I saw Babes In Toyland in Minneapolis at Lolla Palooza in 1993. It was awesome. They are from Minneapolis, so it was pretty epic to see a somewhat smaller band get so much love on the big stage.

The most famous of the girl grunge bands. L7 rules. Their next album Bricks Are Heavy was huge and a great excuse to play loud annoying grunge music when girls were around.

Tad was not my favorite, a little to rough for me, but this mellower song of theirs is great.

Time to get a little later in the 90s when slacker music ruled the world. Archers opening for Weezer (original blue album tour) was one of the best shows I’ve seen.

To find new music I used to record MTV’s 120 minutes every Sunday night. On Monday I would go through the show and hope to find new bands I liked. This video came on once and I immediately went to the record store to buy it. Treepeople is one of my all time favorite bands and at the top of my list for bands I wish I had seen live.

Pavement Ist rad. This band was huge. Everyone enjoyed Pavement. As a side note, they are way better live now then they were back in the day.

I wanted to pick a different Superchunk song, but the fact is this song is one of the greatest songs ever made.

Nirvana is of course the quintessential 90s band. And for good reason, they absolutely ruled. My brother paid $35 for the Hormoaning cd and we popped it in on the way up to Minneapolis to go look at new snowboards. We were so blown away by this song that we started moshing in the car. Ha. Oh to be young again.

If you make it through this song please let me know.

Okay, gotta end it with the greatest band of all time. This song was released in the 80s, but still played throughout the 90s. This band basically changed my life and turned me into who I am. They are still my favorite. I love how su

TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW!!!!! #jmascis #THEBEST

A photo posted by Null Skateboards (@null_skateboards) on Nov 11, 2014 at 11:22pm PST

I’ll just start by saying that on Friday I had the tune “Listen To Me” stuck in my head all day. Although it isn’t my favorite J Mascis song I hoped he played it. He opened with it Friday night. All day Saturday I had “Thumb” stuck in my head with the same hope. He opened with it Saturday night. It just gets better from there. The opening act Luluc was alright. A little mellow and simple for me, but a decent fit and the crowd liked them. The setlists had some overlap, but most of the songs he played both nights were songs I really wanted to hear twice (or every night). Alone, Ammaring, Get Me, Me Again, Every Morning, Drifter, Heal The Star. Actually, he played rocking versions of Drifter leading into Heal The Star both nights. They were my favorites both nights. Friday night had Little Fury Things, Out There (which was insane!) and closed with The Wagon. Saturday had Quest and ended with Just Like Heaven. Both nights were spectacular. They raised the stage for Saturday’s show so shorter people (not me) could see J better which was nice. What an awesome couple of nights. Thanks Larimer Lounge, there is a reason why I consider you my favorite venue.

I had originally planned on skipping this show. Mainly because Dinosaur Jr was only the opening act and I did not care for the headliner in any way (Phoenix). Plus tickets were nearly $60. So I manned up and begged for a spot on the guestlist. It didn’t seem like it was gonna work as I didn’t hear anything for a few weeks. But low and behold, one day before the concert I get an email that I’m on the list. Whewoo!!! So I skipped Sebadoh at the Larimer (still regretting that one a little) and then found out that since the forecast had called for rain the concert had been moved to the 1st Bank Event Center in Broomfield. Say what? Turns out it NEVER RAINED too. Oh well. The Broomfield Event center actually ended up being pretty cool and the sound was surprisingly good. This may have something to do with Dinosaur Jr not being able to play as loud as they wanted to. There were more old people in the crowd rockin’ Dinosaur Jr shirts then I would have thought, but the young crowd was definitely mostly there to see Phoenix. Dinosaur opened with one of my favorites, Thumb. At that point I already knew it was worth the price of admission. Ha ha, it was free! Free free free! They went on to play their typical greatest hits set:

Thumb
Budge
Watch The Corners
Rude
Out There
Feel the Pain
The Wagon
Freakscene
Just Like Heaven
a Deep Wound song

As expected the set seemed ridiculously short for them. My favorite song was Watch The Corners. It went off huge. That song hangs with their best. I’m not sure why Murph wasn’t there either, but whoever filled in on drums did a great job. It seemed like for the most part the Phoenix fans were into DJR, but I did hear one “This is the worst band I have ever heard”. Ha. I left immediately after Dinosaur Jr. Well, immediately after buying a new Dinosaur Jr shirt for my collection that is! Then I went skating with old guy friends and had a blast. This was my first sober Dinosaur Jr show since like 1998. Wow.

