Dinosaur Jr
Fillmore Auditorium San Francisco 10/10/12

See It On Your Side
Repulsion
Little Fury Things
Rude
What Was That
The Lung
Watch the Corners
Don’t Pretend You Didn’t Know
Feel the Pain
Tarpit
Start Choppin’
Freak Scene
Training Ground
Gargoyle
E:
Out There
Just Like Heaven

The best, intensest, loudest, insanest opening band I ever saw was Nirvana opening for Sonic Youth at the Warfield in 1990. This bill was not like that. Shearwater were kinda meh. It sounded to me like the singer was trying to sing like Paul Weller. Not as much synthesizer as I thought there’d be from the clip posted here; some of their synth bubbles reminded me a little of Sky Cries Mary, and overall their sound was pretty mild and repetitive. We got to the Fillmore midway through their set, fine with me. They had 3 guitars at times, played okay, very earnest, not much happening, though the crowd seemed somewhat into it; maybe their fans showed up.

I liked hearing the new songs the greatest. Watch the Corners was crazed, sped up. See It On Your Side to open was colossal, perfect, big.

J seems to’ve shifted the lyrics to “Please explain like I don’t have a brain.” Ha.

Murph is unbelievable, a total athlete, played incredibly hard and fast, huge and great.

The crowd was bumpin, the Fillmore wasn’t sold out but very full, especially for a midweek show, maybe half people in their 20s and half 30s and 40s. Lots of people dancing, blowing clouds (lots of mota, incense, and something gross like burning hair or bark or something, wtf), most everyone was getting down, some literally. There was a tall young guy near us who faceplanted hard, got up, looked a little serious as he stood still for a minute, then took a few steps toward the exit and ate the hardwood floor again. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom, and sometimes to the hospital; hope he’s okay.

There were occasional sound issues, mic problems for Lou, but in all the sound was good from where we were, and they played a killer great show. Lou played great and engaged in perverse, provoking banter, incl. encouraging and engaging the troll up front who was criticizing the crowd for not dancing, which morphed into a brief East vs West coast debate, ho hum, bring it down to where some can relate.

During his set at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass last year Thurston Moore said something about there not being any East Coast-West Coast hate and I was like, yeah, hopefully not, because that would be a huge waste of your brainwaves and time. Life’s short and big. Who cares.

The title of the new album, I Bet On Sky, touches on this, sort of. In the words of one of my teachers:

“Chi defeat Jing. Empty agile defeat solid and firm. No shape defeats having shape. Forget me defeat focus me. Internal defeat external. Heaven defeat earth. Body mass in the sky defeat body weight on earth.” Word.

Speaking of which, J’s wah on Just Like Heaven wailed bigtime, lots of different tones and sounds throughout the show, really great.

Really raging, intense, expansive, huge show last night. My ears are destroyed and I’m envious of everyone who gets to see them at the WOW Hall and anywhere else on this tour. They’re blazing, have fun.

Thanks Hybridge…..always like hearing about shows.