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Hey DD I’m getting off this bus. Sorry to muddy the thread with extraneous associations. I work with kids with autism and other communication disorders and enjoy gleaning meaning from unintelligible utterances but I’m out of my depth here. Take care and all that.
ps I wouldn’t dream of explaining Heidegger, but on a more trivial yet slightly more relevant literary note I would ask if anyone knows what Shakespeare line appears in a Dinosaur Jr song title.
Is the track called that?
This chat has gone a bit afield and your comments have a Joycean ring–we could talk about what bands have used James Joyce in their songs–Jefferson Airplane and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum come to mind–but to tie this all back to the thread, I like the latest Dinosaur Jr albums a lot because they’re mature/developed works, not so much teenage angst etc. and so I can, as a forward-looking 46 year old, relate to them more.
Neil Young and Maigret and Burroughs and Dinosaur Jr overturn the canard that aging equals diminishing. Greendale, Fork in the Road, Psychedelic Pill, and Americana are fantastic albums that equal and even in some ways surpass Neil’s early albums. Burroughs’ space trilogy blows doors on Naked Lunch. I think Beyond etc are better than the Dino jr albums of the 80’s and 90’s. Many bands’ latter works are not as great as their early efforts; I think Neil, Dinosaur Jr and a few other bands go against that tendency and have gotten better and deeper with time, which is a hopeful thing.
I took my kid skateboarding at Venice beach last weekend and on our way back we saw on the marquee of a surf shop a Heidegger quote: “The possible ranks higher than the actual” which resonates a bit with the I Bet on Sky line, I think.
Hey DentDeddies,
Oh. I didn’t mean to assume; not sure why you wouldn’t be among those addressed by Neil’s lyrics, as he’s specifically addressing the listener/listening state, which is sort of rare.
I had a housemate when I was 18 who had a Neil Young thing. My friend and I needed a place to live and he said we could rent living room space in his basement apartment in Oakland so we did. The only music ever played in the place was Neil Young and associated musicians (Steven Stills, Graham Nash, David Crosby). I grew up listening to my brothers’ Live Rust, Decade, Rust Never Sleeps, etc. records and had seen Neil Young play with the Charlie Daniels band and was a fan in general but listening exclusively to Neil Young 24/7 for 6 months put me off listening to Neil for years. The guy had this whole non-consensus reality built up around Neil, that they were family friends, that he ate dinner with Neil, etc. Maybe he did but the ‘letters from Neil’ that he shared were form letters from management. There were rats in the apartment (that he shot with his air rifle, not kidding) and the tweaker teenager upstairs came down and stole our stuff, so we moved out after six months. The whole house burned down along with the whole neighborhood in the big Oakland hills fire of 1991. I think the rat problem was finally solved by flames.
I didn’t listen to On the Beach for 25 years and I listened to it last summer and I still knew all the words to all the songs, it having been hammered so hard into my brain years ago. Anyway, all this is to say, when I heard Driftin Back last year I thought of my old housemate and was just, “Dude, this is your jam.” It’s an amazing song, lyrically and musically. It’s super meta–a song about listening to songs, and the meditative state that arises from deep drones and drifting back mindfully. You don’t have to read David Lynch’s Catching the Big Fish, which is kind of boring (and a little disturbing after seeing David Wants to Fly) to learn about and/or contact meditative/visionary states–listening to Neil’s song takes you there, sort of a how-to tune. No houses or cars, though. 🙂
Hey DentDeddies
I doubt Lou is referring to your wall but you’d have to ask him. I just like the phrasing and angularity/anger of the song. I tend to think of his lyrics as probably part of his process of processing/catharsis and leave it at that.
If you want to be addressed by a song for sure check out Neil Young’s Driftin Back:
Dreaming about the way things sound now
Write about them in my book
Worry that you can’t hear me now
And feel the time I tookTo help you feel this feeling
Let you ride along
Dreaming about the way you feel now
When you hear my song
Beauty!!Hey doesitfloat –I like Rude and Recognition also but think Imagination Blind is a killer song and even better song title and that IB and Your Weather sound more of a piece with the whole Farm album whereas the two Lou tunes on I Bet on Sky (both great) sound more like Lou/Sebadoh songs and don’t blend as seamlessly tone/sound-wise with the rest of the album’s songs and so are sort of jarring at least to my ears. I haven’t heard the iTunes version of Farm but will check it out as I’d like to hear Tarpit close, sounds cool.
