Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary DIG! XX using the untimed birth charts of the two protagonists, musicians Courtney Taylor-Taylor and Anton Newcombe. Themes that emerge center around friendship which spurs both healthy and unhealthy competition and how both coming of age and being artists fan the flames of such competitions. Additionally Kent and Wonder discuss themes of violence, drugs, and mayhem associated with Rock and Roll, and what it takes to chart a steady course to success within that industry. Astrologically these themes relate to the 11th House, the first Saturn return, Venus, Venus retrograde, and the idea of “Time Twins”, where people born close together, like Taylor-Taylor and Newcombe, who were born 40 days apart, share certain astrological signatures, and hence psychological resonances.
Distribution: More info
Director: Ondi Timoner
Run Time: 146 minutes
Artist Statement:
Astrological Data: Courtney Taylor-Taylor, 20 July, 1967, Rodden Rating: X, Source: Wikipedia
Astrological Data: Anton Newcombe, 29 August, 1967, Rodden Rating: X, Source: Wikipedia
*Media referenced: Deadline article where Ondi Timoner says they began shooting DIG! on Anton Newcombe’s 29th birthday (Saturn return)
Music Credit: spacedust by airtone
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.476] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye.
[00:00:15.097] Wonder Bright: And I'm Wonder Bright.
[00:00:16.077] Kent Bye: And welcome to the Story All The Way Down podcast, where we're breaking down the archetypal dynamics of stories. In this season, we're looking at the documentaries from Sundance 2024. On today's episode, we're going to be diving into a piece called DIG! XX or DIG! 20. This is a part of the 40th edition celebration screenings events. There were 8 films that Sundance brought back from previous iterations of the Sundance Film Festival. This actually won the Grand Jury Prize for documentary back in 2004, and it's directed by Ondi Timoner. This is a remix of the original version, and I'm not sure if they're going to get new distribution for this extended version.
[00:00:55.051] Wonder Bright: I hope they do. It's so good.
[00:00:57.080] Kent Bye: Yeah, the version that played back in 2004 is 107 minutes, and this one is 146 minutes. So they've added 40 additional minutes and an update where both of the bands that they're covering, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, as well as the Dandy Warhols, give a bit of an update as to what each of them have been up to. And this is the 4th of 7 in our section on the Power of the Collective, Movements, and Friendships.
[00:01:19.975] Wonder Bright: It really just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? Kent Bye: (laughing) Yes.
[00:01:25.099] Wonder Bright: (intones for dramatic effect) The Power of the Collective. Kent Bye: The Power of the Collective, Movements, and Friendships. So, Wonder, I'm wondering if you'd be willing to read through the synopsis for DIG! 20. Wonder Bright: I would be delighted. DIG! 20? Kent Bye: Or DIG! XX. I don't know. Wonder Bright: What is it? Kent Bye: I don't know. It's either DIG! XX or DIG! 20. I don't know.
[00:01:43.927] Wonder Bright: Oh my god. We should know these things. I'm going to go with XX.
[00:01:48.990] Kent Bye: OK. That's fine.
[00:01:51.277] Wonder Bright: DIG! XX tracks the tumultuous rise of two talented musicians, Anton Newcombe, leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Courtney Taylor, leader of the Dandy Warhols, and dissects their star-crossed friendship and bitter rivalry. Through their loves and obsessions, gigs and recordings, arrests and death threats, uppers and downers, and ultimately to their chance at a piece of the profit-driven music business, they stage a self-proclaimed revolution in the music industry. Originally seven years in the making and culled from 2,500 hours of footage, Ondi Timoner's DIG! gets a 20th anniversary refresh, featuring 35 minutes of previously unseen footage. Fresh, stylish, raucous, and raw, DIG! XX is a feat in rough-and-tumble filmmaking. But the conflicts it examines are as old as Mozart. Where does genius fit into a commodified world? Can it thrive and get its due? Or does it need to self-destruct to preserve its integrity? Being at the right place at the right time is what makes DIG! XX important. But being in the wrong place, like in the path of a flying mic stand, is what makes it exhilarating. (laughs) That's well put. DIG! premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. documentary competition, where it ultimately won the grand jury prize in the documentary category. DIG! XX. Oh, I get it. (laughs) Oh, my God.
[00:03:27.253] Kent Bye: XX is a Roman numeral. It stands for 2o.
