Did you know that there is a band which has put more than 300 of their songs online? I didn't up till two hours ago.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre were founded in San Francisco in 1990 by Anton Newcombe and mates (apparently more than forty members passed through the band). Their name is a composition of the name of the short-lived Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones and the Jonestown Massacre in French Guyana which was a mass suicide of 913 members of a sect led by Jim Jones in 1978.

The BJM make droneful psychedelic music heavily influenced by the Stones/Beatles/Pink Floyd circa 67/68, Roky Erickson & the 13th Floor Elevators, The Velvet Underground, Love, Spacemen 3, Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, Ride and many others. I have just been listening to 14 (of 17) tracks from their brand new album And This Is Our Music which are on their site. A nice appetizer for newcomers to the band is the aptly titled addictive ambientish instrumental You Look Great When I'm High.

Unfortunately the links to the tracks of their shoegazer album Methodrone from 1995 don't work but their Stones tribute Their Satanic Majesties Second Request is fully downloadable. On Give It Back Newcombe's voice sounds pretty much like Syd Barrett's to my ears. Somewhere I read that he sang a little bit like Robert Smith from The Cure on later albums.

In the ILM thread taking sides: brian jonestown massacre vs. dandy warhols the BJM fans were much more active than the Dandies' aficionados.

With most of their œuvre in the public domain BJM seem like the Linus Torvalds of rock music. Is this the future of music? Somehow I doubt it, seeing that their commercial success has been very limited up till now. But they definitely must love music a lot to share it with the world.

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