“Dig!” should be everyone’s number-one music documentary. It really is the film that reignited a new music documentary movement. It was made over seven years, following the increasingly divergent careers of Portland, Oregon’s The Dandy Warhols and San Francisco’s The Brian Jonestown Massacre, as the former signs to a major label and the latter toil on the underground circuit, often a victim of their own excesses.
“Dig!” really makes you question the concept of “selling out”. The Dandy Warhols were given an opportunity – and they took it – but it’s clear that if the same opportunities were afforded to The Brian Jonestown Massacre, which you see they almost were, they would likely have been taken as well.
The fate of two bands that start in the same underground scene divides over several years and the events are captured in real-time. There is a key scene when The Brian Jonestown Massacre, barely scraping by at the time, visit The Dandy Warhols recording in a huge mansion and the encounter brims with passive aggression and things left unsaid. one of the most shockin’ documentaries about ROCK. The Brian Jonestown Massacre vs. The Dandy Warhols.
You can see it in Anton Newcombe’s eyes when he hears his friends’ ‘Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth’ on the radio and he realises: this is a smash hit!
What is interesting looking back is that The Brian Jonestown Massacre stayed the more interesting of the two bands. The Dandy Warhols went off the boil pretty quickly and you wonder if that’s because of the pressure the major label deal they had to deliver on. On the other hand, it shows just how quickly you can be the flavour of the month with people wanting to sign you – and not being the flavour of the month because you’re absolutely barking mad!
I think the legacy of Dig! is that every man and his dog realised that there’s a real worth in making these documentaries because the careers of bands truly are great stories waiting to be told.
The Fat Angel Sings 