Teen Age Riot, after all, is like J’s song, built around a fanfare riff that seems to be mostly about playing a fanfare riff, and then doing it over and over again (in this case) for six minutes. And it eventually drives not to the points of a political manifesto, but to a stylish inventory of rock possessions – and something to keep them safe from the thieving hands of other people:
Got a foghorn and a drum
And a hammer that’s rockin’
And a cord and a pedal
And a lock that’ll do me for now
Of course, the “for now” can be taken, as Matthew Stearns hears it, as an expression of restlessness, all the looking beyond of “but next year …”.8 But I hear it as it can also be heard, as the opposite, of a general sense of contentment, of “I’m good for now.” Of playing in that scene before things got really fragmented, of the Northeastern tours of 1987, and of hanging out with guys who played like Dinosaur played.
* * *
Teen Age Riot is easily heard as an anthem. The Lung isn’t. All that instrumental meandering at the beginning leaves people confused, and the actual song isn’t substantial or long enough on its own.
Still, there’s something about it. It’s the end of a whole side on the original LP, don’t forget, and closes with by far the greatest sense of finality on the entire record. If you want to hear something positive on YLAOM, it’s all you need listen to. So when, in its final moments, there is another weightless shift from G, around which the song has been circling for much of its three minutes, onto A, I can’t help but think of that line. And a cord and a pedal and a lock that’ll do me for now: Lou clambers up the three notes of the major chord; Murph hits straight out, a blast beat for the Dinosaur age, and then fills on a dime. J, rapidly picking away at the Jazzmaster, stomps on a pedal and unleashes a superfast raygun squeal that is less political ferment and complaint, less angst and resentment, and more the electricity of the total blast.
Not so much doubtful, as content for now. Not so much The Lung, as The Hang.
The Hang
1. Quoted in Azerrad, p. 349.
2. From the interview with J Mascis found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCA6TqXVlfs, accessed January 31, 2011.
3. Quoted from the DVD Tad: Busted Circuits and Ringing Ears.
4. Quoted in Azerrad, p. 363.
5. See Marc Hawthorne’s A.V. Club interview.
6. In the interviews on the DVD Dinosaur Jr.: Live in the Middle East.
7. Quoted in Stearns, p. 16.
8. See Stearns, p. 53.
Epilogue
– Just Like Heaven
A band, I guess, is like any relationship. Getting back together is a bad idea. And getting back together after a vitriolic break-up is guaranteed to be even worse.
At the very least, it provides a field day for the cynics. When Dinosaur Jr. decided to reform with their original line-up, 20 years after the release of their first album, there must have been many who were suspicious, jaded by one too many cash-cow reunions of eighties bands. And this feeling probably wasn’t pacified by the emergence of some unusual merchandise that seemed intent on building new fanbases: a custom Dinosaur Jr. Toyota Yaris (purple), Nike Dunk Dinosaur Jr. shoes (purple laces), and a premium price J Mascis Fender Jazzmaster (purple sparkle finish). Or by Lou’s honesty in a reunion interview, when he admitted that, now that he has a kid and all, a certain thought had lurked in the background of his decision to take up the band’s bass again. “Fuck, I need to make money!” he exclaimed.1
If you’ve been to see them in this new incarnation, which began touring far and wide in 2005, you may have noticed some differences. J, now with long gray hair and big square tinted glasses, looks like the outcome of an unfortunate wardrobe mix-up involving Tootsie and the cast of a bad fantasy film. Never one to pogo around the stage anyway, he now hardly finds the need to move at all, Jazzmaster resting against his considerable paunch in finest country singer fashion. Lou still spins the same circles around the stage, but is chunkier, and far grizzlier. Murph is just as intent, but shinier, having abandoned the futile battle against a receding hairline.
To look at, at least, the old Dinosaur was everything the new Dinosaur isn’t. Darkly hirsute. Visually acute. Thin.
