To many people of a certain age, Dinosaur Jr.’s 1993 album Where You Been is a seminal if not quintessential 90’s rock album. Granted I’m about 10 or so years older than the rest of this demographic, I freaking have loved the hell out of this album since its release 30 years ago. I’d come to know Dino Jr. two years prior with their Green Mind album (the first on a major label as well as virtually a J. Mascis solo project as he played almost everything on the album) with its combination of Mascis’s “Neil Young” vocal style1 combined with his aggressive guitar playing. With the release of Where You Been, the band finally hit paydirt. With the opening onslaught of guitar noise on “Out There”, the album’s first track, WYB would go on to become the band’s best selling album up to that point and would also be credited as a major influence on countless bands and artists to follow.
Anyway, for the last week Dinosaur Jr. has been playing the shit out of Where You Been along with countless other nuggets from their almost 40 years of recording. And along for the ride they’ve brought along a cavalcade of friends in the music business to help out. Previous nights had seen the likes of Hamilton Leithauser, Kurt Vile, Warren Haynes, Lee Renaldo, The Hold Steady, Kim Deal, Jason Isbell, Laura Jane Grace & Marissa Paternoster (to name a few) join the band onstage for some very loud jamming.
Friday’s finale would start off with the run’s steady opening act, Brooklyn’s by way of Australia’s Luluc got things started with a subdued yet poignantly visceral set of modern day indie folk-rock.
After a brief break to get the stage prepped for Dinosaur Jr’s elaborate electronics setup, Mascis, Barlow and Murph took to the stage promptly at 10 PM and banged right into that aforementioned onslaught of noise which is “Out There”. The band would proceed to steam roll through the LP song for song like a herd of buffalo storming the Great Plains. With their trademark stacks of Marshall amps bookending the stage, Mascis and Barlow threw out an onslaught of thunderous noise that every fan of Dino Jr. has come to expect. Take a poll of any random longtime music heads of what their loudest concert experiences ever, happened to be and I guarantee that Dinosaur Jr. will finish in the (at worst) top five.
Unlike the previous nights of the run, where the guests would not hit the stage until the second half of the show (after WYB had been completed), on Friday night Luluc came out to add some very eloquent backing vocals to “Get Me”, which was immediately followed by TV On The Radio’s Kyp Malone joining the band for a resound version of “Drawerings” to which Mascis would add as Malone was leaving the stage, “not to worry, he’ll be back”.
True to his word, Malone would return for the first of the non Where You Been tunes, “in A Jar” from 1987’s tour du force You’re Living All Over Me.
Ian Williams, a singer and guitarist from the band Batles whom I was largely unfamiliar with, joined the band for “Freak Scene” from 1988’s LP Bug. Luluc would come out again for vocals on “Feel The Pain” and the final guest of the evening would join the band for the next number, a cover of Neil Young’s “Down By The River”. (This would be the second Neil Young cover of the run, as Warren Haynes, Lee Renaldo and Jason Isbell would each have joined in on “Cortez The Killer” on separate evenings). Said guest would be none other than “Captain” Kirk
Douglas, guitarist from The Roots. The Captain would proceed to push the band through a cacophonous version of the Neil Young classic which was totally spellbinding. Unknown to me at the time was that they were churning out a Buddy Miles version of DBTR which I was totally unfamiliar with complete with a snippet of Hendrix’s “Hey Joe” thrown in for good measure. This had to be the highlight of the evening for me, as Mascis’s exploding wall of thunderous guitar along with Douglas’s blistering fret soloing backed with the pounding reverberous rhythms provided by Murph and Barlow was just ear splitting and mind blowing all at once.
The main set would come to a conclusion with the band forging through “Gargoyle” from their debut album Dinosaur dating back to 1985, followed by an encore of birthday cake and candles along with a crowd singalong of “Happy Birthday” for J.’s 58th trip around the sun. “Tarpit” and the obligatory show closer, “Just Like Heaven”, The Cure song which Mascis and crew have almost adopted as their own ever since they released it as a non LP single back in the day would follow and just like that the 7 days of celebration had run its course. Friday’s show was an absolute BLAST, both sonically as well as emotionally. The tumultuous distortion fueled sounds generated by these three gentlemen is truly an experience to behold, albeit with a good pair of ear plugs jammed into your ear holes.
- Mascis would eventually come to dispel the similarities as the comparisons had become annoying to him, but nonetheless it’s hard to dispute them, be they intentional or completely subliminal. ↩︎
W.S. Walcott Medicine Show 
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