[00:03:29.614] Wonder Bright: I know that it's a Roman numeral, but it's not. Oh, it's the 20th anniversary of it.
[00:03:35.158] Kent Bye: Yes, correct.
[00:03:36.038] Wonder Bright: Oh my God.
[00:03:37.419] Kent Bye: Yes.
[00:03:37.959] Wonder Bright: That was painful.
[00:03:39.780] Kent Bye: Yes, this may all get cut out.
[00:03:45.043] Wonder Bright: I'm not sure. Maybe you should leave it in for posterity. DIG! How do you say it? I think it's XX. That's how they've written it. If they wanted it to be DIG! 20, it would be DIG! two-zero, right?
[00:04:01.110] Kent Bye: I don't know. It's like the thing that people, when they label the Super Bowl, they always use the Roman numeral, so it's like a formalized way.
[00:04:07.493] Wonder Bright: Does it just make it look fancy?
[00:04:10.275] Kent Bye: Yeah. They used to say, oh, this is the year of MCM, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
[00:04:15.211] Wonder Bright: Okay, listen, I'm going to go with XX. I just think it sounds, you know, like, superlative, and, you know, slightly like wrong. Like, do not drink. DIG! XX, which will premiere at the upcoming festival, is not only a digitally enhanced, remixed, and remastered version of DIG!, but also a special 20th anniversary new edit of the film culled from footage shot over 7 years and brought to you by the original sibling team, Ondi and David Timoner. And we don't know which brilliant Sundance programmer wrote that synopsis, but, it's good and it made me laugh.
[00:04:55.319] Kent Bye: Yeah, and at the very beginning of their DIG! XX version, they have Dave Grohl, who is singing its praises, saying that this is the greatest music documentary of all time, showing the most real and raw experience of what it's like to be an independent band, as they travel across the United States in the car and play all these gigs, all the sex, drugs, and rock and roll dimensions that each of these bands are playing. I should say that they're featuring two bands throughout the course of this piece, the Brian Jonestown Massacre with Anton Newcombe as the lead singer, as well as with the Dandy Warhols with Courtney Taylor - or Courtney Taylor-Taylor, who ended up changing his name to be Taylor-Taylor for some reason. But it's essentially following these two bands. Wonder Bright: (laughing) That was really shady. Kent Bye: (laughing) What?
[00:05:44.656] Wonder Bright: You know your wife is named Wonder Bright. Kent Bye: (laughing) I know. Wonder Bright: I'm just saying. If Courtney Taylor wants to add a Taylor to his Taylor, I'm all for it. Go, Courtney Taylor-Taylor.
[00:05:59.135] Kent Bye: So, it's essentially tracking these two bands, apparently in the original version, it's just Courtney Taylor who's narrating, but in this version, in the remixed version, they have both Courtney Taylor, who's narrating the sides of the Dandy Warhols, and then Joel Gion, who's a member of the Brian Jonestown Massacre Band, who's adding a lot of additional context as we go along. So, we are getting a behind the scenes view of over like seven to eight years worth of evolution, these two bands. And I think a big theme that I saw is this tension between the artistic expression and how they relate to the music business. And each of them have their own paths for how they relate to maintaining their artistic integrity and how they either take a path that is going to really exalt their music to the highest level. So you kind of have these two different paths of these two bands.
