Dinosaur Jr: Ear Bleeding Country

     I went to see Dinosaur Jr. the other night at the Beachland Ballroom. I had never seen them before and it was a great show. J. Mascis is a guitar genius, Lou Barlow was rockin' the Geddy Lee Rickenbacker bass and Murph was rock solid. They are also one of those bands that the fans want to hear them play their new songs. Usually that's when people go to the bathroom. As I said, this was the first time I've seen Dinosaur Jr. play and there are a few reasons for that. In the 90's I was in a weird place musically. I had wasted much of the 80's listening to hair metal bands, then in 1991 Kurt Cobain put that scene out of its misery. On a personal level, my oldest daughter was also born in 1991. I was a first time father and didn't keep up with new music. I was too busy sterilizing bottles, changing diapers, not getting sleep and working full time to discover bands. I was so distracted from music at that time that I didn't even expose her to the Beatles. That is one of my biggest regrets as a father, but I'll save that for one of my Beatles' posts. Anyhow, this was pre-internet and the only easily accessible outlets for music were radio and MTV. So I casually listened to bands like Better Than Ezra, Gin Blossoms, Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins. Now, these are all fine bands and I own many of their CDs, but I missed tons of amazing bands because they weren't dropped in my lap. Toward the end of the 90's I actually stopped listening to rock music and got into jazz and New Age. So during that decade I completely missed out on bands like Flaming Lips, Pavement, Guided by Voices, Teenage Fanclub, the Pixies and of course Dinosaur Jr. I say this to explain why I don't have much Dinosaur Jr. in my collection. I plan on rectifying this in the near future, but for the purposes of this blog I have to recommend to my kids that they listen to Ear Bleeding Country.
     Ear Bleeding Country is an apt title for this best of album. J. Mascis's vocals kind of have a country vibe and the music is ear bleeding, but in a good way. Mascis is widely recognized as one of the few guitar heroes of the alternative rock scene. I assume that he was influenced by the guitar heroes of the 70's and 80's but also a product of the alternative scene. My favorite song by Dinosaur Jr. is "The Wagon". I found it interesting during the show the other day that that was the song everybody really got into. I assumed that people would go nuts for Freak Scene or Start Choppin' or Feel the Pain, and they did, but The Wagon was definitely the highlight. I'm not always a big lyrics guy, but The Wagon has great lyrics like There's a place I'd like to go / When you get there then I'll know. It also has great imagery with the lines Ring the doorbell in your mind / but it's locked from the outside / You don't live there anyway / but I'll knock on it all day. Apart from the songs I already mentioned, there is also In a Jar, Out There and I Don't think So. There really are no bad songs on this CD. And I promise that I will soon add "Bug" and "You're Living All Over Me" to my collection because it's kind of embarrassing that I don't have them.