Dig My Mood

Went to the Bob Pollard/Jim Greer book signing yesterday for Greer's GBV opus, Guided by Voices: A Brief History : Twenty-One Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forests of Rock and Roll. I've written about how I sort of know Pollard, so I was curious if he'd recognize me outside of the rock-club environment. Turns out he did, and it was a treat talking to him, as always. He gave me a nice shout-out to Greer by telling him I was responible for hooking him up with Tommy Keene for their upcoming projects (and for the shows Tommy did with GBV last year). Being modest (rightfully so), I have a difficult time taking credit for it, but it's cool to think that I played a small part in it all. If it turns out the tour sucks or their records sucks, I will, of course, disavow any involvement.

Later in the evening, I watched Dig!, the documentary about the Brian Jonestown Massacre's mercurial (putting it mildly) leader, Anton Newcombe, and his relationship with Courtney Taylor of the Dandy Warhols. While it was a good movie, humorous in spots -- and fascinating almost always -- I found it sad more than anything. (Not depressing; good art is never depressing.) Newcombe is clearly mentally unstable, and it's sad to think about the cycle of illness in his family. (His father committed suicide.) Newcombe is so screwed up, he's legally barred from seeing his son; there's a scene where he gets arrested for assaulting an audience member -- he's not jailed for assaulting band members onstage, however -- and he keeps going on about how he would die and never spend time with the boy. Painful to watch.

I do have to admit, the onstage fights were pretty amusing. It's funny, too, that the movie focused on this Dandys/BJM relationship, when there's probably an entire movie there just on Newcombe. I found some of the Dandys stuff almost extraneous, though a lot of it was interesting, too.