[00:06:51.235] Wonder Bright: Yeah, well, the reason I wanted to put it into this bracket of films that are about the power of the collective is because it's the one film of all of the selections that we saw this entire time, which is explicitly about friendship. And it's also about these two men who form this friendship. and the group of friends and associates that they are surrounded by in that period of time. But it really, the centrifugal force of the film rests on this friendship between Anton and Courtney. And The film really does seem to express, as the synopsis said, a bitter rivalry between the two. So I was surprised actually when we were preparing to have this conversation to read that both Courtney Taylor-Taylor and Anton Newcombe and other members of their bands had expressed real frustration with the way that the original DIG! came out and that it didn't feel to them like an accurate portrayal of what had happened, but especially of the way that the Timoners had portrayed Anton Newcombe. And apparently, the Timoners only followed, according to Courtney Taylor-Taylor, the Timoners only followed the Brian Jonestown massacre for a year and a half, whereas they followed the Dandy Warhols for eight years. And that allowed them to piece together footage for the original film that created more of a story that kind of left Brian Jonestown massacre in the dust in some vital ways. But they are apparently on board for this re-release and both artists promoted it on their own social medias, apparently. I didn't see that. I'm getting all of this from an article that we'll link in our notes. So it was interesting because, I mean, I haven't, I never saw the original. I wasn't enough of a music person to even be aware of it. This was the first time I'd heard of it. So my whole introduction to this story is through this newer version with this extended footage. And having said all of that, I will say that there does seem to be this rivalry at the heart of the friendship in the film that I saw, but I wouldn't describe it as bitter, exactly. Just deeply competitive. But there's also clearly this real, what's the word for it? Like, a recognition from one person to the other at the heart of their friendship in the way that the best kind of competition can provide. You're sort of spurring the other person on to be more of themselves, whether you're in reaction to what the first person has done or whether you're adding on to what they've done. I'm not sure that it really matters, but there are moments in time where we have relationships with people where, you know, we talked about it in our last episode, Con Body Versus Everybody, when you have friendships that mirror the sibling relationship, where you have these new people in your life, where you have this sort of intensity of that kind of equality that allows for competition in a way that can be both healthy and unhealthy. And we see both of those things on display in this film. You know, if you're going to add drugs and alcohol into the mix and staying up at all hours and, like, trying to pour your heart out into lyrics, you're going to run into certain unhealthy extremes because you're running into extremes. But you're also running into extremities of highs as well as lows and not just chemically induced highs. But because these people are artists and because they're all together like this little pack of wolves, they're also running into the kind of highs that humans create together and that can only be created together when we're all around a fire.
[00:10:54.696] Kent Bye: Yeah. And so when I think about this film, there's certainly a lot of themes of the 11th house in terms of, like, these are both friends and colleagues in the context of the bands, but they're also frenemies in some sense. There's this rivalry that's there that sometimes seems to be coming solely from Anton Newcombe, who is kind of the provocateur in some ways trying to provoke maybe more of an antagonistic rivalry to drum up more attention in the press and the media. But there seems to be a clear reverence between the two of them where Courtney Taylor-Taylor just really looks up to Anton Newcombe's artistic ability to come up with all sorts of really innovative ideas and often be ahead of the curve in so many different ways. But when I think about one of the primary significations of this film, to me it comes up again and again, the fact that both of these artists are going through their Saturn returns as the film is being made. They're born 40 days apart with Courtney Taylor-Taylor being born on July 20th, 1967, and Anton Newcombe being born on August 29th, 1967. And so we don't have the time to put in the charts, but we're able to at least know that around this time period when the director, Ondi Timoner, told Deadline that they started to film this on Anton's 29th birthday on August 29th, 1996. And so each of them are about to be going through their Saturn return at the very beginning of this filming. And I just wanted to read this quote from Richard Tarnas where he talks about the Saturn return. He says that all individuals go through their first time return transit from about the age of 28 through age 30, a three-year period in the course of which a characteristic complex of biographical events and experiences seem to occur with remarkable consistency. During these years, individuals tend to experience their lives as distinctly coming to an end of an era. beginning the years of youth to a close and initiating the person in an often challenging way into the principal period of mature activity in the world and engagement with the established social order. In examining many hundreds of individual biographies, Tarnas observed that “during the years from age 28 to 30, a tangibly different, usually more serious posture towards life, work, long-term goals, security, parents, tradition, and established social structures tended to emerge. At this time, the wider aspirations and wanderings of youth seem to undergo a transformation, becoming focused on and grounded in concrete practicalities and particular commitments, vocational, relational, intellectual, psychological, and spiritual”. So I feel like in a lot of ways this film is tracing the Saturn return of these two characters and how it can go on two completely divergent paths, one of which is mainstream success, or success from a traditional sense, what Courtney Taylor-Taylor says, with the Dandy Warhols is that they're “the most well-adjusted band on earth”, where they're able to really have all their commitments and their families and they're just kind of operating on all cylinders, going to work, doing their job, and really pushing the bounds of their own artistic expression. Whereas The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Anton Newcombe seem to go through a phase of rejecting any selling out or establishment, and ultimately the band disintegrates in a way that isn't able to sustain that type of longevity.
[00:14:19.454] Wonder Bright: I mean, is that true? You know, at the end of this version of DIG!, we see Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor-Taylor on stage together and Anton Newcombe certainly seems to, you know, he's living his life as a musician.
