Keep Music Evil: The Brian Jonestown Massacre Story

by Jesse Valencia

The Brian Jonestown Massacre are probably best known for their leader Anton Newcombe’s incendiary persona, as captured in the controversial 2004 rockumentary Dig! - which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance  - but what isn’t known is the truth behind the making of the film, or the true story of the band since their formation in early 1990s San Francisco. Until now.

Writer, actor, and musician Jesse Valencia spent ten years uncovering the mysteries of the band and the film, during which time he has traveled from San Francisco to Denver, Portland to Tucson, and beyond, gathering pieces of the band’s history and putting them together, clue by clue, until he found it.

Presented as a personal narrative and compiled from hundreds of sources and interviews with key members of The Brian Jonestown Massacre - including Joel Gion, Rick Maymi, Frankie Emerson, Jeff Davies, Dean Taylor, Miranda Lee Richards, and Peter Hayes - as well as members of The Dandy Warhols, Dig! director Ondi Timoner, and countless other figures from both the film and from the band’s greater history, Keep Music Evil is the definitive work on the band and their enigmatic leader.

Keep Music Evil also tells the stories of the creation of every album the band have released during their three-decade career, offering insight in Anton and his collaborators’ working methods, and provides an in-depth look at the making of Dig!, giving deeper context to the events as portrayed, correcting misinformation, and deconstructing the film as a whole. It also features rare, candid, and never-before-seen photographs of the band from throughout their career.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography

310 pages, Paperback

First published April 16, 2019

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Also, to better understand the recording process, it is not a bad idea to study the history behind some of your favorite records. However, I recommend this only if the information is easily available through online, print, or archival material. Otherwise you may end up writing a book.
—Jesse Valencia, Footnote, p.61

Pandora opened the box: I was introduced to the music of the Brian Jonestown Massacre—one of the most influential rock bands you've (most likely) never heard of—by Pandora's "Music Genome" algorithm, rather than by any concert poster, fannish accolade, or physical recording. I haven't even seen the documentary Dig!, which came out 'way back in 2004.

What actually happened was... I noticed that I always seemed to notice when the Brian Jonestown Massacre came up in my stream—from songs like "Anemone" from 1995, for example, which is the first tune mentioned by name in Keep Music Evil, to "Vad Hande Med Dem," one of the newer tracks in the BJM's discography (from 2014's Revelation). "Vad Hande Med Dem" doesn't even get mentioned in the book until p.276 (and even then the song doesn't appear in the Index for some reason), but it's become one of my favorites.

And this is why the Brian Jonestown Massacre's music keeps grabbing my attention:

"I'm into one-note minimalism with continuous drone notes going through. {...} All my songs have a continuous note, whether it's cranked in the mix or totally buried."
—Anton Newcombe, p.18

Of course, not every song I like needs to work that way, but I do tend to favor music with long, slow background notes overlaid by quick foreground changes, a common characteristic that Pandora's algorithm seems to have teased out of the other songs and artists I'd added (such as Menomena's "Taos") to the station I call "Lovely Black Sea Rocket Power."

How do you afford your rock'n'roll lifestyle?
—from the song "Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle," by Cake

If Jesse Valencia had focused only on Anton Newcombe's musical craftsmanship and the minutiae of composition, though... well, Keep Music Evil could never have justified its title. The unholy and eternal triumvirate of sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll... the Brian Jonestown Massacre partook of all three and more, gathering a reputation (not always warranted, according to Valencia) for hair-trigger anger at hecklers, rivals and industry flacks. The photograph of Valencia on this book's back cover flap looks so uptight to me, but he has no trouble digging into the grit and grime of the band, even so. Moreover, he does so in a way that seems fairer than the movie Dig! is purported to be.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre were the Haight's last real psychedelic export before Silicon Valley choked the life out of it.
—p.23

*

Keep Music Evil is written very boyishly, it's true—with great enthusiasm but also consistently atrocious copy-editing, awkward constructions, redundancies and some outright errors. The one tiny bit of Portland lore I could easily fact-check turned out to be inaccurate, for instance:

{...}in Southeast Portland above Kelly's Olympian{...}
—p.224

Kelly's Olympian is (and has been, for more than a century) downtown, in Southwest Portland, Oregon.

