Back before there was a festival for every city, a booking agent for every band, and a service charge for every ticket, live music was a little less… predictable. Remember the good old days?
 
We all know the monster that it became, but Perry Farrell’s Lollapalooza festival was at one point, pretty cool! So influential in fact, that it inspired an entire industry to effectively dismantle it. Or maybe we’re just getting old…
 
One thing is for certain, however, if the Lollapalooza tour had not begun in 1991, then there certainly would have been no Rollercoaster Tour. Spread across eleven dates throughout the United Kingdom in 1992, the tour was the product of a buzz surrounding the newfound Lolla. With FOUR rotating co-headliners playing full, 45-minute sets each night, the Rollercoaster Tour intended to “give the recession-bitten public value for money with four bands for the price of one.” And that’s exactly what they achieved by assembling some of the most celebrated alternative rock bands at the time (and of all time): the Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr, and Blur.
 

 
Similar to Farrell’s involvement with ‘Palooza, the Rollercoaster Tour was dreamt up by members of the Jesus and Mary Chain. The Scottish noise-pop group was supporting their record Honey’s Dead, but decided it would be better for the fan if they were to split the bill with three other like-minded bands. Dinosaur Jr, the only Americans on the lineup, had been around for a number of years by this point, their classic record Bug had been released in 1987. Shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine were at their peak in 1992 - their seminal distortion record Loveless had come out just a year prior. Also, this would be the last time MBV would play the UK until their 2008 reunion tour. The greatest outlier of them all was the youngest and most energetic of the bunch, Blur. With just a debut record under their belt, the English band was just moments away from taking rest of the world by storm with the colossal explosion of [the dreaded] Britpop. Woo-hoo!
 

Ticket Stub from the Rollercoaster Tour, London
 
Jim Reid, singer of the Jesus and Mary Chain spoke about the Rollercoaster Tour in the April 2013 issue of ‘MOJO’:
 

That year, everyone was talking about [Perry Farrell’s touring alt-rock package fest] Lollapalooza, which to us was pretty crap. We did it, playing at 2pm after Pearl Jam, and it was fairly disastrous. So we thought, Why not do a good version of it? We were just trying to shake things up, to make it not like a bunch of boring blokes standing around with pints of beer. We were sick to death of plodding up and down the UK on our own, playing the same shitholes. The venues we playing on Rollercoaster, like Whitley Bay Ice Rink and Glasgow SECC, we could never have done on our own. Instead of a fucking cold Friday night in Nottingham Rock City, it felt a bit more like being a rock star - more a Bowie/Bolan thing. The idea was to have bands from different corners of the indie scene. It was pre-Britpop, so Blur were there to cover the Manchester/baggy thing, the grunge thing was covered by Dinosaur Jr., and then it was the Valentines doing freak-out noise, and we were doing something similar, but more poppy.

 
More after the jump…

 
Dinosaur Jr. persisted for eight years and four studio albums after the departure of Lou Barlow in 1989. In the spring of 1997 the band released Hand It Over and spent much of the year touring North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. On November 6, 1997, Dinosaur Jr. played Tramps in New York City, and while they were in town they taped an appearance on The Jenny Jones Show. A few days later the band would play its final show in its original iteration at the Middle East in Boston, not far from J. Mascis’ hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts.

I can’t say I ever watched it, but all available evidence suggests that The Jenny Jones Show was a very weird venue for a Dinosaur Jr. appearance. The show’s closest cousins are the scandalous daytime programs hosted by the likes of Sally Jessy Raphael, Jerry Springer, and Maury Povich, none of which, I am pretty sure, ever chose to invite Throwing Muses or Redd Kross on to perform a rousing musical number. But Jenny Jones did like to have musical artists perform on occasion, although the show’s emphasis was squarely on what is euphemistically called “urban music”—noted guests include Usher, Ludacris, Nelly, and Three Six Mafia.

Like the competition, The Jenny Jones Show loved to rile up its audience with shows involving strippers, feuding neighbors, paternity tests, “out-of-control teens,” celebrity impersonators, talent contests, and so on. A famous 1995 program on “Same Sex Secret Crushes” actually led to a murder after Scott Amedure’s on-air confession that he had a crush on Jonathan Schmitz. Three days later, Schmitz killed Amedure with a shotgun, leading The Jenny Jones Show to cancel the airing of the episode.

Aside from that, The Jenny Jones Show was mainly known for humorous rhyming show titles, such as “I Don’t Mean to Be a Pest, But You Need to Cover Up That Chest!,” “I Flash My Body ‘Cuz I’m the Next ‘Girls Gone Wild’ Hottie!,” and “You Said I Was a Weasel, But Baby Now My Body’s All Diesel!”

The Dinosaur Jr. lineup at this point was J. Mascis, Mike Johnson, and George Berz. The two songs performed on the daytime program were “Never Bought It,” off of Hand It Over, and “Out There,” off of 1993’s Where You Been (Jones calls it “Outta There”).
 
“Out There”:

 
Watch the performance of “Never Bought It” after the jump…

 
Finding new (like-minded) band members can be really hard. I mean, have you ever taken a look at the insane “Musician Wanted” fliers that people post at Guitar Center? Craigslist is even worse. What other options are there? Well, perhaps you could try national television.