[00:14:35.061] Wonder Bright: I don't, does he- Kent Bye: Do you remember what happens at the end where they basically, everything gets canceled because they start fighting again? Wonder Bright: (laughs) Kent Bye: There's a consistent emotional outburst that Anton tends to have, and that even when they have their comeback tour, ended up getting canceled because they ended up not being able to hold it together.
[00:14:58.510] Wonder Bright: But I'm just saying that, is that with the Dandy Warhols or is that Anton Newcombe's? Kent Bye: That's Anton Newcombe's, yeah. Wonder Bright: With his band? Kent Bye: Yeah. Wonder Bright: Just alone? Okay.
[00:15:07.894] Kent Bye: Yeah. So like there's a way in which that The Brian Jonestown Massacre on the edge of imploding throughout the course of this film. And in the end, you kind of end with them parting ways. They do come back after 20 years, but again, they kind of -
[00:15:22.897] Wonder Bright: That's what I'm saying. After 20 years, like, we do see in the end that Anton Newcombe is making a living as an artist, seemingly, is he not? Or does he make his living doing something else?
[00:15:33.359] Kent Bye: Well, I think that he's able to have some level of success. However, contrasted to the Dandy Warhols, the Dandy Warhols took the traditional path of getting a record deal, whereas the record deal that Brian Jonestown Massacre had ended up being a bit of a boondoggle. It never really took off. They didn't achieve the same type of commercial success as the Dandy Warhols.
[00:15:53.730] Wonder Bright: Right. When I was watching it, first of all, I didn't actually have the sense that Anton Newcombe was interested in mainstream success in the way that Courtney Taylor-Taylor was. I could be wrong, but there's something in the way that you're describing the difference between the two of them that sounds as if it's like a sort of pejorative judgment on Anton Newcombe. I'm not so sure that he wanted the kind of success that, like, I got the impression he didn't, he was not going to be comfortable with mainstream success. And that sort of part of the construct of his character and his identity is struggling with that tension, but that he is never going to be somebody that wanted to work for a label because he was never going to be somebody that wanted to follow someone else's rules. And that's sort of what makes him, him. That's why he's the sort of, like, rock and roll archetype in a way that has Courtney Taylor-Taylor in the film really looking up to him and craving that, even if he is quite happy to be well adjusted instead. There is this part of him that's like, oh, what's it like on the other side of the fence? Because Anton Newcombe is, like, cutting the figure of, like, the rock and roll archetype, the hero, the rebel.
[00:17:18.635] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I think there is a number of times where he's saying in the film that he is the creator of his own destiny. He doesn't want to have anybody that has any control over him. And yet when he does get signed onto a record, he sort of self-sabotages in a way that he ends up doing a lot of drugs and they aren't able to actually produce the records that were committed to in the record deal. And so you look at how well are each of the two different bands integrating like a healthy expression of Saturn, which is living up to the duties and obligations and the social structures of society. You see the Dandy Warhols are able to really integrate. And then the Brian Jonestown's Massacre ultimately is not able to pull it off. And then they go on this one last trip and then they get pulled over and then basically they get caught with drugs and everything kind of implodes.
[00:18:08.795] Wonder Bright: I know, but again, the impression, the general impression I have is that he has somehow been able to eke out a living as an artist, you know, and whether or not he's subsidizing that vocational career with other sixth house activities. I don't have the impression that he is not doing what he wants to do. Somehow from the overall tenor of the film, I'm not left with that impression. Even when he was messing everything up in his 20s and early 30s, he's still living according to his rock and roll principles. So even though that's not a life that I chose for myself, I'm reluctant to judge it, I think.
[00:18:51.678] Kent Bye: Yeah, when I watch this film, I'm really seeing a contrast between the journeys between the two of them. And one of the ways that I'm describing that contrast is that the Dandy Warhols seem to be integrating the operation of Saturn with the structures and integration in society in a way that is a lot more a positive expression of that Saturnine principle than Anton Newcombe, who seems to be rejecting all Saturnine systems of structure.
