Dinosaur Jr. is touring again, with original lineup. I paid 40 bucks to see them in Central Park two years ago. Tonight, I saw them for free in Harvard Square. They played as part of this benefit for college-type radio stations, in, of all places, a clothing store. (Look at the pics and vid to easily tell which one.) Click here for a visual representation of our night on G-Maps. (You can do a lot over there nowadays.)

I feel like I've talked about these guys a million times on this blog. Since I started this, I've seen J Mascis solo, Lou Barlow solo, and each of them with their other bands. Those two dudes plus Murph equal the original Dinosaur. Search any of these names on this blog to read the old entries. The above shot is the only one I got where you can actually see Murph. Click to enlarge and see the legend or key. Murph happened to stand up and wipe his head with a towel, which you can barely make out when you huge-ify the pic.

J Mascis, looking like some kind of witch doctor. The line for this show went around the corner and down the street and then around the next corner. My girlfriend and I were about 150 down the line, and word had it they were attempting to squeeze 300 people in there. I'm always happy when older bands from the days when bands were good can still draw a crowd. I forgot to bring earplugs. Dinosaur is still the loudest band in the land, so I had to use tissue in my ears. But I forgot to bring that in from the car, so I had to use an old receipt in my pocket. Note to kids: Paper in your ears isn't nearly as effective in noise reduction as tissue. Also, I forgot to bring my ticket to the show. But since the "ticket" was just something you print out off of a website, my girlfried was nice enough to run and make a copy of hers while I waited on line. Despite my terrible job of forgetting everything I'd need for this show, we got in, had a blast, and I even took pics, having not, you know, "seen" the sign that said "no photography."

There was a pole between Lou and I, but I was able to snag this close-up of him.

They played a lot of the old classics. When they started playing "Freak Scene," I immediately thought back to the 1991: The Year Punk Broke video which we used to watch over and over back in the day. (Click there and then click the link to get that thing onto DVD!) I knew right then I was gonna recreate that moment when the crowd sings along to that one line. Here it is:



Just for the hell of it, I checked to see if their performance from the old film was on GooTube. Here it is. Skip to the 1:40 mark to see tens of thousands of people singing along to the line 300 sang along to tonight.