(Father to a fast-moving toddler/ adoptive New Englander/ Ché fan at large Paul Kaufman currently makes it out of the house at night a couple of times a year, so they better count. This one did.)
In the future, I’ll have to contain the instinct to rile when I see current concert calendars loaded with bands you could have seen in the mid-’70s: Pat Benatar, America, Kansas, James Taylor. Sure, most of this stuff is hurl-worthy, but I can’t pretend that nostalgia is of no interest to me.
What were the last three shows I’ve seen? Sonic Youth, Pavement, and now, Dinosaur Jr. True, the first of these is a band still actively exploring new territory, but the others weren’t. The Pavement show was one-off reunion of my favorite band of the ’90s, playing their classics. This Dinosaur Jr. show was an even more specific revisit to a place and time: late-’80s Boston. “Playing the album ‘Bug’ (1988) in its entirety!” read the announcement. I bought a ticket the moment I saw the ad.
The show was at The Paradise Club in the student-centric Allston neighborhood, a few blocks and 22 years from the first time I had seen them. Back then, Dinosaur Jr. was the “it” band among the many Boston college radio stations, and they had joined the übercool SST indie label, but I was lucky to catch them at a small place (“Bunratty’s,” now defunct, still notorious.
