Dinosaur Act

20 years later, Richard Harrington discovers Dinosaur, Jr. and interviews Lou.

My take: Looks like the first true indie oldies act. How much different are they from the band that claimed their name (some asswipes from Quicksilver Messenger Service and other bad acts from the '60s) and made them put that humiliating "Jr." after it?

In 20 years, we'll all be sitting on lawn chairs listening to them play the same songs, I'm sure. Instead of $30 tickets, they'll be $60 (unadjusted for inflation).

At any rate, here's Barlow on how the reunion came about:

The reunion seeds may have been sown in 2003, when Barlow was touring in England and ended up sitting in with Mascis's Stooges cover band on "I Wanna Be Your Dog," "me screeching on top of a wall of noise that was supposed to be a Stooges song," he laughs. "But it gave me a signal: Maybe J just doesn't remember how much he hates me! Or maybe he doesn't [hate me]. When the book had come out where I was saying all this horrible stuff, I was left with such an empty feeling. When I saw that J was 'Okay, whatever, sing with us, I don't care,' I thought maybe we'll play together again."

More baby steps followed, Barlow says. "J and I have had a lot of mutual friends, people who had worked with both of us. My mother had set up a benefit show about a year and half ago that J played and Sebadoh played. And during the course of that show, J and I reunited our hardcore band for one song."

That pre-Dinosaur band was named Deep Wound, and apparently time healed those as well.

"It's kinda cool because we're starting to get back into the real ritualistic, really primal bashing again, which I've been really into," Barlow says. "I didn't realize how much I missed that feeling of being in a band that feels like a band."