Imitations of Grunge Immortaility

Characterizing the crowd at Dinosaur Jr.'s show is a bit problematic: on one hand, the girl selling CDs at the back of the room had the requisite face piercings and don't-mess-with-me attitude; on the other hand, the mosh pit was full of drunken frat-boy types in Abercrombie cords and button-down shirts. Although periodic stage-rushes interrupted the general quietude, the scrunchie-clad and turtlenecked coeds who surfed the crowd looked like something out of 90210-goes-to-Seattle. It was puzzling, to say the least.

If the diversity of J. Mascis' audience is any indication of his mainstream appeal, then perhaps grunge hasn't died the torturous death that its critics all seem to lament. If Mascis' music possesses any one quality, in fact, it is staying power: after 13 albums, (the first in 1985 with bassist Lou Barlow, who departed to create Sebadoh) he still gets the same screamed requests for the same four or five songs every set he plays. Although it must be a huge responsibility to be credited as one of the fathers of alternative rock, Mascis manages to keep churning out the high decibel hits while maintaining the slackjawed public image that made indie loserhood marketable in the first place.

With their latest album Hand it Over, Mascis halts the artistic downward spiral that Dinosaur Jr. had suffered since recording a perplexingly acoustic album in early 1996. Although Martin and Me, a re-recording of old material, allowed Mascis's often brilliant songwriting to shine through, it met with mixed reviews from the critics who had come to expect Dinosaur Jr.'s melancholic lyrics to be imbued with an almost paradoxical electric fury. The new material featured on Hand it Over marks a return to the high energy Lollapalooza style that traditionally, and perhaps regrettably, has obliterated all recognizability in Mascis' lyrics.

On the CD, Mascis, bass player Mike Johnson and drummer George Berz benefit from a little musical diversity with trumpet and flute accompaniment, but on stage the three are alone with their amps (and, from their glazed expressions, one gathers that they're presumably alone somewhere inside their minds as well). On classics like "Repulsion" and "No Bones" the band needs only provide the right chords and mumble a few lyrics, and the crowd fills in the rest.

That's the thing about Dinosaur Jr.--no matter how old we get, they're still playing the same Seattle style garage sounds that endeared them to our generation back when we were entering puberty. At the same time, though, new pieces like "Mick" and "Alone" put a refreshing spin on the old depressed-and-oppressed-in-America theme.

"Mick," in particular, delivers some amazingly creative guitar work: Mascis as a pop icon is a little bit of a exaggeration, but the song is definitely one of the most melodious in his repertoire. Admittedly, lyrics like "I can't take myself/I'm trying to help somebody else" are nothing that's never been said before, but unless you have the album, you really can't tell what Mascis is saying anyway. Ignorance isn't necessarily bliss, but to a certain extent one has to remember that, with guitar talent like that, coherence is not always a priority.

Discussion on the internet seems to emphasize that Dinosaur Jr. is much more comfortable playing together post-Hand it Over. There seems to be a grain of truth in this observation; Mascis and Johnson smile almost apologetically at the audience while delivering the depressive selfcenteredness featured in "Alone" and other new material. It is a little laughable to imagine Mascis telling a girl "I still believe in sometime" or "I still need your sunshine," and the band fully recognizes this overdramatism. On jamtv.com, Berz remarks, "When I first got the tape of 'Alone,' I remember hanging out with my girlfriend and we plopped it in and we all just started laughing. If you could see his house and where he lived and stuff. It's so perfect!"

What makes Dinosaur Jr.'s attitude all the more humorous is the nagging feeling that, at the same time, they're laughing at us as well. Although Mascis admittedly perceives the circumstances of growing up young and lonely in America, his on stage performances give the sense that he's simultaneously weeding some hypocrisy out of the audience. Seriously, was our prepubescent generation really at the stage to understand lines like "With life surrounded/Entombed in war/Don't lie to her. No Bones. No Bones"? More importantly, were any of us, in our torn jeans and flannels, really wounded enough to appreciate it?

That's the point--the 14-year-olds who skateboarded in school parking lots and smoked cigarettes while listening to "Puke & Cry" may have grown up and realized that life isn't so bad after all; but at the same time, they've retained that nostalgia for the music of desperation that eased their hormone-riddled inductions into adulthood. Dinosaur Jr., for their part, have matured as well, diversifying their musical efforts while keeping their guitar-emphasis rock just far enough out of the mainstream to remain interesting. Although their audience's "Kurt Cobain is alive" T-shirts now read "Save BU football" instead, the bodies themselves are the same--and their enthusiasm for the music of their tortured adolescence probably won't allow grunge to take its last dying breath just yet.