Here are just a few more examples, ones that really stood out to me:

{...}Anton wasn't trying to emanate their music so much as he was taking after their founder.
—Intro, p.11

It's not "emanate," it's "emulate."

{...}the Crash Palace on Divisadero, which was owned{...}by this guy she was dating, now called the Independent.
—p.50

Pretty sure it's the club, not the guy, that's now called "the Independent."

And "an antennae" (p.55) should be either "an antenna" or just the plural "antennae."

Et cetera. Maybe not so many tabs (of acid) and more returns (to the dictionary)? Heh—gotta love typewriter jokes.

And then there are the meticulously-traced connections among friends-of-friends-of-industry reps-of-bandmates... sometimes this stuff got a little hard to follow, like one of those rambling stories you hear from your aunt about second cousins you've never met:

The Dandy Warhols had the ear of the A&R reps, Mark Dutton had been doing all the BJM's mastering there, and Anton had recently befriended one Frankie Emerson, whose girlfriend, Krista Crews, worked for Perry Watts-Russell, who signed the Dandys to Capitol, as well as Everclear and Meredith Brooks.
—p.146

Got all that?

*

Despite its flaws, though, Jesse Valencia has put together a unique, lively and readable history of a musical group that hasn't received nearly as much attention as it deserves. Sure, Keep Music Evil has some rough edges... but without a few rough edges, you know, it wouldn't be rock 'n' roll...

[Mauberley]

Anton Alfred Newcombe may be the most important musician alive and those who listen to and adore his music will be grateful for this, the first full-length study of the great man and his band. The heart of the book is really a commentary on 'Dig', the film that did so much to bring the band to popular consciousness and to shape our thoughts of the way that he and it seemed to work. As AAN did not participate with the author, we have a series of sketches of the man that is long on 'exterior' without being able to penetrate deeply into his soul. The most poignant moment in the book (and there aren't an awful lot of them) describes the night at the Troubadour when AAN's sisters arrived to tell the man of their father's suicide while the band and their hangers-on watched through a glass window upstairs. This is not the final book on ANN and BJM but the author has done his job, 'holding the torch high that others may see.' It was somehow significant that Roky Erickson passed away during the weekend that I read this.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall a great book about the band and their leader. Highly recommended for any fan of the BJM or of music biographies in general. Part 3 felt a bit rushed. I would've happily read a few hundred more pages. My only gripe is there was no detail about Anton Newcombe's schizophrenic breakdown around 2014.

[Michael Augustine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really engaging book about a band (musician?) that has always been something of an enigma. The author did a terrific job taking a chaotic history and piecing it together. I'm a little over half way through and I look forward to going back to read more every evening.

Any fan of music who is even remotely familiar with The BJM or have seen (or want to see) 'DiG!', this needs to be the next book you read.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read about the friendship/rivalry between BJM and the Dandy Warhols, as well the beginning of how the band formed in the early 90's in San Francisco. The drugs, rotating casts, etc. all plays into this story as well.

[Jay Slayton-Joslin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sure, the other reviewers on here may have a point. Lots of awkward phrasings and I'm sure some inconsistencies. Though, when a band has been going for over 25 years with copious amounts of drugs and members, I don't think the story will ever be set too straight. Still, I learned a lot about my favorite band and Valencia did a lot of research and work, so warts and all there's a lot to be admired.

[Man · Rating 1 out of 5]

First of all, as a long time fan of the band in question, i was looking forward to this book since it was first announced with different publishers many, many years ago.

Unfortunately, this book is plain and simply rubbish.

Firstly, the whole book is barely readable. It comes across as the worst of an undergraduate research paper or a beginners writing class group. This is not the writing of a professional author, but rather someone undertaking a project to make credits for a part-time degree. It's like a rewrite of Wikipedia by a 6th grader who only has a set of pastel paints to write with.

Secondly, and most offensively is that the book does not appear to have been proof-read in any way, shape or form. Atrocious spelling, grammar, typographic and layout errors are all the way through the book.

