While a reunited Dinosaur Jr continue, 28 years after first forming, to produce brilliant, challenging and very loud music, their 1988 third album, Bug, remains their most celebrated record. Back in June 2011, the trio played the album live in its entirety (plus a few extra treats) at Washington, DC. This isn’t just a bog-standard DVD of that performance, however; in fact, it’s quite the opposite: the fruits of the labours of six individuals who won an online competition to film the show.
Spliced together by director Dave Markey, the footage presents the band from six different, alternating amateur angles, making the concert all the more real. You can almost smell the sweat, inhale the heat and feel the vibrations of the ever-idiosyncratic J Mascis’ squalling guitar. One competition-winner even gets the chance to sing Don’t with the band (which he actually does pretty well).
Backstage, he and the other winners get the chance to interview the band; featured as part of the bonus material, which also includes appearances by hardcore legends Keith Morris and Henry Rollins, it’s surely one of the most brilliantly awkward things ever committed to tape. An odd but brilliant document of an odd but brilliant band.
