Music review Show digs into Warhols/BJM differences

There's a scene in the 2004 cult film "Dig!" -- the surprise hit documentary that captured the uneasy alliance and simmering rivalry between Portland's Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre -- that perfectly encapsulates the bands' quizzical love/hate relationship.

Eric Hedford, then the Dandys drummer, sits in the back of a cab ranting about the BJM's increasingly unpredictable, lunatic-fringe frontman Anton Newcombe: "He's stalking us now. I don't want him anywhere near us: I don't want him sharing our dressing rooms, I don't want him backstage."

"Yeah," agrees guitarist Peter Holmstrom laconically. "I'll still buy his records, though."

This seemingly contradictory exchange sums up the reality of Newcombe's particular genius: Along with the good comes the bad. And it's that very friction (so vividly portrayed in the film, which both groups have subsequently denounced) that filled the Crystal Ballroom to capacity on the first night of MusicfestNW Thursday, with most fans fixated on the uncertain, circus-like dynamic between the two bands, who reportedly haven't played a gig together or spoken much since the film was released. Thankfully, the imagined controversy was quickly replaced by an enthusiastic focus on the incident-free music at hand.

The decade-plus, off-and-on friendship between the two groups is rooted in a shared aesthetic. Both borrow heavily from the garage-rock sounds of the '60s (Seeds, Velvet Underground, Rolling Stones circa "Their Satanic Majesties Request") and '90s U.K. psych-rock bands (Jesus and Mary Chain, Love and Rockets, My Bloody Valentine), and both are dominated by the visions of their respective frontmen, the Dandys' narcissistic Courtney Taylor-Taylor and the BJM's shamanistic, hippie-prophet Newcombe.

The key difference lies in execution. The Dandys have learned how to hone their affection for drone and feedback into digestible four-minute chunks of power pop and shaped their slick hour-plus set accordingly, while the BJM have never deviated from their scruffier approach to improvisation. Nor has the group solidified into a truly functional unit. As "Dig!" viewers will recall, Newcombe has been known to fight his band onstage, sometimes firing them in the heat of the moment, and the band has gone through more than 40 members during the decade-plus in which the BJM has existed.

This show brought into vivid relief the divergent approaches (and career direction) the two bands have taken. For 30 of the 60 minutes the BJM were onstage, they were dangerous, sexy and probably the best band that will play at MusicfestNW all weekend, toggling between punk-inspired churn (a killer version of their team-vocal number "Who?" included former member Matt Hollywood, who has since moved to Portland) and psychedelia-soaked burn before finally getting kicked offstage by venue management. The Dandys, by way of comparison, looked every inch the part of the rock stars they are and sounded tight and organized throughout, especially on their hits "Bohemian Like You" and "Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth," but never broke free of the constraints of their set list.

Syd Barrett, the late founder of Pink Floyd, once explained to Melody Maker that the reason he left the band was because "the way we started to play wasn't as impressive as it might've been. It was done very well, rather than as considerably exciting." Barrett couldn't have offered a more succinct comparison of the flip sides of Thursday evening's musical coin if he had been there himself.