Dinosaur Jr Refuses to Act Its Age at Crystal Ballroom

It was easy, at first, to discount the Dinosaur Jr reunion. Though they were one of the first "hell freezes over" type reconciliations to make headlines in 2005, many acts have since followed with one-off gigs or tours or full-on career restarts. But what makes Dinosaur so special is that they're still unbelievably adept at making the scruffy, powerful music that made them great initially. They've even outdone their original incarnation with a trio of LPs that are actually better than the albums they made 30 years ago. Just imagine ever saying that about the Smiths. It'd be sacrilege.

The enthusiasm for the treasured Massachusetts trio was palpable among an especially diverse mix on the all-ages side of the Crystal Ballroom's bounce-house floorboards Sept. 29, and there seemed to be as many aging rockers sporting earplugs as young punks with plugs in their earlobes.

When Mascis finally emerged and plugged into his wall of Marshall Stacks—painted in his signature purple and gold—the cacophonous wall of sound he released seemed to trigger an equally deafening mass of several hundred enthused screams of adulation.

For a guy who didn't say anything beyond a mumbled "How ya' doin'?" all night, everyone in the crowd seemed to both know and unabashedly adore the grizzled wizard that Mascis personifies on stage. Bassist Lou Barlow and drummer Murph, on the other hand, were relentlessly mobile. Powering through Green Mind's "The Wagon" and later the Without a Sound single "Feel the Pain," the two guys who didn't even play on the recorded versions the first time around ran apeshit laps of craziness around the one guy who did. They kept the momentum going with "I Walk For Miles" and "Knocked Around," off the recently released Get a Glimpse of What You're Not, as well as a handful of songs off the two preceding LPs.

When they finally left the stage for a few minutes it was Barlow who returned first, giddily offering his microphone around the crowd up front and asking, "What should we play?" The first request was the band's scorching Cure cover, "Just Like Heaven," which they laid into almost immediately and embodied the tender atmosphere of the whole evening. Upon exiting I heard a buttoned-up, middle-aged man exclaim to a friend two things I'm sure no one ever said of the reunited Misfits or Guns and Roses: "I hope I have that energy at 50. They were unstoppable."

All photos by Henry Cromett.

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