Dinosaur Jr: Whatever's Cool With Me

 Dinosaur Jr: Whatever's Cool With Me

1991

Sire Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Whatever's Cool With Me  2. Sideways  3. Not You Again  4. The Little Baby  5. Pebbles + Weeds  6. Quicksand  7. Thumb (live)  8. Keep the Glove (live) 



Alright...I'm back from Tucson...Bad news is I think I'm getting sick...My throat feels like I've swallowed a big wad of sandpaper so that part sucks, but I had a shit-ton of fun, hanging out with old friends I haven't seen in a long while...Plus I got to bring back four gigantic totes of stuff that I had in storage...I probably won't get a chance to properly dig through it until next weekend (provided the weekend doesn't consist of me lying sick in bed), but I know I saw some good shit in there...I might have to make a whole separate blog or something to showcase it all...100's of  old 4-Track tapes...Gigantic totes stuffed with various writings and home-made comics...Manoman... I think I'm going to start the process off by digitizing all the cassettes I found...I'm curious/afraid of what I'm going to find on them...Oh yea!! Best of all I ran across the Purple Tape! If that phrase means anything to you, please be advised I'm working on getting it converted to VHS as we speak, so the precious image of me spraining my leg on camera will be preserved for subsequent generations to cherish... (I can't wait until the poor soul who gets tapped for that particular assignment gets an eyeful of me stripping down to the saggiest, bluest pair of underwear ever captured on film...Oh, it's gonna get hairy)...Oh, 90's memories...

Speaking of 90's memories (segue), many of them were scored by Dinosaur Jr's "Whatever's Cool With Me"...I originally had this on a cassette tape that I bought from the Saginaw Mall and boy, did I play that cassette within an inch of its life..I love this record!

 

 Essentially a collection of B-Sides (mostly from the European version of "The Wagon" 12-inch single), it's looser and more diverse than usual...You get the bubble-gum alt-rock tracks like the title track and "Not You Again, " which has one of the greatest opening lines of all-time:

 "I Thought of the blob today,
I though to of you..."

Guys, unless you're looking for a swift, bracing slap in the face, I wouldn't recommend trying this line out on your lady-friend! It takes a true genius like J Mascis to make such a line come across as charming...On the other side of the coin we have The Little Baby which sounds like a more organic Big Black with...well...A screaming baby on vocals...Is that J? I don't think we've ever heard him go this crazy...Lou Barlow would usually handle the whole screaming thing...

My personal favorite however is the band's cover of David Bowie's "Quicksand" (which throws in the intro to Bowie's "Andy Warhol" for good measure)...I've never really been that big a Bowie fan, but my wife is...I had never heard the original until I heard her listening to "Hunky Dory" one day...



It's rare to find cover songs that top the original, but this is one of those examples...Bowie's original was too cold,arch, and nazi-ish...J replaces most of the words and finds the haunting ache at the songs core with just his voice and an acoustic guitar and just proceeds to break your heart...You can compare 'em if you like...

Here's Bowie's version...

Here's Dino's...

The album ends with a couple live tracks...A mighty version of "Thumb" lacking the studio's psychedelic touches but ruling anyway...I've always loved "Keep the Glove"'s breezy ramble and always wondered where in the hell the song came from...I mean, here's a live version but surely there must have been a studio take...

Apparently I could have heard it years earlier by picking up the SST "Fossils" compilation, but I always passed over it because of that damn troll cover...I hate those trolls and so should you...Just try and avert your eyes as you watch the video below...

Alright...I'm feeling ultra-shitty, it's getting late and those trolls are freaking me out...Let's wrap this up by saying that "Whatever's Cool With Me" is the most Dinosaur Jr-sounding title possible...You can only say it with a shrug...And Dinosaur Jr at their best are like the audio equivalent of the biggest, loudest shrug possible, shedding light on the endless possibilities inherent in the phrase "whatever"...Definitely an old favorite of mine and I've never grown even remotely tired of it...

Here's "Whatever's Cool With Me' by Dinosaur Jr...Enjoy...