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Promo interview with Murph for the upcoming Cats Cradle show on Thursday. He talks about the side effects of playing so loud over time, also talks about the new Dinosaur Jr material…
Quote:Look Who’s Coming: Dinosaur Jr.Danny Hooley, Staff Writer
Known for – Loud sludge pop that influenced Nirvana and the Pixies. And a noisy breakup.
What happened? – Basically, singer-guitarist J Mascis and drummer Murph (nee Emmett Patrick Murphy) kicked bassist Lou Barlow out. It had gotten tense between Mascis and Barlow, who were high school classmates.Then what? – Mascis regained the rights to the band’s classic late ’80s albums — "Dinosaur," "You’re Living All Over Me" and "Bug" — and Durham-based Merge Records reissued them in 2004. Seemed like a good time for a reunion. They’re on their second U.S. tour since.
The band plays Thursday at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, scene of many previous Dino shows. Murph spoke in short sentences with staff writer Danny Hooley in a call from Austin, Texas, before a gig at Stubb’s Bar-B-Q.
Q – Is Stubb’s really a barbecue place?
A – Yeah, they do barbecue there.
Q – What style of barbecue is it?
A – I don’t know. I’m not a big barbecue guy. Whenever we’d go through Chapel Hill, we used to go to this place — Dip’s?
Q – Mama Dip’s?
A – That place was great. Yeah, we used to go there all the time. Now we’re more into like, healthy, lighter, vegetarian — ethnic.
Q – Are you whipping out any new material on this tour?
A – Uh, we’re gettin’ there. We haven’t had a lot of time to work on stuff. But we’ll see what happens. We’ve got a bunch of dates, so, you know, towards the middle we probably will.
Q – I understand the band has started to record at J Mascis’ home studio.
A – Yeah. We did some dabbling. You know, we really haven’t had much time to get things done, so we’ll probably take July to really get serious about completing stuff.
Q – Will the new album be on Merge?
A – I have no idea. I don’t even think we’re that far yet.
Q – How do you keep from going deaf?
A – We wear earplugs. But Lou and I were actually talking about that last night after the show — how like, people were complaining and we’ve been complaining of like, weird bodily symptoms [from the volume].
Q – What kind of symptoms?
A – While I’m playing, my hand will go numb — like, literally, I’ll get pins and needles. Or your heart flutters while you’re playing. It’s the low frequencies. Those are the ones that can really get you. I think over the years since we’ve been playing so loud, we’re addicted to the volume — the assault. Even though it’s, like, weird — you get weird side effects — it just doesn’t feel right if it’s not that loud.
Q – Is the new material a departure, or is it classic Dinosaur?
A – Um, it’s both. It’s got the energy. It’s still classic Dino, because me, Lou and J are on it. But J’s gotten much more comfortable with singing, so with the vocals, there’s a lot more clarity. More song-oriented, less riffs. There’s a lot of solos and stuff, but it’s going to be, I think, more of a songwriter’s album as opposed to a musician’s record or something. But we haven’t completed anything. You could talk to me in July, and I could say, scratch what I said [in March.]
Its funny that Murph mentions that whole thing about symptoms from playing too loud, because at the Houston show in the middle of the 1st song his hand started spazzing out and he droped his drum stick but quickly picked a new one up. Its weird cause my heart was also kinda fluttering at the concert but I was right up in front.
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