Last night I drove down to D.C. to meet up with my friend Mike and walk to the 9:30 Club from his place for the Dinosaur Jr. show with the reunion of the original lineup. We got there during Bardo Pond, who were boring and whose drummer played the same fill every other measure of every single song. And I ran into Mat and Candy and watched the show with them. I'd seen J Mascis and the Fog a couple times, and those were about the loudest shows I'd ever seen, so I was really expecting it to be like that, but Dinosaur weren't quite that loud. Still pretty loud, but I wasn't really regretting not having earplugs. They're not a real charismatic or exciting band, but it was still a pretty good show, only stuff from the first 3 albums when Lou was still in the group. And the setlist was heavy on the first 2, not much Bug aside from "Freak Scene" in the encore. My love of You're Living All Over Me was recently reignited by the Merge reissue that sounds a hundred times better than the horribly mastered old SST CD, so I was happy to hear all those songs live, which have held up really well ("The Lung"!). J used some weird phaser effects on some songs that made them sound kinda different from the original recordings, but it was an interesting change. I don't have any special reverence for the original Dinosaur lineup, I like some of the later records almost as much, so it wasn't really a big deal for me, although it was cool to see Murph play drums on those songs. But still, I'm glad I went.

Labels: concerts, Dinosaur Jr.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2005 at 11:44 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.