Brian Jonestown Massacre / The Quarter After / We're Marching On

Guelph-based spazz kids We're Marching On took the stage first, warming up early birds with fragmented songs built around anthemic group wails and keyboard bashing. Los Angeles's the Quarter After were a late addition to the bill and took forever prepping their instruments. The band members have played non-integral roles in virtually every country-inflected psych band on the West Coast, from Beachwood Sparks and Brian Jonestown on down the line. It was all the more disappointing then that they came off stiffer than Bill Cosby in leather pants. It didn't matter though, because everyone was there for Brian Jonestown Massacre. Make that everyone was there for Anton Newcombe. Because of the unlikely success of the award-winning documentary Dig!, Anton and the Massacre look to have gained shit-loads of cult-ish notoriety, all of which translated in the curious half of the Dandy Warhols' crowd jumping ship to pack this 300-capacity venue solid. The band wasn't there to disappoint. They spun off hours of effortless shoegazing physchedelia, drifting into long jams that would crescendo and then dive, only to come back up again. True to form, that Anton is a character. Everything in excess; he can't seem to stop himself. He was a charismatic gentleman, but the slightest disturbance would set him off, and he wouldn't let it go for the whole show. He'd rant on for minutes at a time about the unbearable heat in the venue but over two hours into the set he couldn't fathom calling it a successful night. Sadly, the documentary also invites some people to attend who seem resolved to piss him off just to recreate fight scenes from the film. Nevertheless, Brian Jonestown Massacre is one band that deserved more attention and now they've got it. Befittingly that attention came at the expense of the shallower and less talented Dandy Warhols.