Yes, I got the purple cow shirt. 😀

I ventured downtown Thursday night after work to catch Dinosaur Jr. at the Phoenix. I met up with a former co-worker who shares my musical taste. He has his own business downtown (Spadina/Camden) making video games. I got a quick tour of the office and the game he is currently working on. (Ironically the game I would have been working on. It looks like I didn’t miss much.) We grabbed some tasty Thai then drove over to the show. Often opening acts are similar in genre to the headliner… so tonight’s opening bands leave me uttered baffled.

The opener was Lou Barlow who played a bunch of acoustic guitar songs. Great voice, but just out of place opening for loud guitar rock. Things got even worse with the second band called With MV & EE. Gawd. Sorry guys… you were awful. Admittedly the mixing and sound quality itself was terrible for their set. I’m not sure who would take the blame for that. Anyway… they were similar to Phish… songs that dragged on and on and on and on – they bored me to tears.

So from that mess, Dinosaur Jr. finally took the stage and finally brought the Rock. Again, the sound wasn’t that sharp. The drums and bass were well under the guitar… I guess that is to be expected for Dino Jr. but still… Murph (Dino Jr.’s drummer) didn’t get into Canada. I’m not sure who the replacement was, but he did an admirable job. Still, it would have been nice to see Murph play, I’ve always admired his drumming. The show, however, was about J. and guitar and barrage after barrage of sonic riffs. He was quite impressive. The show ended with a hardcore cameo by Fucked up’s lead singer (seen here in the zero hat) it was a strong ending to a solid show. It was great to see Raj again, I’m sure we’ll do more shows in the future. Now it is close to 2AM, I’m exhausted and going to bed.