By: Bob Longmore
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| Dinosaur Jr. - Publicity Photo by Brantley Gutierrez |
When last I saw Dinosaur Jr., it was 1997. In a sweaty Norfolk, Virginia venue called the Boathouse, I saw the band that connected so many thoughts and occasions throughout the preceding years. I was first introduced the teenage riot, J Mascis in 1992. Funny enough, it was by the guy that was kissing my then girlfriend as they worked at the Military Circle Mall embroidering people’s initials onto sweatshirts at a kiosk. The loneliness and angst that permeated Dinosaur Jr’s music were a perfect accompaniment to the heartbreak that ensued.
Countless hours riding my skateboard in Denver with “Freak Scene” playing in my headphones; driving around Virginia Beach with “Sludgefeast” on repeat as I revisited the ghosts that chased me out of that town, I felt the power of music to cling to a person in perpetuity. Notes and melodies like a sticky sickness attached to memories of an apartment building, the smell of bus fumes and a stretch of road that once brought me home.
For six months in 1997, I tried for the last time to live in Virginia. During that alcohol-filled summer, at a rundown venue on the edge of the Elizabeth River and just below an interstate, Mascis brought his band to town. It was the end of an era in my life and my relationship with Dinosaur Jr. In a few months time I would find my way to Minneapolis and Dinosaur Jr. would cease to release relevant albums.
Even if I had given up on Mascis doing anything astonishing again, I was okay. I could live on the music that he gave me. I don’t really hang on to sentimental things too often, but I still have a SPIN magazine from 1994 with Mascis on the cover. The magazine, now a yellowing and tattered document, has traveled two continents and every state between Minnesota and Virginia. I still stumble upon it every couple of years and read the low-key Mascis answer questions about what it is like to be a rock star and a guitar hero.
Fast-forward to 2005 and the original Dinosaur lineup reformed and toured the country. Only, I decided that I didn’t want anything to do with Mascis and company cashing in on the ‘90s nostalgia. I wanted to keep Dinosaur Jr. the way I remembered them—forever in my sweaty self-loathing twenty-something years.
I was ready to write any incarnation of Dinosaur Jr. off. Forever.
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| Beyond album art |
Then comes this new album Beyond, which is a new Dinosaur Jr. album worth the name Dinosaur Jr. I don’t know if Murph and Lou Barlow had some way to reel in the sprawling mess that marked the last decade of Mascis’s recorded output. Or maybe the original three members did indeed spark a renewed creativity and focus. Any way the band did it, they did it well. If I could forget all the albums that came after Where You Been?, this new album would be the superb follow-up.
So here I am, ready once again to accept Dinosaur Jr. as the thunderous sand that shifts beneath my feet.
At the Triple Rock, while I was sitting at the bar taking down a couple Miller High Lifes, a few hours before he would take the stage, the middle-aged riot version of J Mascis strolled in with his familiar long stringy hair, except the greasy-looking dark locks had been ambushed by gray. A more than noticeable paunch accented his middle section and large black-rimmed glasses, not unlike the ones made famous by baseball broadcaster Harry Caray, took up half of Mascis’s face.
As he walked through the bar, staring straight ahead, making eye contact with no one, heads turned, including mine, with an expression that said—Wait, you’re J Mascis, a rock god, you can’t just walk through a bar like a normal person, you should be carried in by chariots.
This scene repeated a few minutes after I walked into the venue part of the Triple Rock—Mascis walking through the crowd at a deliberate pace, staring straight ahead as nobody can quite muster up the nerve even to say hi to him.
Finally, after all the drama, after all the anxiety against a wall of Marshall stacks, J Mascis took the stage (sans Grandpa glasses) followed by the other two original members of Dinosaur Jr., Murph and Lou Barlow, and with barely a spark, the room erupted.
It was loud.
I’ve read stories about the early days of Dinosaur Jr., the way they would drive people away with their insane volume and Mascis’s insistence on playing with digital effects until it made the acid in your stomach churn. I thought about this as they played “Almost Ready” from the new album. A wall of tinny sharp guitar and guttural fuzzed out bass exploded and just below that aggressively jagged wall of sound was Mascis’s familiar lonesome whine.