[00:19:16.072] Wonder Bright: You know, when you said it originally, you quoted Taylor-Taylor as having said they're well adjusted. And that I think is really key to the distinction there, perhaps, that they're well adjusted. And so then the question is, if from a Saturnine perspective, well-adjusted to what? Well-adjusted to the rules of society, well-adjusted to the rules of our culture. And Anton Newcombe really seems to be setting himself at odds with those rules. And through the course of the film, we do meet his father. And we learn a little bit more about his upbringing, which was difficult, unsurprisingly, and which had many kinds of traumas. You know, that his father was really unavailable emotionally and probably abusive. Although in the film he seems to, like, evince kind of, like, regret, a sort of sorrow around that. You know, he's saying that to the cameras I don't know what the conversations with his son actually were Kent Bye: and then it said that his father died by suicide on Anton's birthday like a year later Wonder Bright: which is like, hello. What kind of fuck you is that? What a cruel thing to do to a child. You know, either he knew that was his son's birthday and he did it deliberately, or he didn't know it was his son's birthday. Which if you don't know the date of your son's birth, I don't know what to tell you. Either way, it's cruel.
[00:20:48.254] Kent Bye: Yeah. Well, as we're looking at these significations, what's really jumping out for you?
[00:20:53.737] Wonder Bright: Well, one of the things that I want to note is that because these two were born 40 days apart, that means that when you use the predictive technique of progressions, we can see that 40 days after Courtney Taylor-Taylor's birth, his chart will progress to the same signatures that Anton Newcombe's chart contains at birth. So these two men are walking a path where in some ways you could say that Anton is walking a little bit ahead of Courtney Taylor-Taylor. And Courtney Taylor-Taylor, as he matures, will live into some of the expressions of Anton Newcombe's chart. So this is something that my friend, Jenn Zart pointed out to me, that you can have this kind of resonance with people who were born within a month or two of you, and that you can look at their charts and how they're living their lives in order to understand how you're going to live into certain traits in your own chart. And it's a really fascinating thing to do if you happen to know enough people that are born close enough to you. My chart typically doesn't allow for that. Most of my friends are people who are many years older or many years younger than myself, because that's the nature of my chart. If you have those signatures, it's a really interesting way to understand the astrology of a time. And it's particularly interesting in this film because we're watching these two people who have similar traits, but they're showing up in this slightly different fashion - or radically different fashion in some ways. And so there's two really distinct features that show up in their charts that I think are interesting in terms of how the film explores these things. One is that they both have Neptune in the third decan of Scorpio. In Courtney Taylor's chart at the end of July of 1967, Neptune is at 21 degrees. But by the time Anton is born, Neptune is at 23 or 24 degrees and Mars is conjunct that Neptune. But because Taylor-Taylor is born with his Sun at the 26th degree of Cancer, Taylor's Sun is trining his own Neptune, but much more closely trining Anton's Mars and Neptune conjunction. And so there's this resonance there, because a trine always creates a kind of ease, and a Cancer Sun is somebody who has a lot of emotional bandwidth for people and is able to intuitively feel out what other people are feeling in a way that, you know, in the film, you can kind of see this sort of like quiet receptivity that Taylor-Taylor has for Anton. He's very clear throughout the course of the film, even when he's younger and older, the love that he has for Anton Newcombe and the admiration that he has for him, and specifically around his musical abilities, which we often relate to in terms of Neptune in modern astrology. Traditionally, that would be a Venusian thing, but here we can see this like real compassion that Taylor-Taylor has for Anton and the force of nature that Anton is, the way that he brings Mars, which is like a classic rock and roll rebellious expression into that Neptunian expression of drugs, alcohol, but also music. And some people have said Neptune is the quote higher octave of Venus. So, you know, your mileage may vary with that. But there is this unadulterated expression around Neptune, where a Neptunian person, you know, the phone is ringing off the hook from divinity. And that can be hard to navigate. But there's also these spaces where there is the capacity for the light to come through. And you can see between that trine that Courtney has to Anton's Mars Neptune, that there's this space where the two of them are able to be simpatico around that. Anton has like a couple of really striking signatures by August 29th of 1967. Venus and Mercury and the Sun are all conjoined in Virgo between five and seven degrees. So there's a number of tight conjunctions in Anton's chart that don't exist in Courtney's chart. And Courtney's chart has like a much more Saturnine flavor to it, which is probably to be expected given everything that we've just said in terms of how he is