But then, as ever, they begin to play. As soon as J hits the first chord, probably of Tarpit, or something more recent, it’s clear that not much has changed. For one thing, they are still loud as hell, if not louder: the Marshall stacks now completely dwarf J and Lou, and both, a few intro notes played, immediately dime all the controls so carefully set by their technicians, unleashing a wind tunnel of screaming noise. J’s hallowed pedal board, now expanded to rival most nuclear power station controls, is still very much present – borne out and taped down, pre-performance, in solemn ceremony. And, as ever, there is no visible interaction between the band members or with the audience, beyond a simple opening “Hey” or a song title or two.
Still, a wizened tour of nostalgia, old songs for old ears? Not at all. There are at least twenty-three new songs to reckon with, mostly by J, but including quite a few by Lou, nowadays well established as an indie force in his own right. This is an expansion of the Dinosaur inventory that contradicts the cynical claim that the new live shows are a throwback tour, however many of the eighties songs they might throw in to flatter the thirty-somethings. They are proof, if only you could hear them behind the volume, of a creativeness that, in two decades, hasn’t ebbed away.
If you want to get to know the new material, it’s best to try out the two new records that have appeared since 2005. Contrary to what you might expect, they are worth the effort expended: the critical acclaim, for one thing, has been little short of astonishing. In fact, it’s difficult to find many negative reviews, a marker of universal success that, I think, must have taken even J by surprise, a man who seems to have undergone a complete surprise-bypass at the age of about twelve. This might, of course, be in part due to a rock-crit respect for its elder statesmen. Still, Beyond (Fat Possum, 2007) did well, and Farm (Jagjaguwar, 2009) did even better, in spite of the recalling of the first European release because, in a supremely ironic twist, it was accidentally mastered at a few decibels over the acceptable limit.
These are slick collections of songs. Pieces, the first track from Farm, may open with lyrics that, just like in the old days, are about as eloquent and undersexed as any teenager’s secret poetry—
Peel me back
Seal the crack
No excuse
A piece is loose
—but even so, the song carefully poises downward-leading vocals, now layered up to sound less raw and more mystical, against upward-going hook; the word “loose,” meanwhile, brings a deliberately satisfying harmonic return.
A kind of assuredness holds this and the other new songs together, a grip of control over the vulnerability of the lyrics and the mass of fuzzy sound. Whether in solos or the tight rhythmic playing, a completely unmistakable brand. The Mascis-Barlow brand? It extends even to the chords and hooks, you might say, with Pieces following similar patterns to Plans, Said the People, and Crumble from Beyond, fingertips reaching out for the same places behind the same jumbo frets. Nonetheless, these are engaging songs, well made, played and recorded, and, all important, retaining a cutting edge of creative potential. We’re Not Alone, on Beyond, stops halfway through and, magic, turns into another song entirely.
So if you want to say they’ve lost it, then it seems that that “it” can only refer, looks aside, to a kind of desperate intensity from the YLAOM days. But that’s something everyone loses between the ages of 14 and 45: these are now middle-aged people with kids, remember, not ratty teenagers, the thrashing drive of sex nowadays reduced to the rolling wheels of the shopping cart, the smooth transmission of the SUV, and humdrum decisions over life insurance and wallpaper pattern.
And glad to see that, in spite of everything, the goofy side, obvious in the very earliest material and much less so on Y
LAOM and Bug, still hasn’t vanished. Some of the most recent footage I have seen of them is up on YouTube, taken from a performance in the Yo Gabba Gabba Live! show in New York City in late 2009, to an audience of toddlers, including J’s own. The band shuffles on, disheveled as ever, and through a couple of small combo amps to protect those delicate little eardrums, they play the Banana Song. “Monkey see, monkey do” sings J; “Banana!” punctuates Lou in his Bulbs of Passion voice.2 It’s all pretty silly, and pretty cute.
“Mommy, why are the scary homeless men on stage?” reads one of the YouTube comments.