To just list a handful of grammar/spelling examples:

1 "offering no further comment further"
2) "eschatology - the science of last things"
3) "Phillip John, director of Downtown Abbey"
4) "Nothing is even remotely close to what I knew was a kid"

Even worse though, and destroying any integrity the book could have had, are blatant factual errors, which are not just differences in peoples memories, but easily fact checkable information, such as show lineups or dates or names. If you can't understand how to spell Delia Derbyshire's name and accurately place her position in the history of this band, why bother?

The author also seems unable to distinguish between minor players in the bands story, giving them pages and pages of self aggrandising time, yet ignoring other key people who definitively made the band what it is. The author lacks any filter to develop a "truthful" narrative and throws all opinions at the wall. Unfortunately this more or less reads as:

"Person A says this." Then the very next line is an opinion piece by the author STATED AS FACTUAL INFORMATION. The book falls apart on this, as a casual reader is simply unable to determine fact from fiction, as the author is unable to articulate the difference between the opinion of an interview subject and his own opinion.

Finally, the author's attempts at a Hunter S gonzo style are frankly pathetic and embarrassing. All his talk of himself "frying" on LSD, and others as "tweeking" and "fiending" come across as childish and immature with a deep lack of understanding of the cultural resonance of these things to the band and associates. Let alone his references to his own "making love to beautiful women" and desperate attempts to place his own unknown band within the narrative. Contrast this with the amazing writing and story told by Paul Drummond in his book "Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, The Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound"

If you want to read a great book on modern psychedelic music, try Jim DeRogatis "Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock" or his "Staring at Sound: The True Story of Oklahoma's Fabulous Flaming Lips". Even David Brownes "Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth" is an incredible example of how this book could have been written by a real writer.

What a disappointment! Don't go near this book. Seems one of the band members is publishing something soon, you'd be much better waiting for that.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a big fan of the BJM since 2003 or so, I was excited to read this book. It does offer a lot to the hardcore fan, but ultimately it is poorly organized and conceived and, as a result, cannot be seen as the definitive statement on the band.

Valencia performed quite a lot of research in the writing of this book - obscure magazine interviews, blog posts (by Anton and others), and interviews he conducted with some (but not all) of the key members of the group provide a lot of fascinating micro-details to the hard-core fan. Indeed, Valencia seems to have spoken a lot with Jeff Davies and Matt Hollywood (but not Anton), and their memories of key periods and events are worth their weight in gold. Still, even for such a hard-core fan, the book is a slog - Valencia bogs down in the prosopography of the revolving door of the band and its friends/hangers-on. Sometimes, I dare say, it doesn't really matter which band one of Anton's temporary girlfriends played in (and we hear about all these obscure groups). That is to say that Valencia often gets lost in the dense mass of details he has assembled, and his book lacks a controlling narrative or argument. To be sure, given the tepid reaction of some fans to the narrative presented in Ondi Timoner's film, Dig!, it might be wise to think hard about pushing a particular narrative structure onto Anton's strange genius. But, ultimately, that's what biographers and writers must do, and for Valencia to default to an album-by-album, band-member-by-band-member approach whose only glue seems to be Anton's dictum 'Make Art Every Day', inevitably deprives the book of a central, guiding spirit.

So, as noted above, those already fascinated by Anton Newcombe and the BJM will find a lot of interesting detail to round out the picture of the band. But the definitive history of this epochal group remains to be written.

[final pet peeve: Valencia seems to think that he's doing 'new journalism' a la Tom Wolfe. He isn't. Merely reporting that he 'took 4 tabs of acid' and listened to the band, or attended a few shows in the 2010s, does not push him into the realm of participatory new journalism. In fact, the sections (especially the end) in which Valencia does inject himself into the story are the weakest. ugh.]

[David Rugendorf · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anton Newcombe and his ever-changing support cast in The Brian Jonestown Massacre provide the subject matter of this book. Valencia tackles Newcombe/BJM with passion. One can tell he worked very hard on it, conducting numerous interviews with dozens of subjects. The book is highly detailed, and you can tell that while he was writing it, it was the author's obsession. I'm glad I read it after working my way through the entirety of Newcombe's/BJM's discography as well as having watched Ondi Timoner's heralded documentary "Dig!", which covers a lot of the same territory as this book. I think it would have been harder to follow otherwise. "Keep Music Evil" provides a deeper dive than Timoner's film, and for that I am grateful. It was even reassuring to read that, when all was said and done, BJM and the Dandy Warhols patched things up -- if they ever really had a falling out at all. The book definitely gave me a better handle on Newcombe's genius, although I often stopped reading and wondered how much of it was actually true. Nonetheless, a grain of salt is what you take with every rock 'n' roll biography, and this one is no different.

