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Cool article, obviously I don’t agree with the guys statement about the whole J stifled LB’s song writing deal
Volatile Dino Jr…Annarbornews, Nov 27 ’05
Volatile Dinosaur Jr. rocks back from brink of extinction
Band members reunite to delight of indie-music fans
Sunday, November 27, 2005BY WILL STEWART
News Special WriterThe "reunion that would never happen” is suddenly showing signs of being more of a long-term affair than any of the members of indie-rock pioneers Dinosaur Jr. ever expected.
Or not.
"With this band and the people who are in it, things could go either way,” said Murph, the one-named drummer of the trio, whose principal members – J Mascis and Lou Barlow – share an uneasy and sometimes volatile relationship.
"I think for the time being, we’re all pretty committed and we all realize that we have a lot of unfinished business together.”
Which includes an ongoing live-video project tied, in part, to the rejuvenated trio’s gig at the Blind Pig on Monday. The DVD – planned to come out of a larger tour for which the Pig date is a tune-up – comes on the heels of a series of summer festival gigs that found Dinosaur Jr. receiving the kind of adulation it lacked the first time around.
"It’s bigger now than it ever was before,” Murph said of the hype surrounding the band. "We played the second year of Lollapalooza back in the day and that was a pretty big thing.
"But the response and the attention we’re receiving now is way beyond even that.”
The three albums the original trio released – "Dinosaur,” "You’re Living All Over Me” and "Bug,” all of which were re-mastered by Mascis and re-released just prior to the reunion – are part of the template that created the grunge revolution in the late 1980s.
By then, of course, the original band had splintered amid acrimony and bitterness. Barlow, whose songwriting aspirations had been stifled by Mascis’ reputedly dictatorial temperament, was thrown out in 1991, only to re-emerge with his own band, Sebadoh, and a series of musical attacks on his former bandmate.
After Barlow’s dismissal, Murph stuck it out with Mascis for four more years, before Mascis took the name and soldiered on with hired hands until retiring the Dino franchise in 1997.
"I think it’s pretty obvious that we were the band never to reunite,” Murph said. "After so many years, though, it’s like finding that all of our vaults are full of renewed energy and good memories about all the things we did together.
"There’s a renewed sense of anticipation about what we can do as a band.”
The thaw in relations came slowly, with Mascis and Barlow showing up at one another’s gigs from time to time. When the band’s three albums were set for re-release, Mascis’ manager sent out feelers to Barlow and Murph.
"We all felt like we had unfinished business,” the drummer said. "And we all felt like all that baggage wasn’t there anymore and we could get along together well enough to make it work.”
Not that it’s always peaches and cream backstage. The drummer acknowledged that old animosities lurk close to the surface and that the he frequently acts as an emissary between the bookish Barlow and the edgy Mascis.
"J and Lou aren’t at odds,” he said. "But (Mascis) and I tend to be closer and Lou kind of keeps on his own page.
"That’s just how it’s always going to be with this band.”
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