Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Things I learned about Dinosaur Jr. in The Big Takeover’s recent cover story

Jack Rabid does one of his typically great interviews in The Big Takeover #88 with one of my definite top 10 favorite bands of all time. Here are some highlights of the Dinosaur Jr. conversation:

  • Drummer Murph says they were so bad live in their early days, on the tour for their first album, that people would regularly boo them. Hard to believe based on all the shows I’ve seen of the band.
  • Leader J. Mascis says he ran sound for two shows in his life, and they were Nirvana and My Bloody Valentine. Pretty good resume item!
  • Kurt Cobain asked J. to join Nirvana. It obviously didn’t happen for whatever reason.
  • J. claims he’s not very good at figuring out how to play other people’s songs, despite having some of the great indie-rock covers such as The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” and Peter Frampton’s “Show Me the Way.”
  • Even still, no real answer emerges as to why Dino broke up the first time. In between the two band's stints, though, J. and Murph went to a Sebadoh show where Lou yelled from the stage at them as they simply tried to attend. It seems the reason for their breakup in the Green Mind era was for reasons that will always mostly remain a mystery.
  • They played a Craig Ferguson show as their first time back on national TV and they claim to have completely messed up the performance.
  • One of bassist Lou Barlow’s stipulations when they got back together was the he be allowed to bring his kid and wife, Kath, on tour.

And those are the nuggets. Luckily, Murph attended the interview because J. doesn’t say much in it.

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