First: a most probably untrue story, or a legend as it were. Some two decades ago, my brother and his friends were parked by a country lane—we lived in the sticks outside Gettysburg—ingesting prodigious quantities of beer and valium and listening to Dinosaur Jr.’s “Freakscene” when my brother swears (and still swears) he saw, swoop above the treeline, a chihuahua with bat wings.
I like to think that “Freakscene” had a similarly profound, if somewhat less phantasmagoric, effect on scores of alt-rock fans. An insanely catchy slice of pop with metallic trimmings and a life-altering guitar solo, not to mention J Mascis’s nasal pothead drawl, it may not have caused most people to see batdogs, but it did cause them to see intimations of sonic bliss.
For those of you who don’t know the basic rudiments of the Dinosaur Jr. story, guitarist and vocalist J Mascis, bassist Lou Barlow, and drummer Emmett Jefferson Murphy III (Murph) got together in Amherst, Massachusetts to form Dinosaur, which ultimately had to add the Jr. to avoid legal troubles with a preexisting band. Nobody liked them—as J Mascis put it, “If you’re too loud and don’t have any fans, it’s a bad combination.”
They put out an embryonic first album (the eponymous Dinosaur) in 1985, followed it with the seminal 1987 LP You’re Living All Over Me, and then followed that with 1988’s infectious Bug. This was dope music, whether they intended it to be or not; while illicit substances don’t feature significantly in the Dinosaur Jr. story—J Mascis, for one, is straightedge—theirs is the druggiest-sounding body of work since Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night.
Then long-festering bad feelings caused Mascis to throw Barlow out of the band, and Murph followed shortly thereafter. What followed were Dinosaur Jr.’s major label years, during which Mascis softened the band’s sound and lost some of its original fans—including yours truly—but garnered plenty of new ones. In 1997 Mascis retired the Dinosaur Jr. name until 2005, when a gradual rapprochement with Barlow and Murph took place. The trio have since put out three Dinosaur Jr. albums, including 2012’s I Bet on Sky.
On I Bet on Sky, the fundamentals of the Dino sound—Mascis’ “whiny low key drawl” (his own words), Barlow’s heavily distorted bass lines, and Mascis’ epic guitar solos, heavy with squalls of feedback, distortion, and heavy metal thunder—are still plenty in evidence, even if I Bet on Sky is a quieter work than, say, You’re Living All Over Me or 2009’s Farm. But it’s still excellent, and I looked forward to seeing my favorite guitar god and his band on October 25th at the Black Cat.
The show was sold out and loud, outrageously loud. The loudest show I’ve ever been to except for Killdozer, who quickly drove me away from the stage and to the back wall of the Black Cat, from which I finally made my getaway. For the first time in my life at the advice of a friend I wore ear plugs, and I’m glad I did, because Dinosaur Jr. really brings the volume. I had trouble making out J Mascis’ words, which was no great loss because never in my life have I been able to parse a single one of his lyrics. It just goes to support my theory that straightedgers, by starving themselves of life-giving beer and illicit substances, slowly addle their brains.
Dinosaur Jr. played a set heavy with cuts from the new album and (unfortunately) light on songs from You’re Living All Over Me and Bug, starting with “See It On Your Side,” the final cut on I Bet on Sky and a guitar rave-up of unparalled ferocity. The usual Dinosaur Jr. formula is for J Mascis to break into a guitar solo at the halfway or three-quarters point of a song. On “See It On Your Side” the guitar pyrotechnics go on from beginning to end, making happy those of us who would just as soon hear nothing but J Mascis play his axe.
Shortly thereafter they played “Almost Fare,” also off the new album. A quiet, mid-tempo number with a funky, ambling bass line, it featured Mascis singing above a ringing metallic riff, “Now there she is, what should I do, what should I do?” Followed by the obligatory guitar solo, of course.
Also off the new album was opening cut “Don’t Pretend You Didn’t Know,” a poppish number that concludes with an almost polite Mascis solo, and is worlds away from such old-school late-eighties numbers as “Sludgefeast” and “Tarpit,” two murkfests off of You’re Living All Over Me that I’m sorry to report they didn’t play.
They did play “Watch the Corners” off of I Bet on Sky. It features a heavy metal riff, some searing J Mascis guitar work, and a chorus that goes “Amy, watch the corners, watch me cuz I know what you’ve done,” and anyone who wonders about Mascis’ straightedge bona fides should check out the video for the song, which is a veritable afterschool special about the evils of drugs and alcohol.
Finally, they performed “What Was That” off the new one, a slow burner that starts with some lazy metal chords before seguing into a melodic chorus. It features a short guitar break and ends with some crunchy stop and start metal chords. It’s far from my favorite cut on the album, but sounded good at top volume.
They also played some old numbers, such as “Budge” off of Bug, “In a Jar” off of You’re Living All Over Me, and even—talk about your deep cuts—a hardcore song by Deep Wound, the punk band Barlow and Mascis were in while attending high school before they formed Dinosaur Jr.
In addition, Dinosaur Jr. played some songs from the major label years. Like “Start Choppin’” from 1993’s Where You Been, part of which J. Mascis sings in falsetto, “Feel the Pain” from 1994’s Without a Sound, and “Out There,” also from Where You Been. “Start Choppin’” was a revelation, a catchy number that starts with J. Mascis doing some funky strumming and singing “I ain’t tellin’ you a secret, I ain’t tellin’ you goodbye,” after which everything gets heavy and Mascis plays a pair of distorted guitar solos that make Jimi Hendrix sound like a piker.
The band closed their set with the seemingly mandatory Lou Barlow song, which Mascis concluded by playing perhaps his most incendiary solo of the night, after which they performed an encore consisting of the proto-metal “Out There” and, at the request of an audience member, “Just Like Heaven,” their happy-go-lucky cover of the Cure number. J Mascis played some wah wah guitar, the audience sang along, and no one seemed to begrudge the tune’s abrupt ending, which when the song was released sent buyers back to record stores to complain their copies were defective.
And yes, they played “Freakscene.” I’m sorry to report I didn’t see a batdog rise above the rafters of the Black Cat. Or maybe I just didn’t see it because I had my head down in my stupid notebook.
Photos: Julia Lofstrand
