Freak Scene

It’s so fucked I can’t believe it
If there’s a way I wish we’d see it
How could it work just can’t conceive it
Oh what a mess it’s just to leave it

Last night I went to the Dinosaur Jr reunion show at the 9:30 Club. Wow. I would describe it as 1 perfect hour of guitar meltdown madness. J was absoutley unreal.

It was really amazing to hear the original lineup playing together again after all of these years. The show was made up entirely of songs from the first three "seminal" albums with J, Lou, and Murph. Although I am a sucker for J's later Dino albums with the poppy hooks, there is an intensity and degree of madness to those original albums that is unmatched by anything that came after them.

The most interesting aspect of the show was to hear how J's playing has evolved (I'll use that term loosely) over the almost 20 years since the first album. While he still plays with as much volume and agression as in the early years, the guitar solos seem more focused. Through all of the fuzz and distortion they are even more melodic than I remember and actually go somewhere in the end.

Highlights included Freak Scene, Budge, Bulbs of Pasion, and of course Just Like Heaven.