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good news in this article…
[img]http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Third_Party_Photo/2006/11/27/1164630390_3357.jpg[/img]
Quote:Dinosaur Jr. roars back to lifeBand’s reunion is tied to settling old scores and recording new material
By Sarah Rodman, Globe Staff | November 26, 2006"I don’t think any of us thought that there would be a reunion," says drummer Emmett "Murph" Murphy. "To me, reunions were always for big rock bands like the Allman Brothers or [Lynyrd] Skynyrd . I never really thought about it in our arena at all."
The "us" he’s talking about is himself, bassist Lou Barlow , and singer-guitarist J. Mascis , the original members of Dinosaur Jr. And not only has the barely imaginable reunion come to pass, the band — whose original tenure was marked by feuding — has a new album on the horizon.
Formed in Western Massachusetts in the mid-’80s when the three were in high school, Dinosaur Jr. created hard-core avant-punk that peeled eardrums and sent the faint of heart scattering.
"When we were starting to play, we had really bad reactions, and we had to kind of win people over," recalls Mascis.
"The band didn’t break out because we were hitting the road and making people happy," concurs Barlow with a laugh. "It was like we were just a weird loud band and people were attracted to that."
But if the group wasn’t big, it was important. Along with fellow Bay State bands the Pixies and Mission of Burma , it influenced a generation of musicians who would go on to garner attention in ZIP codes as far away from Amherst as the UK and the Pacific Northwest.
So when Merge Records decided to reissue Dinosaur Jr.’s first three albums in the spring of last year, the band members may have been the only ones not thinking about a reunion.
Of course, there was tension. Barlow was dismissed from the group in 1989 — the reissues were the only three Dinosaur Jr. albums on which he appeared. He went on to form several acclaimed, decidedly quieter, groups, including Sebadoh and Folk Implosion .
Mascis soldiered on without him, and then without Murphy, through four more Dinosaur Jr. records, which were increasingly popular.
But Barlow’s and Mascis’s intertwined Western Massachusetts roots made it impossible for them to avoid each other. "We’ve always somehow been a part of each other’s circle, even through all of the years where I was badmouthing him," says Barlow.
And then an outsider intervened.
"The thing that really pushed it over the top," Barlow says, "was he got this manager who’s just extremely enthusiastic and took it upon himself to start hounding me on the phone."
Brian Schwartz pleads guilty to that charge. "I definitely was very persistent and put all of the pieces of the puzzle together" with partner Barton Dahl , says Schwartz.
Just prior to Schwartz’s arrival on the scene in late 2004, Murphy — who had done a hitch with the Lemonheads and session work in New York — was coming off a sabbatical in Maine. He was ready to play.Continued…
Barlow and Mascis were also interacting again. "I had been to a show he played, and I had seen him play in London and kind of talked to him and apologized to him for putting bad vibes out there," Barlow says. "But that wasn’t any kind of overture to a reunion. It was more just me trying to fix things."
That fixing aligned with Schwartz’s bullying and Murphy’s reemergence, and one thing led to another. Dinosaur Jr. hit the road last year and hasn’t looked back.
When the trio plays the Paradise Wednesday, it will be armed with something it didn’t have last year, however: new material.
All parties agree that the process of recording the new album — now in the mixing phase but still seeking a title, label, and firm release date — was much more relaxed this time around. "J. was more rigid in the past about specific drum parts and stuff, and he was lot more open to interpretation this time," says Murphy. Barlow even managed to get two songs onto the record, which he describes as "really layered and definitely noisy."
In addition to the record, the band is releasing a DVD it shot at the Middle East in Cambridge last winter.
Barlow has also happily agreed to play songs that postdate his tenure. "The height of J.’s career happened far after I left the band," he says. Albums such as "Where You Been" and "Green Mind" actually spawned singles that got airplay on radio and MTV in the early ’90s alt-rock boom. "That’s where he got a lot of the audience, so if I’m going to do this [reunion] and we’re doing the new record and stuff, I have to play that stuff too, because it’s part of J.’s legacy and I’ve always been there to support J.’s songs and visions."
But as excited as they are about the future and the new record — OK, Murphy’s excited, Barlow seems warily optimistic, and Mascis is as enigmatically terse as ever — at least two band members are deeply ambivalent about actually playing songs from it.
Guess which two.
"Initially I thought, ‘Who the hell wants to hear a reunion record?’ " says Barlow. "As a fan I’m never like, ‘Wow, hey, so and so got back together again after 15 years. I can’t wait to hear the album!’ I’m such a cynic on that stuff."
"Most people I know feel the same way," says Mascis.
As is reportedly often the case with Dinosaur Jr., it is up to Murphy to summon some enthusiasm.
"I’m more the optimist because I’ve had so many people come up to me and say, ‘Why don’t you play stuff off "Green Mind" and how come you guys don’t have any new songs?,’ " he says. "So I think that people do want to hear new stuff."
And then there’s the charge he’s getting out of the audiences.
"I just figured the audience would be all people our age who had seen us in college, and now they’re grown up and married and they’re, like, sneaking out for a Friday night to go see us. And it wasn’t that way at all," says Murphy, a grin audible in his retelling of last year’s shows. "It was more like kids who had heard about us from their siblings and they were like, ‘Oh, I need to check these guys out.’ For me, that was really refreshing."
Great Article…….. If only we could convince J and Lou that we are dying to hear the new stuff, and that we really can’t wait for the new album and DVD.
"SonicD " wrote:new jazzmaster?nah j’s had that jazzmaster since at least 97, he used it on the tour after hand it over a bunch.
great article.
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