How do you make an epic skate trip even more epic? You start it off by seeing your favorite band put on perhaps the best show you’ve ever seen them play! Everyone here knows I’m as big of a Dinosaur Jr fan as they come and when I found out that Dinosaur Jr would be playing in Boston the first night of my skate trip my excitement went through the roof. The first two days of Boston were rain, but it didn’t even matter, we saw Dinosaur Jr!

And did I tell you that Carleigh was in Boston for a day too! Awesome. Carleigh, Joe, Pat.

Carleigh took this photo of Joe, Pat, me and Charlie. And no, I wasn’t double fisting it.

Epic Bug shirt purchased.

OFF! opened and they killed it. OG Black Flag steez.

Did I mention I’m friends with the guitarist for OFF!? Dimitri rules.

The second part of the show was Henry Rollins interviewing Dinosaur Jr. We had made a joke that you would have to drink everytime J Mascis responded with a blunt one word answer. Not the case, he and the rest of the band were on point. I’m pretty sure there are multiple times where I freaked out and was like “This is the best thing ever!”

Someone recorded and posted the interview. Without a doubt between OFF! and the interview this was the best opening for a Dinosaur Jr show ever. Top it off with good friends, a good crowd, good beers, a good venue, a great setlist (Bug) and you get ..

Quite possibly my favorite concert ever. Words cant really describe how insanely awesome I thought this show was. They played In A Jar and The Wagon before starting Bug. Bug didn’t use to be my favorite, but I’ve always thought the 1-2-3 punch of They Always Come, Yeah We Know and Let It Ride was the best three song combo on any Dinosaur Jr album. It didn’t disappoint.

Instead of Lou screaming WHY DON’T YOU LIKE ME? over and over during Don’t two dudes got on stage and screamed their lungs out. It was amazing. Carleigh took this awesome photo. They played Don’t for almost 15 minutes of pure destruction. After a short break came an encore. Lou announced, “Wouldn’t it be awesome is we played a shit load of Black Flag songs?” Then they went on to play Out There and The Lung. Ha ha J Mascis is one hilarious dude. Indeed one of the best shows I’ve ever seen and I haven’t stopped listening to Bug since.

Liz and I went to the early showing of this video. We met up with Fuzz and Carleigh after some dinner with Darin and posted up next to one of the stars of the night, Shad. It was rad. Lots of teasers including a new Null one. The video itself was awesome. Not a hammer video with lots of raw street skating that can be viewed over and over. I can’t wait to get a copy of it. Liz and I bailed as soon as the credits started to get to the J Mascis show.

We said a quick hello to friends then posted right up front. I laughed as J’s guitars were brought to the front with the airplane tags still on them. Kinda hard to see in my cell phone photo above, but we shared a laugh with the guy next to us who might even be a bigger J Mascis nerd than me (not possible). The fire alarm at the Hi-Dive was going off which was pretty annoying.

J was walked up front looking frail and awkward and after a quick “Hello” busted right into The Wagon. Pretty much my favorite song ever. Although I’ll admit that’s one of those songs that benefits from the added noise of the whole band. Next up was Listen To Me off the new album and then Several Shades Of Why. Several Shades may have been my favorite song of the night. Then he went on to play mostly oldies including classics like Alone, Get Me, Ammarring, Quest. Oceans In The Way had one of the loudest crowd responses which kind of surprised Liz and I, but is just more evidence that Farm is one of their finest. I was surprised and excited to hear Not The Same. Not Enough went off. Flying Cloud is another runner up for my favorite song of the night. The encore was Raisons then Repulsion I think. The show was great. The only thing that takes away from it to me is this was the Several Shades Of Why tour and he only played four songs from it. A couple more would have made this show beyond epic to me. That being said, it was still a totally awesome show and J Mascis cannot be touched. After the show I went to get a t-shirt, but they had all sold out except one size large and a bunch of XXL (I’m not Mikey). Doh. Read a better review and see better photos at heyreverb.com.

This is pretty much the best trailer that’s ever been made and yes Dinosaur Jr is the greatest band of all time. I have nothing but the highest expectations for this video. Don’t let me down Workshop!