Eugene weekly., April 13, 2006, Page 28, Image 28

BY VANESSA SALVIA
Freak Scene Just Can’t Believe Us
20 years later, Dinosaur Jr. still rules.
I
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Dinosaur Jr. (pictured), Priestess, Dan Jones & The Squids
9 pm, Tuesday, 4/18 • WOW Hall
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trying, Mascis set a new standard for guitar
rock that still holds today.
When the band was new, there was no
way to categorize their textured noise,
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and they blew people away with the gui-
tar washing over everything in waves of
fuzz and distortion. They sometimes
mumbled, sometimes howled. They were
UPCOMING!
t’s hard to believe 20 years have passed
since J Mascis, Lou Barlow and
Emmett Patrick “Murph” Murphy
started the sonic boom heard ’round the
world that became known as Dinosaur Jr.
Barlow and Mascis, friends from Amherst,
Mass., originally formed a band called
Deep Wound, a hardcore group which
found Mascis leading the drum beat of
rebellion. They quickly tired of the formu-
laic nature of hardcore, Mascis swapped
his drumsticks for guitar picks and the rest,
as they say, is musical history.
Mascis plugged in, amped up and let
the guitar take over his world. He’s a tour
de force guitar shredder without the
wankery or affectations of the modern day
guitar hero, and his voice often sounds like
he’s barely awake. It was all part of the
geeky appeal of this band that made mak-
ing melodic, emotional but hard-rocking
music seem effortless. The three chums
sported bedhead hair, jeans and flannel
years before the Seattle crowd would
become famous for it. And without even
loud. They followed no song structure.
They were lo-fi nerds in a sinister world,
and never reached the heights of success
they should have.
As is wont to happen when two cre-
ative minds share the same mental space,
tensions between Mascis and Barlow ran
high. Barlow was publicly and messily
canned from the band and went on to suc-
cess with Sebadoh, but not before
Dinosaur Jr. released three acclaimed
albums, 1985’s Dinosaur (on Homestead
Records), 1987’s You’re Living All Over
Me (on SST) and 1988’s Bug (also on
SST). Later, Dinosaur Jr. became essen-
tially Mascis’ pseudonym; as songwriter
and primary instrumentalist he produced
1991’s fantastic Green Mind and 1993’s
Where You Been; and went on to other
work with his band The Fog, but that’s a
whole ’nother article.
Fans of Dinosaur Jr. will be pleased to
know that Mascis regained the rights to
those first three influential albums, and
reissued them on Merge Records in March
2005, timed to coincide with the announce-
ment that the original lineup would
regroup. Incidentally, Rhino Records has a
“best of” Dino CD and has plans to reissue
Green Mind and Where You Been.
ew
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28 APRIL 13, 2006
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