* * *
So what’s the message, if any, of this book? Inevitably, this 33 1/3 series will tend toward the building of monuments. This or that album was classic. This or that band cannot be bettered. This guitarist is as good as any you will find, and is superior to that one. Fine; but when the record in question appeared well over 20 years ago, I wonder if there’s a danger in it – that it might slip into a kind of rhetoric of decline, the musical world seen through a rose-tinted, back-when-this-was-all-fields filter that preaches that everything used to be better.
In this case, I’m not sure that this is a very useful perspective. As the example of the new Dinosaur records demonstrates, it’s just not that clear cut. J Mascis will go on writing songs – some of them good, some of them not as good – and playing shows – ditto – until he stops. And the others will presumably, now invited back in, go on playing and writing them with him.
Michael Azerrad, to close his chapter on the band, places a stoned Lou in the street, sometime in the early nineties, screaming at J that it should have been them and not Nirvana who made it big.3 And people often pick up on that, an egregious accusation of golden opportunities missed. But look: Lou always screamed something at J back then. Engaging as it is, I don’t think anyone – even Lou himself – really believes it. Kurt Cobain was someone completely different from these three, his antics and looks a massive media sensation, his songs way more simple and direct, his path a short one. J Mascis’s, and Dinosaur Jr.’s, has turned out to be the long game. “Nah, I mean, the guy’s dead,” grunted J in a recent interview. “I think I’d rather be alive.”4 Amen to that.
So listen again to You’re Living All Over Me: the first 30 seconds of Little Fury Things, the solos of Kracked and The Lung, the breakdown of Raisans, the last verse of Lose, the middle of Poledo, the lid-off of In A Jar. These among the highlights of a great record, one that testifies to all kinds of peculiar collisions with the world, and disengagements from it, a big screwed-up bundle of nerves that won’t ever happen again. But don’t stop there. Listen to Dinosaur and Bug – Repulsion, Bulbs of Passion, Freak Scene, They Always Come – and get Beyond, and one of those coveted loud versions of Farm. And, at some point along the way, give in to what they would all prefer anyway, stop thinking about it, and, in the eminent words of Jon Fetler, “crank the Dino.”
“Go and kill this need to always understand,” says Lou’s Jesus. “Enjoy it as you enjoy your own teeth,” advises Byron Coley.5 And while you’re at it, don’t forget to resist, if only to an extent that your parents would approve of. Vote Nixon.
Four more years!
* * *
Back in the eighties, one final thing. I don’t know who it was that came up with the idea, but it is a good one. A stroke of genius, even. Whoever it came from, it was a brilliant move, when YLAOM was reissued in 2005, to affix the Dinosaur cover of The Cure’s Just Like Heaven to the end. A massive improvement, I think, on the Peter Frampton cover that used to be a bonus at the end of some SST pressings.
Brilliant because this cover, originally released as a single by SST in February 1989, is rightly fabled, a dynamic masterpiece, one of the all-time great take-offs of one band by another. And even more brilliant because, in spite of the apparent contradiction between the two bands (loud American fuzz rock meets wimpy British new wave), Dinosaur’s version is in a lot of ways an imaginative, and nonetheless painstakingly careful, homage. It reminds us, like those photos that document J’s preferred attire in 1985, that this kind of aloof cooler-than-rock style loomed just as large in Dinosaur’s background as Black Sabbath, Venom, or other bands much heavier.
The staggered introduction is one important point. Faithful to the original, it also demonstrates how Dinosaur would build up their sound, layer by layer, and the versatility of their guitars. Bass and drums – acoustic – jet-engine electric – wah-wah siren lead (imitating the original’s synth) – and then, the real star of the show, Lou’s little choked-to-death ukulele. Also J’s solo, which, while characteristically raucous, stays remarkably close to the tinny piano one from the original version. (The Cure were confused but amused by the whole thing, by the way, inviting Dinosaur to play a show with them in Denmark in May 1989.)6
Mainly, though, the cover’s ending. We all crave an ending, a signal for closure, just as much as one for a beginning. Pretty much anything will do. A final smashed chord or feedback loop, perhaps, effects pedals chiming, bells ringing – anything that repeats to fade. Even the most iconoclastic bands, at their most iconoclastic, give us this.
