Three 65, Day 42
Dinosaur Jr, Where You Been

On Day 34, I discussed how my mother took me to a record store called Purple Haze and more or less changed my life by allowing me to pick out three tapes at random. (Tapes... remember them? But I digress.) One of those tapes was this album, Dinosaur Jr's Where You Been.

I had no idea who Dinosaur Jr was, other than that they'd be playing the third Lollapalooza (which, come hell or high water, I was going to), they had a cool name, and the cover looked cool. I ended up listening to the album the next day on a ride into New York City for a school trip, and I was just fucking mesmerized.

No discussion of Dinosaur Jr is complete without mentioning Neil Young; the band, fronted by guitarist/vocalist J Mascis, sounds like Young on serious steroids. Total feedback guitar; folk-rock noodling; whiny vocals... everything. On opening cut "Out There," you can practically smell Young's road-dirt showering off the band as they tear through power chord after power chord.

"Start Choppin," the first single, continues in the aforementioned folk-rock vein. Other highlights include the fierce "What Else Is New" (a 9-minute live version accompanies the album's remastered version as a bonus track, proving that Dinosaur Jr are one of those live bands) and the sad "Not The Same," one of the first songs to make me cry. You got a problem with that?