Check it out, me awkwardly narrating a succession of video clips! Dad’s doing a slide show, gather round!
Dinosaur Jr. just completed a 3 show, weekend, tiny-tour of the big state of Texas. There are a few things I wanted to point out in the video but did not.
#1. Interstate 91, our path to Bradley International Airport, runs parallel to the Connecticut River. I love that highways follow pre-industrial trade routes. Of course, they do, but it still excites me.
#2. In Dallas, we played the storied, and recently renovated, Longhorn Ballroom. The name of the place carried a tingle of recognition and when J thundered into soundcheck with a Sex Pistols song it came to me: the Pistols played here on their 7 show stab into the American Heartland in 1978. We played Caines Ballroom in Tulsa last year, another stop on that legendary, blood and spit-soaked tour. We plowed our way through a few Pistols tunes during that soundcheck too.
#2. We played at a place outside Austin called Lakeline Park. The stage was very low so I wasn’t able to see the crowd beyond a line of people my age, standing still and staring blankly at us. When I saw Dave Pirner side stage I felt energized remembering how Soul Asylum threw themselves all over the place when they played. So, I threw myself all over the place in tribute. He watched the whole show. When I stepped off stage Dave approached me and said our set gave him “lots of warm fuzzies”. Our sound engineer, Noel Ford, told me that, just beyond the static wall of Gen X’ers, there was a mass of kids dancing their asses off. Alright!
#3. In San Antonio, we were at a club called Paper Tiger. The crowd was incredible, at one point bursting into a spontaneous chant of “Murph! Murph! Murph!”. Murph got the longest tribute of the night, it was really fucking nice.
#4. Texas has, in my estimation, the most enthusiastic Dinosaur Jr audiences in the country. It was neck and neck with Southern California before this tiny-tour. Our show in San Antonio put Texas on top. The spirit kids bring to the shows down here is inspiring. It just doesn’t happen everywhere. Maybe, like Southern California, it has something to do with its proximity to Mexico. I’ll work on that generalization, I love simplifying things!
Dinosaur Jr will be playing sporadically throughout the year, I’ll do more slideshows!
"Here we are..."