Written by Michele Ulsohn Sunday, 06 June 2010 13:35

Currently in an eight-member line-up, the BJM are finally bringing their unique musical menagerie back to St. Louis for the first time in six years.

Considerably more of an ever-evolving and constantly-changing musical work-in-progress than it is a conventional band, San Francisco's Brian Jonestown Massacre has somehow always remained slightly below the mass-exposure radar throughout its 20-year existence. Quite likely undergoing the most personnel changes of any rock act in history, approximately 50 musicians have been granted joining (and often re-joining) privileges over the past two decades, including Sune Wagner of the Ravonettes, Jeff Davies of Dead Meadow, and Peter Hayes of the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. The one and only consistent member throughout all of the BJM's numerous incarnations has been its fearless leader, Anton Newcombe; a psychotic yet prolific genius who has taken his passion for 1960's psychedelic music to strange and wonderful places that it had previously never been taken.
  

Listening to each of the BJM's 12 full-lengths and four EPs is like taking a sonic journey inside Newcombe's multi-faceted creative mind. The shoe-gazing stylings of Methadrone, the middle-eastern flavor present on Their Satanic Majestie's Second Request, the blues and country twang on Thank God For Mental Illness and the electronica found on And This Is Our Music all seem like natural-sounding phases of an ongoing cross-genre exploration. Newcombe went for more of a global sound on the latest release, 2010's Who Killed Sgt. Pepper? It was recorded in Iceland and Germany and features musicians and vocalists from both of those countries, as well as from France and Russia.


Currently in an eight-member line-up (four guitars, two bassists, one drummer and a keyboardist), the BJM are finally bringing their unique musical menagerie back to St. Louis for the first time in six years, to one of our city's best-sounding venues, Off Broadway. Don't bother trying to find somewhere else that you need to be more than there on that evening; you won't succeed. | Michele Ulsohn
 


The Brian Jonestown Massacre play Off Broadway on Friday, June 11th


Floorian opens the show 


3509 Lemp Ave. 


314-773-3363 


Doors 7:30, Show 8:00


21 and over- $18
Under 21- $20