1994.
We occupy an Army orderly room within a nondescript government building in a nondescript Canberra suburb.
We are separate from the other Defence offices and are pretty much the only military presence in a building staffed by public service lifers.
Our favourite is Linus with the loud shirts and ponytail. He seems like he never really returned from his trip to see Led Zeppelin at the Showgrounds in ’72.
The rest wore beige cardigans with their grey slacks.
Still, it was better than being with the desk warriors in the main Defence offices.
Bunch of crocks and blowhards.
We lads are young, so we drink hard every night, run hard most mornings, and listen to Triple J all day. We don’t do any work. Australia’s defences still hold firm.
It is peak American indie rock.
Grunge has broken through (maybe even gone over the top?) and the nonsense that would become Britpop hadn’t really kicked in yet. (For the record, give me Pulp and Supergrass over Oasis and Blur any day. Though none of them can touch the Stone Roses debut. Or anything by The Smiths.)
Lots of guitar, apathetic or angst-ridden lyrics, long hair, scruffy clothes.
We inhabit the straightest of straight worlds and they seem to offer everything that we don’t, or can’t, have.
Dinosaur Jr received plenty of Triple J airplay, with ‘Get Me’, ‘Start Choppin’ and ‘Feel the Pain’ all earning hottest 100 spots.
Dinosaur Jr is the J. Mascis show, and to me, J. Mascis just seemed cool.
While the grunge and punk ‘purists’ eschewed guitar solos, J. Mascis leaned into them. He sings as if he is permanently half-blazed, yet had been ‘straight edge’ since the early 80s.
Not having as much cash to spend on music back then, what cash that had been spent at the Army boozer, Civic nightclubs, or Maccas runs, was directed towards established acts like Pearl Jam and Nirvana, or the emerging Aussie bands You Am I and The Cruel Sea.
(I caught Tex and the lads at Selinas in the Coogee Bay Hotel in May 1994 knowing the following day was to be spent at a high ropes course up amongst the treetops somewhere on the other side of the harbour. Looking for a taxi at 1am was not an ideal prep for one with quite the fear of heights.)
In those pre-streaming days, bands like Dinosaur Jr, Soundgarden, and Smashing Pumpkins remained radio bands. Their full catalogues left largely unexplored.
Come 1995, things change.
The orderly room team is broken up and dispatched to different locations.
(Like all my postings and training courses you go from living in each other’s pockets for months at a time to then making a total break when it comes time to move on. Maybe everyone needs to keep moving on from the sketchy shit they got up to? Closets are filled with skeletons.)
Canberra with its non-descript suburbs is left behind.
In time Triple J is benched.
Life moves on.
Fast forward to 2024 and I still don’t have much cash to spend on music.
Money that used to be spent on beer, Beam, and Big Macs is now being directed towards adult things like mortgage payments and insurance premiums.
Nevertheless, I spend my free time acquiring as much vinyl as I can (or can’t afford).
Soundgarden’s ‘Badmotorfinger’ is an early acquisition. I keep passing on their ‘Superunknown’ album as I think it’s over-priced.
The same goes for the Smashing Pumpkins’ 1990s albums. (‘Siamese Dream’ is a good album, but not when I can get two Black Sabbath albums for the same outlay. Come on.)
Dinosaur Jr is not quite forgotten about but does remain deep in the background.
Then seemingly out of nowhere, one of the weekly emails from my regular record stores is advertising 20% off new copies of Dinosaur Jr’s 1993 album ‘Where You Been’.
I can’t pass that up.
I go back to the well the following week for a (full price) copy of their 1994 follow-up ‘Without a Sound’.
It didn’t seem right to have one without the other.
There may be a nostalgia factor in that the sounds take me back to those days in 1994.
(I would like to say it was a less complicated time, but it wasn’t. So much that they need a Royal Commission to unpack some of it …)
However, when taken together I am comfortable in bestowing my highest level of praise upon these Dinosaur Jr albums.
I deem them to be good guitar albums.
Two good guitar albums that invoke pleasant memories from a somewhat difficult time.
Enough said.
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Your journey through the 90’s mirrors mine. Triple J was pivotal to my experience of music, and I liked Dinosaur Jr. I reckon Where you Been? has great album art and I always enjoyed the humour of it. In 2017 a mate and I saw them at The Gov. J. Mascis said two words for the entire night. Hello. Goodnight. More coolness. In between hugely loud guitar rock with my friend describing J’s fingers going up and down the frets as being ‘like a bionic crab.’ Like you I enjoy buying vinyl and generally don’t invest in recent music with most of my purchases being ones from the 70’s. Thanks Greg, I enjoyed your musings.
Cheers Mickey.
I just kept landing on cool as the most apt descriptor. Fingers like a bionic crab. That’s a ripper!
Likewise, most of my recent purchases have been 70’s albums.
This brings back memories of army life in Wagga studying with the RAAF for 12 months and visiting Canberra one or two debaucherous weekends in the early 80s Greg. A different time pre-grunge but fun nonetheless. There is a book I read recently you might like if you haven’t found it already called ‘Our Band Could Be Your Life’ and covers off many great post-punk bands from the US including a couple of my favourites, The Minutemen and Husker Du. It’s a terrific read and Dinosaur Jnr are featured of course. Here’s a link to it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Band_Could_Be_Your_Life
Thanks for the article
Cheers Ian.
My introduction to Canberra was also via a debaucherous weekend visit from Wagga. A group of us went there on our 4 day break during recruit training.
Thanks for the book suggestion, I will check it out.
Enjoyed this musical tale, Greg.
If the ABC wants to know why Triple J rates so poorly these days, I will happily advise them.
Cheers Smokie.
I can’t even remember the last time I listened to Triple J. The stuff I used to get from them I find elsewhere these days.