Diggable plan
It's tough to write up last Thursday's show by the formerly notorious San Francisco pscyh-rock vets Brian Jonestown Massacre without bringing up the semi-celebrity they acquired by way of the hit indie documentary DiG!. Much like the movie, from which better than 90% of their semi-celebrity derives, this has almost nothing to do with the band's music.

We walked into the Exit/In having missed opening act The Flavor Crystals, finding instead a room packed full of fans cheering and jeering as BJM walked onstage, then looked at each other and tuned instruments for a good five minutes before breaking out their first tune. The group commenced with a string of sleepy, mid-tempo, semi-noisy, melody-driven hallucinogenics.

Annoying taunts from multiple male patrons persisted between songs, which we assume were intended to illicit a reaction from the band's oft-troubled leader Anton Newcomb. Anyone else who came expecting the volatile train-wreck persona made famous in the documentary surely went home disappointed. Newcomb ignored the catcalls completely, and the singer-songwriter once infamous for fighting audience members maintained a sober, steady focus on his trudging, fuzzy traipse into spacey, retro-flavored, shag-carpeted terrain.

In fact, there were very few surprises or even deviations from the 120 BPM tempo and vibrating melodies the band grooved on throughout the show. The lone exception came in the form of a drum loop-driven psychedelic industrial rap excursion somewhere around mid-set, during which Newcomb rocked the mic with a tale of a drug hunt gone violent. Those who came in with reasonable expectations of the band's signature pastiche of '60s psychedelia no doubt got their money's worth. Everyone else would just have to go home and put DiG! in their Netflix queue.

An beer
We cruised onto Elliston with the top down—well, with the windows down, at least, and landed at The End, sparing no expense and sipping on the delightful elixir that is Pabst Blue Ribbon. Our eager beaver companion insisted that we arrive early, much to our chagrin, but that left ample time to check out the rather flush and young crowd.

As we waited for to Heypenny get set up, a member of the band came to the bar and struck up a conversation. "I hate playing this place," he complained, holding his plastic water cup expectantly over the bar and tapping his fingers in time with the ambient music. We deduced that he was the drummer, as he bemoaned the lack of beer provisions, his voice dripping with diva-esque annoyance. It was a strange conversation to have with members of your audience, and a grouchy drummer generally doesn't bode well.

Although thrown and intrigued by the grouch encounter, marching band outfits and old-school television stage props, we were pleasantly surprised as Heypenny took the stage. They pranced and marched around the small space, rocking out with staccato pop beats and just the right amount of synth as a sax man (not in outfit) added some needed pi-jazz from the back. We spent a good amount of the high-energy set afraid (and secretly hoping) that the whirling and kicking bassist would whack one of the too quiet background vocalists with his instrument, but nonetheless thoroughly enjoyed their quirky vocal lines and jaunty guitar riffs. Definitely check 'em out.

Shoot the Mountain played straight-up no-nonsense rock, and after their set, we hung around for a breath of ocean-fresh air from Brisbane (that's Brizzy for you Aussies) natives An Horse. We're predisposed to love Australians from a walkabout abroad, but this sun-kissed blonde guitar-and-drum duo impressed us with their engagingly clever and uncomplicated sound. The call of responsibility soon drew us homeward, but it proved to be a great night for live music.

What we're into
Damn The Ryman's confounded early start times. For fear of showing up late, we jogged through the Saturday-evening drizzle down 5th Avenue, scarfing the last bit of our Rodeo Cheeseburger in order to make it in time for Flight of the Concords. We were, of course, just being paranoid, because we entered the fabled venue with enough spare time to join the snaking beer line before finding our seats. After unintentionally overhearing a painfully intimate story from the girl behind us, we snagged a frosty, 11-dollar 24-ounce and hustled into the auditorium. It was finally business time.

We thought we heard a familiar voice from the lobby, and our suspicions were confirmed when we seated ourselves in the balcony: The opening comic was Kristen Schaal, known better to Flight of the Conchords fans as Mel, the obsessive FOTC groupie from the series. Clearly a tinge more self-aware than her alter ego, Schaal utilized a handful of absurdist playlets and her bizarre (but strangely compelling) persona to elicit a genuinely powerful response.

Clad in robot apparati, the Conchords opened with the instant club classic "Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor" while bathed in the reflection of the Ryman's disco ball. (Or did they bring their own?) They proceeded to play the bulk of their set on acoustic-electric guitars, and it pretty quickly dawned on us that the vast majority of their material is lascivious pseudo-funk: numbers about layin' a woman down and whatnot sung in a ridiculous but consistently entertaining falsetto.

We'd hoped to hear "Bowie," one of our favorite FOTC jams, and while it was absent from their set, standards like "If That's What You're Into" and "Business Time" made the cut. Bret and Jemaine preemptively apologized to any music critics in the house for their subpar chops, but they were actually at least passable on a handful of instruments (drums, Omnichord, guitar, keys and glockenspiel), and most mistakes were pretty endearing.

Perhaps the most obnoxious occurrence of the evening was the increasingly unruly crowd, who shouted "Free Bird!" about four too many times, went berserk when Bret made mention of East Nashville and constantly hollered lines they recollected from the Flight of the Conchords series. You'd think living amongst the country strain of celebutards would desensitize Nashvillians to becoming severely starstruck, but a lot of folks seemed thrilled simply to be in the presence of people they seen on the tee-vee. Regardless, the Conchords battled back with some pretty hilarious faux Southern accents, and it's nice to see that New Zealand's fourth most popular folk-novelty duo has transcended obscurity far more than they'd ever let on.

Between Rites of Spring and the Nashville Film Festival, you really have no excuse for staying inside your cave this weekend watching Reese Witherspoon marathons or BitTorrenting How I Met Your Mother. Srsly. Email thespin@nashvillescene.com.