As I listened to it walking to work this morning I was reminded of the link between Dinosaur Jr. and my arrival in the Emerald City.
On my way up here for the first time I stopped off in Ashland to purchase a used truck. I visited a friend I went to high school with who recommended this SST band called Dinosaur Jr. He had seen them in New Haven. He said that they were so loud he could feel the music on his skin (and it hurt). Once I got settled in a sublet apartment that looked down on 23rd Avenue East I repeatedly played cassettes of You're Living All Over Me and Bug that I had picked up at either Tower Records or Cellophane Square.
At the same time I discovered at the local convenience store the pleasures of 40-ounce bottles of Midnight Dragon, an inexpensive but tasty malt liquor. After work, mostly on the weekends, I listened to Dinosaur Jr., often followed by Neil Young's Tonight's the Night, late into the night, typing letters on a second hand manual Brother and getting drunk.
It was this summer that I began thinking about connecting a group of ideas: dinosaur extinction, nuclear testing, Phenomenology,and early childhood memory; also, the two hands of God. I gained inspiration listening to Lou Barlow sing "Poledo," the last track on You're Living All Over Me. I continued to fiddle with these ideas -- Phenomenology yielded to Gestalt psychology -- for the next five years.
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