - The Dandy Warhols (2000)

3. Same Trailer, Different Park - Kacey Musgroves (2013)

4. Shaking the Habitual - The Knife (2013)

5. The Mis-education of… Lauryn Hill (1998)

P.S.

I feel I need to explain. 

In case anyone, God forbid, acts on a recommendation of mine.

I can understand why any upstanding citizen of similar age would question the quality of the Parquet Courts’ music, and why I'd choose it over the other records I've heard this year.  

Well, there are two reasons:

First, simple rock n’ roll will always be one of my favorite genres.

Second, the PCs pursue their admittedly limited goals as relentlessly and with a single-mindedness worthy of the early Ramones. And they unquestionably reach those goals.

Perhaps the Dandy Warhols are more ambitious. Lauryn Hill certainly is. But the first are more polished than I'd like and a bit too obvious about what they steal. And poor Lauryn - as talented as she is - just isn't as much fun to be around.

After all, when someone starts a song off with:

I was hanging round Ridgewood, Queens,

I was flipping through magazines,

I was so,

Drunk and starving

.… as they do on the slightly mis-named “Stoned and Starving”, well it just brings me back, although not to Ridgewood. (But then again, who knows?)

And there’s really no defending the first guitar solo here, except to note that, after all, they are drunk, etc...

I guess the point, is that mood trumps notes. Although the guitar duel at the end of this live version shows that some folks get drunker than others.  

And it’s really just as simple as that.

Talent vs. Genius, Round One, or, Just Dandy

As adventurous as I’d like to pretend to be about music, whenever I do dip my toes into a genre experiment I can usually be counted upon to come running back to that old reliable - rock n’ roll. And it doesn’t hurt a bit if it’s tuneful and bright rather than harsh and bitter. I can supply that on my own.

Dandy Warhols - Thirteen Tales of Urban Bohemia (2000)

And boy is this tuneful and bright!  

The Dandy Warhols first came to my attention on the radio, where they could be counted upon to do something that was catchy but that still had some ooomf to it.

So, I decided to see the movie “DIG!”, which pits the Dandys against the Brian Jonestown Massacre. They start out as pals - if anything with the Dandys being in awe of the BJM - but it eventually turns into rivalry and mutual hatred. 

The Dandys were the savvy ambitious band, while BJM was the brilliant but self destructive (getting into fights on stage, etc.) ones. By the end of the movie the Dandys have moved on to fame and fortune (relatively speaking) while the BJM can never quite stop shooting themselves in the foot (or the arm, as it were).

This excellent movie whetted my appetite, so I decided to investigate and eventually choose sides. I’m the type who's more likely to root for the self-destructive genius against the ambitiously talented.

But I have to admit that this is as good a commercial rock record as I can imagine. Oh, and believe me, I can imagine because I’ve heard some pretty horrific ones. (They’re the ones that sell so many copies.)  

And as is usually the case when I hear a record as listenable as this one, I wonder why it didn’t sell a million, too. Any of this would have sounded great on the radio.

Okay, it may be a bit superficial, and there are some parts I could swear I’ve heard before on Beatles and Stones records. And at the end of it, you’re reminded of what Steve Martin said to his wife-with-a-shady-past after sex in “The Man with Two Brains”: “Thanks, that was so…professional!”

But if you don't like it, you're displaying either obstinacy, or maybe integrity, depending upon whether you've seen “DIG! or not. An early contender for album of the year.

Okay Brian Jonestown Massacre, let's see what you got! A-

"Get Off"