A Whistling In My Ears.

Dinosaur Jr - London Scala 26 June 2007.

I woke up on Wednesday morning with a tell-tale hum in my ears. After 25 years of attending gigs whistling ears is something that I very rarely get these days. It can happen, especially if the sound quality is bad and their is a lot of feedback.Public Enemy at Cambridge Junction last year was an example of this. Sometimes though the ear whistle is caused by one thing and one thing only, very LOUD music.

I was very lucky to receive a ticket to see the best grunge band in the universe on Tuesday. My mate Paul couldn't go so he rang me on Saturday to ask if I wanted his ticket. It was a silly question as Dinosaur Jr have always been one of my favourite bands. I had missed the chance to get a ticket for this smallish venue through general tardiness and jumped at the chance to go.

E F Rice and I met Jack Gestures at Kings Cross satation and after a swift Chinese meal we made our way to The Scala. This is one of my favourite venues in London, it is small and compact, you are never far away from the stage ad if you get there early enough you can get a decent view.

After decent support from Tad (though not the Tad from the early grunge years) the audience were well pumped up for Dinosaur Jr. The original line up have recently got back together again after a fair while apart, although guitarist J Mascis has carried on the name with several different line ups. For those of you who are unfamiliar with their repertoire it can easily be summed up as noisy and dirty. Grunge describes it perfectly.

With new album 'Beyond' recently released I didn't know what kind of set we'd get so I was delighted when they peppered their set with some of their classic tracks such as 'The Wagon', 'Sludgefest' and the big crowd pleaser 'Freak Scene'. The band rocked their asses of with Murph pounding out the beats and breaking an inordinate amount of drum sticks whilst he did it, Lou Barlow thrashing the life out of his bass and J Mascis just being goddam awesome as usual. If there is a better guitarist about I haven't heard him yet. After about 80 minutes of blisteringly loud joy it was all over and we all trudged out into the Kings Cross streets, ears humming away merrily. What a gig that was. And now today I've found out we've got tickets for The Jesus and Mary Chain at Brixton in September. Fuck me life is good.