like, quote, “better adjusted” and better able to navigate his Saturn return transition. Because we can see in Taylor's chart, Saturn is square his Mercury, and it's a partile square. So they're both at 12 degrees. And in addition to that, it's likely that Courtney also has a Capricorn moon. we don't have the time, so we don't know how tight that T-square is. But we can see because the Moon is in Capricorn and it's ruled by Saturn, and Saturn is squaring both the early degrees of Capricorn and the Mercury in a tight partile orb, so that Saturnine hold has a really strong flavor in Courtney's life. So For one thing, that Saturn square to both the Moon and to Mercury is going to create a level of self-doubt and censure and a need to perfect things. That means - well, he’s in the music industry, he’s describing himself later on as being a member of the most well-adjusted band. But this is an industry that's not really into being well-adjusted. You know what I mean? Like we're here to seek fame and fortune and like tear up our hotel room, not like go home at 8 p.m. So he's a little out of sync with his culture in a way that, you know, that's going to naturally imply, like, am I doing it right? You know? And so you can kind of get this flavor of that kind of intensity and impulsivity in Anton is such a direct foil to that and so much more in keeping, frankly, with what we think of as what rock and roll is supposed to be. It's ironic, really, that we're talking about being well-adjusted in the world of rock and roll, which is archetypally not well-adjusted. The whole point of rock and roll is to fight for your right to party! Thanks, Beastie Boys. This is not about being well-adjusted. This is about sticking it to the man. It's the opposite of being well-adjusted. So, Courtney Taylor-Taylor has kind of set himself up for a life of being well-adjusted and not ever being good enough to be in the room with people who are not well-adjusted. So, you know, I think in the long term, this seems to have like worked out for him and he's really been able to manage that balance. But you can see why Anton Newcombe is so evocative and such a powerhouse for him. Okay, so I have spent a long time covering only one of the like signatures that I wanted to, but I wanted to see what you heard and if you had anything you wanted to add.
[00:28:47.649] Kent Bye: I wanted to pick up on this Mars-Neptune because that's something I really picked up on. Anton Newcombe's chart has such a tight conjunction between Mars and Neptune, and it's also squared by Jupiter. So I'm just going to read a few of the significations that Richard Tarnas assigns to both Mars as well as to Neptune. because I think it actually plays out throughout the course of the film, some of the character traits of Anton Newcombe. So in Cosmos and Psyche, Tarnas says that “Mars is the principle of energetic force, the impulse and capacity to assert, to act more energetically and forcefully, to have an impact, to press forward and against, to defend and offend, to act with sharpness and ardor, the tendency to experience aggressiveness, anger, conflict, harm, violence, forceful physical energy, to be combative, competitive, courageous, vigorous, Ares, the god of war”. So there's a lot of what happens throughout the course of this film where there's a lot of these angry outbursts that we're seeing from Anton, especially relative to his other band members, to the point where there's physical violence that's breaking out on stage that they're kind of infamous for. And this conjunction between Mars and Neptune being squared by Jupiter. So it's like an amplification of this sudden, rash, violent outbursts. And for Neptune, Tarnas writes, “astrologers consider it to govern the transcendent dimensions of life, imagination, and spiritual vision in the realm of the ideal”. Anton's a very big idealist when it comes to his ideals for what the perfect version of what might be because he really fights for his ideals in a lot of ways. But Neptune in a negative manifestation can mean that it's also associated with illusion and delusion, deception and self-deception, confusion, ambiguity, projection, maya. It rules both the positive and negative meanings of enchantment, both poetic vision and wishful fantasy, mysticism and madness, higher realities and delusional unreality. I wanted to read all that just because I feel like there's a certain amount of his creative genius, his poetic, artistic visions that he's really singing about, both in his style of singing that is so inspirational to Courtney Taylor-Taylor. But at the same time, Anton is plagued with turning to drugs at the most inopportune times. That means that he escapes and when he goes into these drug benches, he starts to have these violent outbursts that then becomes a key part of what ultimately leads to the band disintegrating. So there's a way in which that really tight Mars-Neptune conjunction squared by that Jupiter ends up being a pretty key theme throughout the course of this deep commitment to the ideals that he has, but also these violent outbursts that he has on stage. Neptune has this diffuse quality of blurring the boundaries of what's appropriate and not appropriate. So he's in the middle of performing, but yet he's sniping and bickering and attacking both his bandmates and other people who's helping to run the soundboard or whatnot. But sometimes it comes to these breaking points where that verbal sniping turns out to actual physical violence.
