Coming in for the home stretch of a long day of interviews promoting his band's hoped-for breakthrough album, Strung Out in Heaven, Brian Jonestown Massacre frontman Anton Newcombe has one simple request: "I want to focus people on the music now."

If the singer/songwriter seems frustrated, it's understandable. His wildly prolific band has released six albums in less than two years (all on the indie Bomp), and its new CD -- its first for TVT Records, due June 23 -- is filled with moments that attest to the band's burgeoning genius. But the Brian Jonestown Massacre have an image problem.

The five-piece band has developed a reputation as notorious as their namesake -- adventurous founding Rolling Stone Brian Jones, who was found dead in his swimming pool in 1969. Tales (tall or not) of barroom brawls, patrons demanding refunds, drug-impaired performances, and gigs gone postal are only half of the BJM story. A former manager has claimed that Newcombe threatened him at gun point. Fist fights and defections within the band itself were de rigeur on their first tour. And just last month, the drummer brought onboard for the band's current tour departed, being replaced by hired gun Arik Olson. A documentary crew is currently immortalizing these and some of the band's other more infamous moments. But Newcombe is eager to move forward -- if only the press will follow.

"Shit has happened," Newcombe says about the past. "We're much more like brothers and sisters and the way they'd behave in all those good ways, and that's why we've been together for multiple years. [The former behavior] was more like that's what we did for our own personal reasons."

But it's this "personal" growth that's generated the stories that persistently dog the band. Surely Newcombe wouldn't deny the benefit of the extra attention such behavior had brought his band?

"Ultimately, I think that's gonna mirror lazy journalism," Newcombe says about the focus on the negative. "People are just gonna go, 'Why are you perpetuating these stories that are totally old; why aren't you talking about the music, because I thought they were a band, not some WWF project.'"

Adds BJM tambourine player Joel Gion: "It's just modern-day tabloid Jerry Springer bullshit that everybody seems to be completely brainwashed by."

Ironically, the tabloid-style headlines helped fuel the buzz about the band among record labels, although on the balance, they may have repelled as much interest as they attracted. "People loved the music, but we were never a sane business venture because of this idea that we were gonna implode at any second," Gion laughs. "We were finding all of these record companies [saying] 'Well, if you just tone down this, or not do that ...'"

"When we started to make this arrangement with TVT, we were like, 'First of all, welcome aboard.'" Newcombe says. "'There's nothing you're gonna do to make us, because we already made ourselves. We're our own phenomenon.'"

"Yeah, they dig us for who we be," Gion says. "It's very nice to be doing this with people who let us do what we do."

BJM got their chance to "do what they do" all over Strung Out in Heaven. For the TVT debut, the band eschewed the acoustic-vibe and meandering experimentalism of some of their past discs. Instead, the hypnotic swirl of melodic songs on Strung Out reveals Newcombe's songwriting prowess at a new peak. Newcombe, who is said to write three new songs a day, already has another EP completed and ready for release. "I look at it like every record should be a different audio environment," Newcombe says.

As Gion more eloquently puts it, "There's always other meals being cooked in the kitchen. Whereas the new one is more of a collection of songs, the EP is more of like a back porch, foot-stompin', Charles Manson kind of psychedelic freak-out kind of vibe."

The feel of each CD may vary, but BJM's aesthetic remains constant. "We wanted to approach the way you make music like the way Brian Jones did," Newcombe says. "He was really open-minded with instrumentation. He was very tasteful."

And speaking of the dead Stone, Newcombe is quick to dismiss the "retro" handle that might be inferred from their moniker and their jangly, harmonizing pop. "Look at what Bob Dylan did -- he animated a classic sort of folk thing and took it some place that it's never been. We're doing the same exact thing. It's not retro. It's dead if we don't participate with it."

That takes care of the music end of the BJM story. Now, let's get back to the rock & roll sideshow, and of course, that documentary. Can we expect Cocksucker Blues II? Or will the film showcase a kinder, gentler brand of rock hedonism?

"They're waiting for somebody to die, or waiting for us to break up," Gion says about the documentary's impending release. "They're just going to keep on filming until there's a tragedy. So on that level we've disappointed them thus far."

STEVE GDULA