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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Something must be wrong with me, because both Slowdive (shoegaze) and Uncle Tupelo (opposite of shoegaze) say Dinosaur Jr. was a key influence, and I have in my life never been able to pick up a Dinosaur Jr. influence in anything. I think I have a Dinosaur Jr. Appreciation Deficiency.

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A few reasons:

1. Everybody knows J. If you were involved in hardcore or underground metal in the 80s, you knew J. It didn’t hurt that J sweats coolness.

2. Likewise, everybody knows Lou. And most people LOVE Lou. Hell, I hung out with Lou when I was 16 and it was incredible (http://nmh.livejournal.com/3336.html).

3. J’s guitar playing broke punk. While he was a super competent guitarist in era of less than competent guitarists, he still used the shitty Jazzmasters everybody else was using. He was an inspiration from a technical perspective.

Amazing guitarist. A friend (J's greatest fan incidentally) managed to convince him to do a guest solo on one of his albums a few years ago. Pretty amazing thing to strike off your bucket list!

I've never heard of anyone calling a jazzmaster shitty before though ;) Amazing, beautiful machines.

Even though they're stylistically pretty different, there are some similarities to Dinosaur Jr. in Uncle Tupelo's earlier more rock-centric stuff. Obviously they never did the J Mascis-style shredding, but some of the other elements are there. I would have never made this connection without your comment though.

Now I have to check out Slowdive...

For sure. Dinosaur's fingerprints are all over Graveyard Shift.

What's the Dinosaur song closest to Graveyard Shift? I can play that Tupelo song from start to finish in my head, but there's not a single Dinosaur Jr song I can do that with. And I've tried!

I don't have the skill to play any song from start to finish in my head, and I don't know about "closest", but "Does It Float" and "Repulsion" on "Dinosaur" are some specific examples you could look at that have some similarities IMO.

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