But this doesn’t. It’s probably not deliberate – someone, I imagine, forgot to turn the tape over, or elbowed the stop button, or spilt Dr Pepper on the mixing desk, and the band liked the effect. It just stops dead, mid-breath, and funny how in music nothing hits you far harder than something.
So: one final furious scream from Lou, all too loud, supposed to copy the original’s “You!”, but sounding far more like death metal’s “No!”, a flat denial of the whole thing. Then instant silence. Stopped, freeze-framed, on a chord that, as it turned out, was only resumed 20 years later with the searing lead attack of Beyond, another beginning without warning.
Maybe hating each other, or maybe not. Murph, concentrating furiously, one stick straight up. Lou, teeth tightly clenched, arm mid-strum. J, calm, face to one side, Jazzmaster angled skywards—
Dinosaur play at the Anti-Club, Melrose Ave, Hollywood, 1987, during their first West Coast tour. (Picture courtesy of Joe Henderson).
Epilogue: Just Like Heaven
1. Quoted from Marc Hawthorne’s A.V. Club interview.
2. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPdtWxdgvpo, accessed January 31, 2011.
3. See Azerrad, p. 375.
4. From Alexander Jensen’s interview for Norwegian television at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnb-CQql7Og, accessed January 31, 2011.
5. In his liner notes for the reissue of Dinosaur.
6. See Steve Sutherland’s interview in Melody Maker, May 1989, and http://www.cure-concerts.de/concerts/1989-05-01.php, accessed January 31, 2011.
Sources
All specific quotations are taken from my own interviews, carried out between November 2009 and January 2011, unless otherwise noted.
General sources, in no particular order, are as follows:
—Dave Markey’s film 1991: The Year Punk Broke, released on VHS by Geffen Home Video in 1996.
—Steven Blush’s remarkable collection of sources in American Hardcore: A Tribal History (Feral House, 2001).
—Albert Mudrian’s Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal & Grindcore (Feral House, 2004).
—www.killfromtheheart.com, the site for all things hardcore.
—http://www.amherstma.gov/ for official Amherst demographics and whatnot.
—http://www.keeblin.com/ for Dinosaur discography.
—Michael Azerrad’s book Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981–1991 (Little, Brown & Company, 2001), particularly the chapter on Dinosaur.
—Jon Fetler’s liner notes for Farm, and Byron Coley’s for Beyond, the Merge reissues of Dinosaur, You’re Living All Over Me, Bug, and for Deep Wound, all found at http://www.dinosaurjr.com/history.htm.
—Byron Coley’s notes for the Dinosaur best-of Ear Bleeding Country, found at http://keeblin.com/dinojrdetails.php?AlbumID=12.
—M
atthew Bannister’s article “‘Loaded’: indie guitar rock, canonism, white masculinities,” in the journal Popular Music 25/1 (2006), pp. 77–95, which challenges hard some of the most taken-for-granted features of this music and culture.
—The interview with J Mascis and Kevin Shields by Alan Di Perna in Guitar World magazine 14/4, April 1993.
—Jess Harvell’s classic reviews of the reissues of the first three Dinosaur records for Pitchfork, posted April 7, 2005, and found at http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11719-dinosauryoure-living-all-over-mebug/
—Steve Kandell’s interview with Kevin Drew and J Mascis in Spin, April 2010, pp. 59–60.
—Marc Hawthorne’s interview with the band on their reunion in July 2005, for The A.V. Club, found at http://www.avclub.com/articles/dinosaur-jr,13943/
Also, three 33 1/3 volumes:
Matthew Stearns, Sonic Youth: Daydream Nation (Continuum, 2007).
Gillian G. Gaar, Nirvana: In Utero (Continuum, 2006).
Mike McGonigal, My Bloody Valentine: Loveless (Continuum, 2007).
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