Gig Review: Dinosaur Jr (Sept 22, San Francisco, USA)

Bringing gig reviews back - even while on holiday. My first time seeing Dinosaur Jr in 28 years…

Dinosaur Jr

Fillmore, San Francisco

Friday, September 22

Sold out at the Fillmore (West), it was such a treat to be seeing Dinosaur Jr for the first time since 1995. When I saw them last, in Wellington, NZ, I was in my first year at university, I had just moved to Wellington - they were only the second international act at a venue where I’ve now seen hundreds of acts…

And then, here I am, 13 years after I was last at the Fillmore, so just my second gig (the first was Kurt Vile; wonderful). It’s a venue to saviour if, like me, you’re an out-of-towner, but for the locals it’s just the place they go to see gigs. No matter to them that the walls are coated in history - Janis and Jimi and The Doors and The Grateful Dead and The Byrds and Miles Davis in framed photographs, memorialised. More recent snaps of more recent bands too: The White Stripes, Los Lobos, comedian Zach Galifianakis…it is rock’n’roll history, the old and new.

But on this night, it’s just a chance to see Dinosaur Jr. The classic line-up now back together in reunion mode, for longer than they ever were a thing the first time around (a bit like the Pixies). J Mascis (guitar/vocals) looking like Wayne’s World’s Garth and Neil Young came to a shared custody agreement and gave equal influence over their baby. Lou Barlow (bass) looking impossibly cool and much younger than the amount of rings around the trunk of his tree. And Murph (drums) looking very angry whenever a cymbal or drum gets in his way.

Ostensibly, it was about the 30th Anniversary of classic album, Where You Been, or so the early info told me. But that was either red rag to Mascis’ bull - or he never received the same memo as me, because only two songs arrived to tell us of Where They’d Been, the rest were from all over the catalogue, and wonderfully so. They reached back to the debut (Dinosaur) for the opener, Bulbs of Passion, and then again, mid-set, for the super-charged speed-metal of Mountain Man, which was positively ferocious.