Hey Empire–As for similar riffs on the same album, I’d guess that this is not a continuity error/coincidence.
e.g. Jefferson Airpane’s Volunteers album opens wih We Can Be Together and closes with Volunteers, which open with the exact same riff, sort of bookending the album. Actually, that riff is the same one that’s in Fairport Convention’s Matty Groves, Quicksilver’s Shady Grove, and the Dead’s St Stephen. Intertextuality is a thing.
Word. I couldnt decide between Beyond, Farm, and I Bet on Sky. I voted for Farm because it has more songs than the other two. And Ocean in the Way and I don’t Wanna Go There. And the Lou songs On Farm I like the best of the 3 albums. YLAOM is genius; not sure why it’s not my favorite.
Gosh, thanks Empire! Quatermass is the best ever but what’s with all the coffee and sandwiches.I liked the flaming pumpkin best, though I lol’d at all titles, y’all’s funny.
Ha!
Bobbin For Apples
Make it Fright
Quatermass and the Tarpit
Wreckignition
I Know a Dose of Hell
What Was That NoiseI typed this with thumbs at the gym so excuse the incoherence but its an interesting question and discussion so here’s my (sweaty) two cents–
The people who vote in bands to the RnR Hall of Fame are like the mansion cadre in Eyes Wide Shut. They control the vertical and the horizontal and their parties are by special invite only. I think Paul Kantner said something about how if you knew who does the voting you wouldn’t feel honored to be inducted into the HOF. Dinosaur Jr seem to be independent (to a degree) of the big industry end of the music biz so they’re not going to be on the radar of the HOF committee, for that reason and many others. Independent, as in you’re not getting interrupted and called to go upstairs when you’re getting your groove on.
Also, as its a hall of FAME most of the inductees have a measure of mass popularity. Dinosaur Jr belong in the pantheon of great bands of all time and they’re musicians’ musicians who are more well known than some bands and millions (?) of people get off on their music but, as has been pointed out, that doesn’t mean they’ll be recognized by the music industry as the influential and great band they are.
Dead Kennedys were asked to play the Bay Area Music awards in the mid 80’s or so when they still had the Bammies (maybe they still do) and they dressed up in skinny ties with white shirts and a big “S”on the front of their button down shirts, forming a dollar sign and did a rework of the Knack’s “My Sharona”, changing it to “My Payola” and made the gloaty industry dudes in the front row very uncomfortable. If Dinosaur Jr gets inducted to the Rock n Roll HOF they should wear Venetian masks and robes for their performance and acceptance speech. Don’t rent a cheap gilded mask or come in a cab or They’ll Know.
Watch the Coroners
Little Fury Things That Couldn’t Die
Tarpit and the Pendulum
What Else is Newt
Mountain Wicker Man
Whatever’s Ghoul With MeSorry for the Griffin worship screed. Alan Forbes is a talented artist whose stuff I like and it’s cool that he’s borrowing from the best. He should branch out a little, maybe try Victor Moscoso’s lurid colors and optical weirdness.
I think Rick Griffin had a very particular perspective, and the images and symbols he used in his artwork convey his scope and understanding. People come along later and employ those images in less personal, native, and intentional ways in their work and it loses something. It’s great that Forbes is referencing him at all, I guess.
Also, thanks for the link to Kyle Thomas’ Witch art; great detail, fine lines.
Re. Said the People and Skins, my kid (16) and her friends watch Skins on YouTube and her friend wanted to go hear Dinosaur Jr play in Sonoma based on her love of Said the People, which she heard on Skins. I was willing to bring her friend along but knew they wouldnt play it and wasn’t sure she’d be into the rest of their tunes, plus it was at a winery, at night, so wasn’t real psyched to have her come with.
I agree on Raisins, We’re Not Alone etc as singles. I know nothing about singles but maybe Pond Song or In a Jar?
