Dinosaur

Things I did last night: watched "Alien vs. Predator." I liked watching the Alien and Predator fight each other.

Also saw Dinosaur Jr. on the talk show that now follows David Letterman. That’s Dinosaur W/ Lou Barlow--the same guy who wrote "The Freed Pig" about J. Mascis, though it’s mainly hard on himself. They seemed sloppy and unrehearsed and maybe like they still hate each other, but I’m probably reading into it.

Weird that I’m so old that a band like Dinosaur Jr. can reform and it seems like the Rolling Stones reforming for another show. Indie rock is the new classic rock. Can't really fault them for getting back together. They can sell out a lot of shows.

Speaking of which, Our Band Could Be Your Life is a great book--about the eighties underground/indie rock scene, mostly about SST: Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, Husker Du, Minutemen, etc.



Made me appreciate the bands that I grew up with as an actual phenomenon. I spent most of my time thinking how much better the sixties were, not realizing I was sitting on top of something that was just as vibrant. The chapter on Dinosaur Jr. is the funniest--Lou Barlow phallicly chewing on a pen making J. Mascis nervous. Reading that book kind of opened up my world. I started reassessing a lot music I liked, and looked into new bands, realizing I could be missing something. It even indirectly led me to researching underground subjects like UFOs, magick and so on which are going into my novel.

The writer of Our Band, Michael Azerrad, plays in my friend’s band The King of France. I once recorded drums with the songwriter at a half-built house in Vermont. Our payment for using the house was to dig a ditch for an outhouse. I now appreciate how hard it is to dig a six-foot wide/deep hole in the ground. We had to move the massive, shit-stained outhouse over the hole we had dug. I also got a spider bite which made the back of my head swell up. There were no showers and we had to bathe in a drum full of rainwater. Made some nice recordings though.