Dinosaur Jr. Live 4/12/06

Last Wednesday night at the wonderful Blue Note in Columbia, MO, alt-rock legends Dinosaur Jr. were about to take the stage (for a large $25 per head sum!). I looked around in disbelief, as I have been to many shows at the Blue Note the past few months, and this was by far the ugliest. Perhaps this is superficial, I don't know, but I do know from going to a lot of shows that a good crowd can help make the concert. Dinosaur Jr. did not have that crowd.

I arrived just in time to catch Warhammer 48k, one of the local bands that was opening. Their lighting consisted of a strobe light into the crowd that was probably the most annoying thing I could've imagined. Then, they started playing and that became the most annoying thing I could've imagined (Priestess had not started playing yet). While they had instrumental moments that proved quite enoyable, this "doom metal" (self proclaimed I believe) band made sure to ruin them with screaming vocals that became downright laughable.

The second opening band Priestess came roaring with some sort of Prog-Canadian-type-metal that was quite forgettable. The songs were rather cookie cutter and throw away. Here is just another "back to the basics" 80's metal band that fails to realize to bring back the music they love, there has to be a new element that makes the dead genre current. Without this, they are just a cover band with their own dull, lifeless material.

Finally, Priestess left the stage and I was about to have my first Dinosaur Jr. experience. I was well prepared, and I very cutely unpacked my pristine ear plugs that I had purchased from walmart the previous day, and found a nice place for the onslaught of loud, violent bass and Masci's cutting guitar notes. The sound was, first and foremost, very loud, by far the loudest show I have ever been to. A negative though was the vocals were very difficult to hear and were continually getting louder and softer, making it very distracting.

The crowd after every song was shouting song requests over and over. I hope to preach some concert etiquette at the current moment: crowd-performer interaction is great, but certain things such as yelling song requests and repeatedly screaming "I love you ___" are the most annoying possible things to do at a concert for the people around you. Please refrain, public. Anyways, a fantastic rendition of "Grapes" was played in midset that was by far the highlight. Beautiful cutting guitars and the perfect amount of notes played, nothing else later could match the energy or precision of this song. One disappointing factor was that so little of the new stuff was played, no doubt due to Lou having rejoined, but I personally was really looking forward to some of the songs like "Feel the Pain" with such fun guitar licks. Overall, it was fantastic to see these legends up on stage, but for the price and sound, I left a little unfulfilled.