[00:31:59.193] Wonder Bright: Yeah. It's really interesting that because this film is framed through the lens of rock and roll, that that behavior is, well, the synopsis says this is what makes the film exhilarating, right? That we don't read it as abusive or trauma-induced, but that we read it as, yeah, that's rock and roll, man. Yeah, he's sticking it to the man, as I said, you know, that it has, like, I remember I got this letter from my brother when I was at college in England, and he had sent me a mixtape with some of his favorite bands. So this would have been like 1996 or so. In it, he makes this impassioned plea for noise as a valid form of expression. That there's something about the inarticulate rage of artists funneled through rock and roll or through expressions of anti-harmony and rage that is, of itself, enough. It's enough to be angry and to be vocal and to smash stuff up. My brother wasn't making a plea for violence. He was making a plea for noise, just the expression of noise, the antithesis of harmony. I don't remember how he wrote it, but, like, how it's coming to me right now, as I think about it in relation to Anton's antics on stage, is that there is something powerful about that nonverbal, explosive, NO! Just NO. And that perhaps it's a symptom of like how overwhelming the circumstances and systems of the world are that the no is inarticulate, that it isn't a verbalized expression of a rationalized “no”. It's just NO. No is enough. And that there is a space in rock and roll for that no to exist in its inarticulate form that is really powerful and important, and that we need to have room for. And so this might be a moment to consider what we're lacking, that there aren't more women allowed in rock and roll, because women certainly should have a right to that inarticulate no as well. But just that that's a space where that no can exist in a way that is meaningful and can be shared by people and can be shared in communities and maybe especially within youth cultures.
[00:34:44.942] Kent Bye: Yeah, both bands of Brian Jonestown's Massacre, as well as the Dandy Warhols, do feature some women that are also in these groups, which was nice to see. But as you start to think about other astrological signatures, what are some of the other things that you were picking up on?
[00:34:59.079] Wonder Bright: Well, the one that I really want to draw people's attention to is that in the 40 days between Courtney Taylor-Taylor's birth and Anton Newcombe's birth, Venus stations retrograde and actually goes backward enough so that in those 40 days, Courtney Taylor's Venus is at seven degrees Virgo and Anton Newcombe's Venus is at six degrees Virgo. So Newcombe's Venus is at six degrees Virgo and it's conjunct the Sun retrograde. So by the time Newcombe is born, Venus has gone retrograde and is closely conjoined the Sun. And when it emerges from that conjunction, it will emerge as a morning star Venus, which is Venus in her warrior goddess phase. But when Taylor-Taylor is born 40 days earlier, Venus is an evening star. So it's only visible in the sky at night after the Sun has set. So this is another space where we can see the difference between the two men because an evening star Venus like we see with Courtney is somebody who has this capacity and understanding, like, in a general way that Venus expresses the qualities of Venus that we generally revere Venus for. In its evening star expression, Venus is a more receptive planet. When it emerges in the night sky after sunset, it sort of heralds the night forces because it's the first star that we see at night. So, in its evening star guise, it's bringing the cooling forces of the night, and it's time for us to rest, it's time for us to relax, it's time for us to indulge in our senses. This is one of the signatures of Venus as being desire and sex. So, it's a more receptive Venus. And so, classically, when you're going to see somebody who has an evening star Venus, especially when it's far enough along that it's going to be an evening star for like an hour after sunset, as it is in Taylor-Taylor's chart, then you've got somebody who understands how to use their Venus in order to create harmony in the world around them. Whereas by the time you get Venus conjoined the Sun and retrograde as it is in Newcombe's chart, now Venus is on its way to the morning star phase. And you know, if you remember an earlier podcast, we talk about a retrograde planet as operating the opposite of the way that it's supposed to operate. So already when Venus is retrograde, it's going to not be so conducive to creating harmony in the world around it. It's already going to illustrate people who are disinterested in creating harmony. Their Venusian contract, if you will, is more about creating disharmony. And it's important to understand that that aspect of disharmony is not necessarily like antithetical to harmony. So much as it is like the inarticulate no! around when things are already not harmonious. So the disharmonious or warrior phase of Venus is pointing out where we are already in disharmony. And it's pointing out those things, which is a disharmonious thing to do. Right. But this is not a people pleasing Venus. This isn't Venus that's going to take a back seat to things and make things easier on other people, which is what we want Venus to do. This is a Venus that's going to be fighting for things. It's also invisible because it's closely conjoined the Sun. So it's got another measure of difficulty in that way, because it's going to be harder for this person to access their Venusian