Jurassisc Larks-blog review of Mean Fiddler show

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very cool blog review of one of the London shows…

http://ezycheezy.blogspot.com/2006/12/j … larks.html

Quote:

Jurassic Larks

I’m reading lips today. It’s the only way I can understand people after DJ Tray and I attended the Dinosaur Jr gig last night at Mean Fiddler.

Yep, they were loud! But were they any good?

I’ll get to that bit later. But first, a little history: Dinosaur Jr were one of a big bunch of great American indie bands in the late 80s/early 90s. In straddling the divide between punk, hardcore and grunge, I’d (kinda/sorta) group them alongside bands such as Husker Du, Meat Puppets, Mudhoney, Pixies, and Sonic Youth. My brother owned albums by all of these bands and that’s basically how I got into them – by making pirate copies of his LPs and playing them at full blast… generally through my tinny, crackling car speakers. As a result, I don’t know many of the song titles, but I am familiar with that distinctive Dinosaur Jr sound.

This sound is tricky to explain but it’s based around the extraordinary noise that J.Mascis extracts from his guitar as he veers between distorted (but often speedy) fretwork, and launching crashing waves of feedback at you. Imagine if Neil Young played sloppy lead guitar on an early Metallica album and you’re probably about halfway there. It’s great!

The band played in London last year as part of the Don’t Look Back series, in which a band from the past plays one of their seminal albums in its entirety. This season of gigs (which also included Iggy & the Stooges, Gang of Four, and The Lemonheads) generally sold out in the twinkling of an eye, so Tray and I weren’t able to see Dinosaur Jr playing their You’re Living All Over Me album. The only show we were able to see was Mudhoney’s Superfuzz Bigmuff gig (which was superb, but it was still disappointing to miss out of the Dinos).

But not to worry. We heard that they were coming back again this year, so we snapped up tickets for their London gig without delay. And the rumours are apparently true – not only is the classic 3-piece Dinosaur Jr line-up touring again, but they’re also recording new material and will have an album out next year. This represents a significant reconciliation between Mascis and bassist Lou Barlow (who Mascis kicked out of the band in 1989). Good to see they’re feeling the love once again!

Still, it’s hard to know what to expect when an old band reforms like this. Will they be doing it for the right reasons? Are they still into the music? Or are they just cashing in on past glories to help pay the mortgage? And, if the latter, will it matter? Can they fake it?

I hate to sound cynical… but I am, so that’s the way it comes out.

On the other hand, I’ve been to a few of these kinds of gigs since I’ve been living in England again (Pixies, Mudhoney, The Waterboys, The Pogues, Siouxsie) and only once felt like I was ripped off – at the execrable Sisters of Mercy gig – so it’s fair to say that our hopes were fairly high when we entered the Mean Fiddler on Charing Cross Road last night.

And we weren’t disappointed. Not by the band anyway. They played a fierce little set, the early highlights of which were two of my favourites – Freak Scene and Feel the Pain ("I feel the pain of everyone, then I feel nothing"). I recognised about half of the rest of what they played. It was all good though, even the songs they introduced as new ones.

Overall, it served to remind me that dance/electronic music – which I’ve been heavily into for about a decade – is all well and good… but there’s still nothing quite like standing dangerously close to a huge Marshall amp, closing your eyes, and allowing your brain to be indecently assaulted by a thunderous rock’n’roll band!

Granted that we weren’t right up the front, where everyone appeared to having a good time, but the people standing around us seemed to be doing the "too kool for skool" indie-kid thing i.e. just standing there and nodding their heads in time with the beat. I mean, really. These people were watching a fantastic band! How boring of them. It also made me wonder whether they knew the music even as well as I do (which, as I say, is not particularly well). Maybe they just came because Dinosaur Jr is a legendary name?

No matter, cos when the band played Freak Scene, Tray and I started jumping around enough for everyone else and basically didn’t stop until the end of the gig.

The final encore was a blistering cover of The Cure’s ‘Just Like Heaven’ which, back when they released it, was actually one of their biggest, erm, ‘songs’… (the word ‘hit’ probably doesn’t apply to bands like Dinosaur Jr). This final song absolutely went off, so me and Tray (and this funny Dutch bloke standing next to us, who was an honourable exception to the generally dull crowd) started up our own little ‘moshpit’, which isn’t bad considering we’re all getting on a bit!

Anyway, thanks for a top night, Dinosaur Jr… but can I have my hearing back now?

posted by Cheezy at 11:01 AM

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