Chimpomatic

There’s been a lot of reunion style gigs recently… mostly with pre-Nirvana bands getting some praise that they maybe missed out on first time round. The original 3 Dinosaur Jr. albums have recently been given the full re-release-with-bonus-tracks treatment, and this mini tour is a kind of support for that. Lou Barlow and J Mascis fell out shortly after Bug, and it wasn’t until Lou climbed on stage for guest vocals at an Asheton+ Asheton+ Mascis+ Watt Stooges gig that they even really talked, so things have obviously gone far enough that they’re playing together... but not far enough that they’re actually communicating. Not that anyone could hear anything over their legenary thundering volume.

The set was an onslaught of very loud, very heavy, very fast classic Dinosaur tracks, pulled from a democratic balance of early favourites - with the post-Sebadoh Lou getting a few more vocals slots than he maybe would have first time round. He even commented that he hadn’t ever sung a couple of the tracks live, but that didn’t cause any problems. It’s kind of nostalgic for us and them really, knocking out the now-classic album tracks like The Lung, Freak Scene, Just Like Heaven, In A Jar, and getting the huge support that they always deserved.

Extra half star for old times sake.