qualities. And then additionally, it's in Virgo, as is Courtney Taylor-Taylor's Venus. So both men are really deeply concerned with a kind of deep analysis, which is the Virgoan trait, of things that qualify as beautiful to them, which we can see in their shared love of dissecting what they're doing through their musicality. They're both really interested in dissecting it in a really Virgoan manner, like how it works and how it doesn't work. And the fact that their Venus's are closely conjoined, but Taylor-Taylor's is an evening star, whereas Newcombe's is a conjunction, is this really potent statement where I would imagine that Taylor-Taylor both had this experience of like understanding his Venusian qualities more brightly because they're being illuminated by Newcombe's Sun and they're being shown to him like he's going to understand his music better as a result. And at the same time, he's going to feel eclipsed because Newcombe's Sun is also on his Venus. So just as a side note, though, in favor of thinking about this friendship as a real genuine friendship, like a real mutual love, I will point out that 40 years after Taylor's birth in 2007, in December, he got married and he's been with the woman that he married since that period of time. So in other words, when his chart progressed to the same Venus that Newcombes had at birth, that's when he gets married. And I would just suggest that there's something about that that indicates that he feels really safe and secure and able to be himself when his chart progresses to the point that his friend Anton Newcombe's chart was at birth. That that's actually when he comes into a way of being that allows him to release himself into an intimate marriage partnership for the first time at 40 years of age. And then a year or so later, he and his wife had his first child.
[00:41:08.793] Kent Bye: Hmm. Awesome. And I guess as you think about DIG! XX as a remedial measure, then who would you prescribe this movie to?
[00:41:18.487] Wonder Bright: I would prescribe this movie for anyone who's interested in that aspect of being a bit of a time twin with someone, you know, if you want to understand like that expression of two people who are born just like a month and a half, no more than two months apart and how that can play out in their lives. And then I would also prescribe this film for people who want to understand the astrology of rock and roll, that this is a really good film to play with those dynamics and to see these two people who are pursuing the same career from slightly different angles, but with a real communion and shared passion.
[00:42:06.250] Kent Bye: Yeah. And when I think about this film and what I want to bear witness to, I want to bear witness to the process of the film being made by Ondi Timoner and David Timoner, who had captured 2,500 hours of footage over eight years and had to edit it down into like a two hour, two and a half hour film that, you know, first showed at Sundance 2004. And now this two and a half hour plus version that we got to see at the 40th edition of Sundance in 2024. And also I want to bear witness to the narrators of this piece, both Courtney Taylor-Taylor and Joel Gion, who both add a lot of context to the stories and the footage that we're seeing from their own first person perspectives. Because, you know, it's one thing to have everything edited and cut together by the filmmakers, but it's another thing to have someone who actually lived through it, from a much broader context, to be able to add the deeper story as to what each of these moments meant in terms of the evolution of each of those bands, because we're able to really get a lot of insight over this eight-year period, which is a Venus period of eight years, the planetary period of Venus that repeats its patterns over five synodic cycles. And so yeah, just the fact that it's such a huge archive of someone's life and as they're both going through this kind of maturation turning point with the Saturn return that represents a shift in each of their lives. It's quite a moment in time that she was able to capture in the evolution of each of these bands and the way that the film was aided together, but also the narration for how it tied everything together as well.
[00:43:43.973] Wonder Bright: Yeah. Yeah. And I just love to bear witness to the love between these two men and their enduring friendship through all of its highs and lows and articulated and unarticulated aggressions and discursions and eccentricities. It's really a potent story of friendship amongst the heightened twin powers of coming of age and also of really trying to craft yourself in the profession of your choosing and especially of an artistic one. Where people are so full of dreams when they're young and burning so bright and how the people that you surround yourself with in that period of your life end up being a part of your life for many, many years later than you could possibly have imagined in that period of time. It's a really powerful testimony to that.
[00:44:48.983] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's very fitting that we have it in our section on the Power of the Collective, Movements, and Friendships, because I think it definitely is echoing that. So yeah, that's all that we have for today. And I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Story All the Way Down podcast. And if you enjoyed the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends and consider signing up to the newsletter at storyallthewaydown.com. Thanks for listening. Wonder Bright: Thank you.
