The Brian Jonestown Massacre Brings Kool-Aid to the Ogden

Photos: Billy Thieme

It used to be that any show featuring The Brian Jonestown Massacre would be likely as not end up in a chaotic fistfight, generally due to frontman, genius, and eccentric Anton Newcombe‘s irascible personality and his overwhelming perfectionism. I’m not sure if Newcombe has taken up meditation or anger management classes, but the wild angry outbursts now seem to be a thing of the past. Hanging out stage left all night last Tuesday as he led his current seven-piece band at the Ogden Theater, he was generally the picture of cool, calm, and classy.

That genius is the basis of the unmistakable vibe that is a Brian Jonestown Massacre tune.

Not that there weren’t a number of annoyingly long stretches of dead air and guitar string twanging, matched with complaints about one of the many guitars on stage being out of tune, and making the night seem like band practice more than a show – there were, proving that the perfectionism is still there. It’s just “mellowed” a bit. But – isn’t that part of why we come back to see them play, again and again? It’s that perfectionism that’s at the root of his genius, really, and that genius is the basis of the unmistakable vibe that is a Brian Jonestown Massacre tune.

Leading an orchestra of three – sometimes four – guitars, many of them twelve-string guitars, Newcombe built a palace of shoegaze-meets-psychedelic rock for just under two hours, as fans screamed “You’re a legend, Anton!” from the crowd in the packed house. Covering much of the band’s tumultuous three-decade history, they ran through hits from years past like “Anemone,” “We Never Had A Chance,” and the brilliant “Servo.” They added more recent tunes to the mix like “Pish,” and “Your Mind is My Cafe,” pulling from more than 19 albums of material.

Arrangements this full of sound aren’t easy to manage, and are harder to manage well – but each song the band pulled off sounded at least as full and strong as the album version – and often better – making the pauses to tune, restring, switch guitars – or whatever glitch came up – worth it. Building a wall of strings that echoed some of the famous Glenn Branca orchestras, the seven-piece band bowled over a full house with their unmistakable hippy-tinged sound, centered around Newcombe’s smooth, droning vocals.

And, at the center of it all, was Anton’s only true competition, the enigma that is Joel Gion – likely one of the best – if not THE best – tambourine-playing percussionists in music. Decked out in a blue one-piece jumpsuit, Gion kept the swirling cyclone of late-60s psychedelic tinged shoegaze grounded and centered, with perfect flicks of the wrist that reverberated through his tambourine (and other hand-held percussion tools). It seemed he also may have been keeping Anton a little focused – one of his historical duties with the band. His sunglasses (an accessory nearly all band members wore onstage – though Gion’s were of a more pronounced bug-eyed variety) accented his impressive sideburns-cum-lamchops-cum-hipster beard, adding a perfect level of farcical charm to the stage. And yet, as simplistic as the tambourine may seem, Gion truly anchored the band, as always – though this time his need to maintain the balance across from Newcombe’s chaos was less necessary.

Setlist:

We Never Had a Chance
Your Mind is My Cafe
Charmkins Attack
The Future is Your Past
The Real
Fudge
Nevertheless
Anemone
Number one Lucky Kitty
Do Rainbows Have Ends?
Drained
Wait a Minute (2:30s to be Exact)
Pish
Servo
A Word