Dinosaur Jr.: Brilliant or crap?

i can't say that i have been a superfan thru the years. i really liked the song "repulsion" in the 80s but i didn't buy the first two records. one of the reasons i bought Bug when it came out was because i really loved the album cover. i bought the just like heaven 12-inch. but didn't follow them or sebadoh at all in the 90s. the first time i really ever heard sebadoh was when my brother was opening for them at the troc in philly and i got to dance on stage dressed as a witch. i did see dinosaur at the height of grungemania in a skating rink in connecticut and it was one of the most cavernous things i have ever heard. that would have been them touring green mind.

my kid, rufus, got to be there last night too. he loves J.

this was just ridiculously fun the other night. gloriously loud. nothing but neil all night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2RcNI2pL88

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dyVLtVVHG8

that's amazing

seriously!

The first time I ever heard of NY's On The Beach was J lamenting about its unavailability on CD in an issue of Melody Maker circa 92

have they been touring with an extra guitarist?

no, dino is just the trio. this was a one night only thing with matt valentine and john moloney and adam from sore eros and a guy on bass from....i can't remember what bands. he roadies for dino. he was great.

this is from the dino show at the local bar this year. also a wonderful night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2UuYbgZtzI

seeing J. with two other good guitarists was so cool though. such a great sound live.

yeah, J does a lot of overdubs in the reunion-era songs, so sometimes the long solo sections can sound slightly thin live. perhaps they've figured it out in the years since I saw them last.

BTW I saw Dino play six months ago and the guitar tech guy played some guitar during the gig. He didn't come out from over behind Lou's amps, but you could still see he to the side a bit. He faced the front from what I remember, it didn't look like they were hiding him, just he didn't leave his roadie area

actually this explains it better
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D79DSyg8eyg

i think they do double drums with john moloney during the wagon too sometimes. he roadies for them as well.

when dino played at the bar beforehand i was scared that j's stacks would kill me but they totally made it the perfect kind of loud for that show. there was a lot of family there. they didn't want to liquify anyone. still plenty loud though!

Saw them last night, and they sounded great.

Literally knew only one song of theirs before yesterday, from a mixtape someone made me long ago. But now I've been listening to that song (not played last night) over and over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-2o-qQk_EU

Ha I was reading your comment PaulTMA and thinking of that gig as evidence, and then I saw you posted the vid which I'm pretty sure I'm in

def saw them at Maxwells ('88?) when they didn't have the "Jr"

Their cover of just like heaven slays

Absolutely Ross, love the random cut too

Yeah!

I consumed an awful lot of US indie rock as a schoolkid at the turn of the nineties and I'm increasingly thinking D.Jr stand up better than anything else I bought at the time. I didn't anticipate this. I largely tuned out after Where You Been, but the overwhelming bulk of their output to that point is good-to-great. Even Green Mind is at least 60% decent. I'm very gradually absorbing the post-reunion records...

I mean they put out a lot of stuff, and for a few albums were getting increasingly better then j/they kinda fizzled out no?

I loved Bug and YLAOM the most but 'lost track' of them when the re-recorded The Wagon wasn't as good as the Sub-Pop single. I guess they have made some other good albums.

J Mascis And The Fog (with Ron Asheton) live was better than any Dinosaur Jr. gig I'd seen.

Well I mean yeah. It’s fuckin Ron Asheton.

I’ve seen Dino Jr maybe like three times and it was always good. Friend of mine said he saw them once and J would hit THAT pedal and things went into totally painful/nauseating levels of tone and volume. Didn’t experience that for better or worse.

Are there many better “reunion” albums than Beyond?

I think the most recent one is really, really great.

https://pitchfork.com/news/a-25-year-old-dinosaur-jr-song-is-a-hit-in-japan-nobody-knows-why/

good for the Dinos, time to book Budokan

That’s really weird

Does anyone from Pitchfork post here? It's the background music for the credits of "Gachinko Fight Club" on TBS.

I think you could email them that

i emailed a correction to an Unthanks review once and they never replied but they did fix it pretty quickly.

congrats to up and coming SoundCloud rapper D1NO$$$AUR JR.

ha this is a great story! I don't even know that song though

Pitchfork has updated to mention Gachinko Fight Club, citing this tweet:

I know the answer @pitchfork .
A linkage this song with Japan is obvious. “Over Your Shoulder” was used in popular TV show called “Gachinko Fight Club” hosted by TOKIO, famous male band/talents.
On Feb. 6th, TOKIO’s current TV show “TOKIO KAKERU” seems picked up former member of https://t.co/DfBD7xCYEU

— 鈴木貴歩 #EnterTechの提唱者 (@SuzukiTaka) February 8, 2019

(Annoyingly, the P4k article still says "Nobody knows why! The answer isn't obvious at all!" while acknowledging "Oh yeah, some people have said it's this TV show.")

(that's the magic of editing their posts after publishing)

Here's the clip if anyone's interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zMIXtjk6Do&feature=youtu.be&t=759

oh shit, forgot this embed code hates timestamps, c/p:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zMIXtjk6Do&t=759

So did the TV show inspire viewers to seek out the original song; or is it charting simply due to being played in background of that widely-streamed scene (and machine-recognized for copyright/royalties purposes)?

It was a very dramatic moment to a memorable scene and it brought back a lot of memories for people who watched it the first time around. The replay went viral on ameblo & FC2 blogs, plus there are a ton of Youtube comments asking for the ID on various clips, also on Yahoo.jp chiebukuro (like Yahoo! answers but less babbies formed & more utility).

It’s a pretty beautiful song.

I've been listening to Dinosaur Jr. quite a bit lately. They were sort of a second tier interest to me when I was a teenager, but for some reason I've been enjoying returning to them more than many other bands from that era.

the P4k article still says "Nobody knows why! The answer isn't obvious at all!"

The world is a very confusing country

"They Always Come" is such a great song... but then around halfway through it morphs into this even better song. Feel like Bug is so much better than I remember everytime I throw it on.

yeah that's my favorite one

Heh I wouldn't say I like it more than YLAOM, but Bug feels super-slept on in comparison. The highs on Bug (for me: "They Always Come" & "No Bones" esp.) are as high as any of their albums. Not sure how dictator-y J was by this point but both Lou & Murph's performances are incredible.

My wife gave me a print with "sometimes I don't thrill you sometimes I think I'll kill you just don't let me fuck up will you cos when I need a friend it's still you" for my birthday a couple of years ago

I put that song on at her memorial last Saturday

beautiful

xps no I meant that's my fave Dino Jr song!!! so perfect. as an album yeah Living... is better

Ahhh, yeah I'm with you haha.