My major problem with this book is the editing, which is so horrible it degrades the whole experience. Was there any editor at all? There are typos everywhere, sentences that go nowhere, names dropped without antecedent identification -- I can go on and on. I find mistakes in pretty much every book I read, and forgive them when they are few and far between, but this was egregious. My other problem with the book is the use of footnotes -- this is not an academic treatise or a legal brief, and I found them distracting. Most of them weren't worth losing one's place in the main text anyway.

So for these negatives, I was tempted to give this book two stars, but because I find the subject matter so compelling, and because I appreciate the author's effort, passion and attention to detail, I am giving it three stars.

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting and in-depth view of the work (still in progress) of the BJM. Any true fan of the band will appreciate the details elaborated in this text.

I will not reiterate the typographical problems and need of an editor that the text requires, which other reviews have noted. Though I will note that I have read more grievous publications (and in supposedly "academic" texts - see (or rather, avoid) Zero books publications...), and this text remains readable and understandable. It is worth note that the constant who's who of interviewees looking to establish their place in the band's legend is a bit tedious at points, but in a biographical work of this nature it can be forgiven. The bookends are pretty superfluous (especially the end of the book, which reads like self-aggrandizement on Valencia's part) however, and the suggestion that this in any way links Valencia's book to the Gonzo journalism of Hunter S. Thompson is a total injustice to the latter's détournement of journalistic practice. It takes more than expressing the place of the subject within one's own life to participate in the gonzo - there is need of a total detouring and hijacking of the medium in a doubling which totally displaces the message and content the narrative. Valencia's narrative remains a traditional biography, by any assessment of the term.

[brother_rebus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Follows a chronological narrative of the BJM focused mostly on Anton. Lots of wide ranging input from many tidbits of their history from a bunch of hanger-on’s & key players alike. Realistically the book could have been a bit shorter by excluding the author’s personal narrative to the epilogue or prologue, cutting out anecdotal ramblings from friends of friends of friends, or bouncing jumbled events that ultimately carried less than no worth. Kind of felt like I read the same thing a few different times over the chapters. But the aforementioned gripes could help a neophyte reader reflect the chaotic nature of the band & it’s history.

[Daniel Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very telling

[Kel Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Obviously written by a super-fan, the book is intriguing and in need of an editor.

[Christian Rettig · Rating 5 out of 5]

More entertaining of a read than watching a certain documentary.

[Jon Sylte · Rating 2 out of 5]

Love the band but this book was just poor

[Phoebe Kennard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was extremely excited to read this and I was good but a long tough read , was a lot more informatique than expected

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jesse, thank you. It can’t be said enough for putting to page the things that happened. The pure will and amazing amount of research that went into this account can’t be discounted. Anton’s missing in action account is felt as a literary conceit rather than an omission or missed opportunity, so congrats on that.

But as you know Aton's story, is only part of the story. Even in a one man band. And as ever, that’s what makes the band so great. Omission, as much as collaboration, is art. The notes you don’t play are just as important.

My constructive criticizism is that this book reads a lot like a bunch of notes compiled in order over 10 years, as opposed to an ode, as you admit to full-fledged band-crush. I was missing the feeling and emotion of that band love.

You say it. But I didn’t read it. I was missing the passages of flowery language, or an occasional flourish or swish of your magic typewriter. This book was more Cormac Mccarthy's The Road than a book. "This happened. This happened next. Then this happened. But before that happened this other band member did something to make this happen. Which relates to the next thing." Hard to follow. And hard to keep interest, especially for the uninitiated bjm-know-nots. It’s like you were trying to write it as an impartial journalist, which you’re not, and avoiding the deep introspection of a cultural attaché, which perhaps you are. Or which perhaps got edited out.

That said, if anton/mat's revisionist lawsuits are any sort of lantern, I’d say you can rewrite and update chapters of the digital copies of this book for the foreseeable future. And when you do, I’ll take a slashy on the credit.