Dinosaur Jr & the UK

 

'Who do you listen to?' asked Melody Maker's David Stubbs. ' ...Uh....everybody,' Mascis replied. ' Now this may not seem like much of an answer,' wrote Stubbs ' This is not quote of the year and wants for the delicious aphoristic quality which we so enjoy in an Oscar Wilde or a Nietzsche. But stark print cannot do justice to its catatonic deadweight, more eloquent than any Pete Burns rant, the sprawl of the drawl, the great mental cloud which attempts to conceive of the great swathes of rock history in which Dinosaur are soaked. The pause that precedes this answer is like the death of the word.'

 

They were flattered that these American bands liked English bands such as The Jesus & Mary Chain and The Cure. The English press, whipped to a froth by the exotic brutishness of Blast First Bands such as Sonic Youth, The Butthole Surfers and Big Black, had found a new object for their love/hate relationship with American culture. Mascis was some kind of idiot savant worthy of equal parts reverence and condescension. To Americans, the band was readily recognisable as a typical bunch of  Northeast ski bums; to the British they were like the wildmen of Borneo. 

 

And after Dinosaur's tour, a whole wave of English groups, dubbed 'Shoegazer bands', sprang up in their wake, playing folk chords through phalanxes of effects pedals to make swirling, deafening music; they uniformly adopted a nonchalant demeanor and paid lip service to Neil Young and Dinosaur Jr.'

 

He's quite right. The Stubbs snippet sums up what it was like reading Melody Maker towards the end of the eighties. Another extract from the beautifully written Our Band Could Be Your Life. Without it, it seems impossible that we'd have My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Swervedriver and countless other bands of the early nineties. Need to track down a vinyl copy of this album. I particularly love the dentist drill solos.