I often collect music in huge groupings, often managing to catch names and groups that I've seen, read, or had recommended all at once, then find myself having difficulty keeping enough track to explicitly explore any that do not immediately have some effect on me. This is the primary reason I set up a poll on the right side of the page to help me pare down my listening and focus it a bit. It was mostly successful, though the runaway nature of my
post about The Church (after both the Church's official Facebook and Steve Kilbey himself--calling it "worth reading" [!]--shared it through Facebook, it has had nearly 500 views, which is about...33x the usual views I have) caught me in an interesting problem, as former leaders, 70's pop-glam-stomp-rockers Slade were suddenly over-taken by alternative guitar-driven power trio Dinosaur Jr. Of course, the Big Star official page had also given me another couple hits, so maybe it was them? I can't be sure, of course, though I only wonder out of curiosity. I'd believe either of them.
Anyway, I'd been learning what I knew of Slade's
Slayed? and
Nobody's Fools when all this happened and I had to shift gears. Luckily, the alternating leads--in the poll, not guitar leads--meant I'd already been dropping in little tastes of Dinosaur Jr the whole time, but it seemed Slade were in the lead for sure and now I was just all goofed up.
However, as agreed, I'm going to write about the final winner: Dinosaur Jr. The name, like many, passed my eyes many times over the years--mentions as opening act or headliner for whom another band opened, an influence, a love, an example, but never enough to give me even a hint of what they sounded like. When I saw the cover art for the last Dinosaur Jr album,
Farm from 2009, as well as lead guitarist and overall lead vocalist J. Mascis, 2011's
Several Shades of Why, I got the impression of laidback, pothead, jam band type stuff. Of course, this is likely hysterical to anyone who knows the band or Mascis--at least, parts of it--or may reflect elements of the band or his solo work (or side projects) I'm unfamiliar with and be amusingly accurate, but having heard Dinosaur Jr for myself, well, I was ridiculously incorrect. Mind you, as a young child I confused U2 and REM (for which I was thoroughly admonished and mocked--though I later discovered they were commonly grouped together in some ways, at least in the 80s, even if not commonly confused, and felt a bit vindicated) and have trouble with confusing various indie bands I only know by name, often via strange trains of thought such as: Silversun Pickups -> Silver Apples -> Apples in Stereo, meaning I could conflate all three and be utterly lost.