Barlow stood in front of his own impressive array of amplifiers and shook his curly ‘80s mop of bangs in front of his own face. I swear he still looked like the kid in the album insert on You’re Living All Over Me. I think depending where you were standing; the vocals were barely audible at times. I was standing near Barlow’s wall of bass amp, so I don’t think I was getting the full sound.
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| Dinosaur Jr. circa 1987 |
To call J Mascis’s stage presence lifeless might be an overstatement, but he is certainly not ebullient in his performance. But that is what you get with Dinosaur Jr. Barlow and Murph bounce around, but Mascis’s pulse barely rises even when burning up his fret board with one of his many blistering solos. The band jumped into “Out There,” which featured one of those amazing Mascis solos, and it was a jump in time back to the early ‘90s when Dinosaur Jr. released Where You Been and marked the point where their sound changed to a more polished version of the punk rock and hardcore roots. Also, the album landed Mascis on the cover of that SPIN magazine. It was their high point in indie rock fame.
“Feel The Pain” is one of those Dinosaur Jr. songs that just bugs me. It was a minor hit off a not very good record, Without a Sound. From the moment I first heard it, I thought it was an uninspired, going-through-the-motions type song, an intuitive feeling I got from pretty much every album after Where You Been. As Mascis swayed gently side-to-side, he played the opening refrain, and I couldn’t tell from his usual expressionless demeanor if this song bored him any more than the other songs he was playing. The crowd, however, chose this point to relive the ‘90s in all their awkward mosh pit glory. Clumsy elbows flailing about and within seconds, two guys were trying to out macho each other. Trying to win the fight without actually fighting, friends jumped in to break it up, which caused splinter fights, finger pointing and some restrained shoving gave way to drunken awkward smiles and hurt feelings. The song wound down without anybody actually feeling any pain, except for weakened pride.
A highlight of the night was “Little Fury Things” from my favorite Dinosaur Jr. record, You’re Living All Over Me. With Barlow’s hoarse screams punctuating the intro, the more straightforward Dinosaur Jr. came to light. Free from all the noodly guitar indulgence, the sheer force of the wall of amps came through with the classic loud-quiet-loud formula that would later become the trademark of the grunge sound.
I am still curious about Barlow’s ambition to reform the classic Dinosaur Jr. lineup. Here is a guy who, by indie rock standards, had some success with his own post-Dinosaur Jr. bands like Sebadoh and Folk Implosion. Coming up on 20 years since Mascis showed Barlow the door, here is Barlow back to sharing a stage where the only perceived communication between the bassist and the guitar player was Mascis’s occasional icy glance towards Barlow. Although, I guess I was a little surprised that Barlow actually contributed to the evening's set list. “Forget the Swan,” off of the first record, was a treat. With Barlow and Mascis trading vocals, the song culminated with Barlow screaming with his whole body, “They fly at dawn….” And also Barlow swallowing the microphone as he screamed the chorus of “Bulbs of Passion.”
The main set ended with the classic “Freak Scene,” which is a melancholy tale of an outsider—maybe it is now a metaphor for the entire career of Dinosaur Jr.—always a little ahead or a little behind. “Just don’t let me fuck up will you/ Cause when I need a friend it’s still you.”
If there was any aggression missing from the main set, the encore laid waste to any sense of content. The encore was the Dinosaur Jr. hardcore set. Beginning with the aforementioned “Bulbs of Passion,” then leading into an inspired version of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” a song that, since the early ‘90s, Mascis and company have made their own. Leaving behind the contemplative nature of the original and infusing it with sheer angst. Of course, the crowd went crazy for this song. People pogoing like mad up front were nothing short of amazing considering the heat in the building at this point. It was downright tropical. In addition to the sweat dripping off the audience, I swear I saw the walls and floors sweating as well. Ending the night with another Barlow screamer, “Chunks,” is about as hardcore as Dinosaur Jr. got. A metallic riff on top of thundering double time drums. A perfect crescendo to a night of nostalgia turned into the real deal.
Even though I had earplugs in, as I walked out, deaf to the chatter outside the venue, my ears were still ringing on the drive home. An addendum to my heartfelt relationship with Dinosaur Jr.: I can still love them. They can cash in on ‘90s nostalgia all they want because that is my nostalgia, and I am happy to give them my cash to remember what both Dinosaur Jr. and I were feeling a decade ago.
Location Info:
Triple Rock Social Club
Artist Info: Dinosaur Jr.
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