It List: Monday

Brian Jonestown Massacre/The Flavor Crystals (The Granada): By pretty much all accounts, Anton Newcombe, founder of Brian Jonestown Massacre, is a fairly ridiculous and troubled individual who is prone to violence, drug addiction and a variety of other irresponsible behaviors. Anyone who attended BJM's last local show at Trees can attest to this-- within literally one minute of being onstage, obviously drunk and intoxicated by any number of other substances, Newcombe got into a shouting match with an audience member, asked that the guy be kicked out by security, and then proceeded to tell the audience that he had "lost his voice" and would be unable to sing that evening. Instead, he lead a pointless 20 minute instrumental "jam" by the band before inviting audience members on to the stage to sing BJM classics to the mostly disappointed fraction of the audience that actually decided to stay through the show. And this was an extremely tame and unenventful night by his standards.

So yes, Newcombe has proven himself to be a hit-or-miss live performer, to put it kindly, and although he might not have come across as quite as much of a douche as the members of the Dandy Warhols in Dig!, the infamous documentary about the two bands, he still seemed like a caricature of a rock n roll cliche, and a pretty poor one at that. Still, the guy can be given a few props-- for starters, his behavior in Dig was highly entertaining, for the most part, and for better or worse, it can probably be said that Newcombe's influence as a songwriter in the American underground has increased quite a bit over the past few years, perhaps because of Dig, or maybe in spite of it. His embrace of 60's psychedelic pop and groups like Spacemen 3, Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine was certainly never as revolutionary as many around him seemed to think it was, but the group had a string of great records in the mid and late 90's, perhaps culminating in their underappreciated foray into shoegaze and british psychedelic pop, Bravery, Repitition and Noise, released in 2001. The best of BJM's work is perfectly executed guitar pop that touches on everything from They Byrds to Slowride to Suicide, and you can probably expect to hear a lot of this material this evening. I admittedly don't know much about Newcombe's more recent work (although the little I've heard has been fairly terrible), but if you are willing to roll the dice concerning what kind of mood Newcombe will be in tonight, you could very well see a pretty fantastic show.

Themselves/Yeahdef/Lil Foot (Hailey's): Anticon's Themselves have been around for more than a decade now, and like you might expect from a group on the aforementioned label, they've worked with people like Busdriver, Aesop Rock and Mr. Dibbs... as well as some that you might not expect, such as the Notwist.

Cool Out (The Cavern)