If you dig deep into a lifetime of unnecessary pop culture references, you may recall the laughable, once-upon-a time reality series from 2005, Rock Star: INXS. After losing founder and vocalist Michael Hutchence to a potentially accidental, autoerotic asphyxiation death in 1997, the Australian rock group auditioned an oblivious group of starry-eyed randos in front of the entire world in hopes of “discovering” their new frontman. Competition winner JD Fortune really did become the new face of INXS for a number of years, and the group even recorded their eleventh studio album Switch with him. Fortune was eventually kicked out of the group (twice), in true rockstar fashion, all thanks to his newfound drug addiction.
 

INXS with their new replacement singer, JD Fortune
 
While an attention-seeking stunt like this may seem absurd to you, let’s take a moment to admire the time Dinosaur Jr. was a guest on MTV’s alternative music program 120 Minutes in 1991. The scenario was simple: vocalist / guitarist J. Mascis and drummer Murph joined VJ and series creator Dave Kendall on air to promote their newly-released fourth album, Green Mind. Not only was it their first to be released on a major label (Sire), but it was essentially a J Mascis solo album with him playing nearly every instrument on the record. Original bassist Lou Barlow had departed from the group years prior, in 1989, due to internal tension and they hadn’t quite replaced him in time for this major milestone.
 

 
Discontent and lacking a bass player for touring purposes, J and Murph utilized their MTV appearance as a humorous opportunity to round out their dynamic three-piece. After much withstanding and sarcastic deflection of Kendall’s prototypical interview questions in true Dino Jr. fashion, show producers flashed a fax number where one can reach out to try out for the band. According to the interview, the only requirements of the applicant was that they “had to rock” and, of course, all band members had to get along. I’m not sure if this was how replacement bassist Mike Johnson got the part later that year, but I would like to imagine Mascis choosing his application among the stacks of papers rolling out of their fax machine. The band eventually disintegrated in 1997, only to reform with the original lineup of Mascis, Murph, and Barlow in 2005.
 
Watch Dinosaur Jr.‘s hilariously awkward appearance on ‘120 Minutes’ below:
 

Dinosaur Jr. perform “Raisins” on MTV Europe’s edition of ‘120 Minutes’ in 1994
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
27 years of MTV’s ‘120 Minutes’ has been recreated online
Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, & more: 1991 comp CD accurately predicted ‘90s indie rock
Dear Boy: Advice column for ‘Sassy’ teenagers from Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis

 
In August of 1991, a month before Nevermind was released, and when hair metal was still pretty much the only thing on the radio that bore any resemblance to rock, a tiny indie label called No.6 Records released a compilation of guitar instrumentals called Guitarrorists. It featured names that would be familiar only to resolute undergroundists at the time, but many of them would soon find mainstream attention—these guitarists were members of bands like Afghan Whigs, The Butthole Surfers, The Flaming Lips, Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, and other, less immortal bands that would nonetheless experience some success within a few years of the comp’s release. And it should go without saying that a lot of it is fantastic.
 

 
Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne’s “I Want to Kill My Brother: The Cymbal Head” is an insane, noisy, and dynamic journey through Coyne’s very strange mind:
 

Wayne Coyne - “I Want to Kill My Brother: The Cymbal Head”

Big Black/Rapeman/Shellac guitarist and Nirvana recording engineer Steve Albini’s contribution “Nutty About Lemurs” sounds unsurprisingly abrasive and, well, very very Albinilike.
 

Steve Albini - “Nutty About Lemurs”

A big curveball on the album is “A Little Ethnic Song,” by Dinosaur Jr’s J. Mascis, which sounds nothing like the first thing you thought when you read his name. And it’s really wonderful.
 

J. Mascis - “A Little Ethnic Song”

Tom Hazelmeyer never became a household name playing guitar for Halo Of Flies, but as big boss man at Amphetamine Reptile Records, he shaped the sound of the ‘90s bludgeon-rock underground as much as anyone. He’s lately turned up on the rock radar again, guesting on guitar with the Brisbane band No Anchor. His Guitarrorists contribution is the skin-flaying “Guitar Wank-Off #13.”
 

Tom Hazelmeyer - “Guitar Wank-Off #13”

Interesting for how far this selection sticks out from the crowd, and for how lovely it is amid the sea of distortion that is much of the comp, here’s “I Really Can’t Say,” by Kathy Korniloff from Two Nice Girls, a folk-rock band from Austin, notably loud-and-proud out lesbians at a time when that kind of openness was still highly unusual, and far riskier than it is today. They broke up in 1992, but scored some college radio love with a gem of an anthem called “I Spent My Last $10 on Birth Control and Beer.” 
 

Kathy Korniloff - “I Really Can’t Say”

Lastly, though there are contributions on the CD from all three guitar-wielding Sonic Youths, only one of them seems to have found its way online. Here’s an appropriately stark fan video for Lee Ranaldo’s pensive acoustic solo “Here”:
 

Lee Ranaldo - “Here”

 
KEXP Radio recently uploaded a video of Dinosaur Jr. performing live in their studio. It was recorded on December 17, 2011.

Setlist:
01: “Little Fury Things”
02: “Freak Scene”
03: “Just Like Heaven”

Henry Rollins also interviews them between songs.
 

 
Via Testpiel

 
Well whad’ya know? Dinosaur Jr. frontman, J Mascis, gets his own Throbblehead figure. Apparently J comes with the “signature silver mane that features REAL DOLL HAIR.”

You can pre-order one now (shipping starts in April) at Aggronautix.