Photos by Bill Shouldis

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why Dinosaur Jr. (with Henry Rollins interviewing Dino before their set) with Fucked Up and OFF! was one of the most anticipated shows of this summer. Adding a full performance of Dino’s Bug and you’ve got quite a show. It may have been an odd choice since J Mascis has said that Bug is not his favorite Dino album, but everything pointed to this one being worth your $35.

Sadly, due to an early set time, most people (of the working variety at least) seemed to miss OFF!’s 15 minute set. But word on the street was that it was the best set of the night. Definitely a shame that it was played in front of a mostly empty venue. But never fear NYC-ers, they’ll be back next week with Superchunk.

Fucked Up released the brilliant David Comes To Life last month, so obviously, their set centered around that. While the band has taken a bold step forward, it was refreshing to see that some things haven’t changed that much, as leader Damian Abraham spend most of the time on the floor. That being said, the sound didn’t translate well at first in the towering Terminal 5, but the band finished on a strong note. I heard the show at 245 Kent with Jeff The Brotherhood was much better (and sweatier) that their T5 show though.

I think a lot of people were intrigued by how exactly an interview between the notoriously apathetic Dinosaur Jr. and the fiery Rollins would go down. As I expected, the interview was a mix of awkward reminiscing, capped (unexpectedly) off by pair of flying shoes that headed in the general direction of Rollins’ head. Watch the video below (at about 9 minutes in, the shoes fly) and see how Henry took the gesture.

Finally, Dinosaur Jr. took the stage to play Bug. While the album has two of my favorite songs from the band (“Freak Scene” and “Let It Ride”), this performance seemed somewhat uninspired. Maybe this is because I remembered for the 40,000th time that I am over bands playing albums in their entirety. Yet, I keep getting tricked. While it’s always a cool idea, it rarely yields positive results.

The best part of the set may have been when they brought up some guy they met (in Boston?) to sing “Don’t” since Lou Barlow blew out his voice the previous night. Funny enough “Don’t” is the one track I always skip over, but it made for the most interesting live moment.

So not exactly the “show of the summer” to me, but still awesome to see three great bands together.

More photos below.

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Henry Rollins spoke to SundanceChannel.com for their “Voices On The Election” feature. Rollins answered ten questions, ranging from his favorite political movie to the biggest problem facing the next generation of Americans. Read it here.

Think back to when you first discovered punk rock. What were some of the names and bands that first entered your vocabulary and ear drums? The Dead Kennedys, Bad Brains, The Misfits… of course. The list goes on and on. Excluding Henry Rollins from that class would be a crime. Through his work in Black Flag and Rollins Band, he’s inspired an uncountable number of people, along with his writing, radio, and spoken word career.

Of late, Rollins has left the band life behind and hopped back on the spoken word path. I got a chance to catch one of his performances at Brooklyn’s Warsaw that went down late last month. It was a blistering, three-hour marathon of conversations, ranging from Pakistan to his one-off performance with The Ruts in ’07. The topics were wide and Henry’s delivery, of course, was relentless. I mean, god damn, one sip of water after three hours of talking? What else would you expect?

I had a chance to talk with Rollins on the phone while he was in Athens, Georgia for a gig. We talked about his recent trip to Cape Town, South Africa, the two books he’s working on for ’08, and his thoughts on the upcoming presidential election.

I know you’ve been traveling around a lot lately with the tour. One of the stories I saw on the website that I thought was really interesting was your experience in Cape Town, South Africa. Can you expand on everything you experienced?

Henry: It was mind-blowing. I’ve been to Africa seven times and of all the trips there that was the one that really moved me the most. Unless you just sit in the hotel all day, you end up seeing things that are very moving and extremely beautiful, very sad and sometimes scary. Life and death is so in your face there. It’s very real. In South Africa, what was interesting and different than Egypt or Morocco was the white/black dynamic. There’s a lot of white people, there’s a lot of black people. I wasn’t use to seeing so many white neighborhoods in Africa. The apartheid, which is in the past, is still a topic. You can’t not talk about it. What I saw was a lot of people dealing with the aftermath of it. Trying to get move on past it and get on to what the new chapter is going to be. That was the fascinating thing. The white and black people that I met were working together to move forward. To see these people really wanting to make tomorrow different. I ended up walking around in these townships, basically a government run zone. You see a whole lot of people living in a small space. Basically, the dorm room from hell. People having to make due in very close proximity to each other. 1,000 people, four toilets. Aids clinic, 150 patients a day, one doctor. They realize as long as they stick together and have a strong sense of community and teach their children right. If they let it slide then what? It was very hard to see some of the stuff but it was inspiring to see how they were dealing with it. I met some of the strongest people I’ve ever met like these doctors treating AIDS and HIV patients. It’s the most grueling work and they are saving lives. I don’t know what their off-time is like. This one woman who worked there, she’d been there for eleven years. Teenage, HIV- positive moms with their kids walk by you. ‘Wow, this is very real.’ We are not joking around. In America these days, we are given some wiggle room. It’s not really in your face like it is in South Africa. Walk into a room full of HIV-positive people waiting for treatment. It’s an amazing facility, it’s immaculate and people get tremendous care, but there’s a lot of them. That’s what I encountered. The audiences, primarily white people, [were] incredible audiences. I can’t wait to go back there. The show sold out really quickly. The promoter said we could do these shows tomorrow night and we’d sell them out again. We are looking at trying to get me back out there sooner or later. I’d love to put South Africa on my tour.

Read more of my interview with Henry Rollins after the jump.

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Today I woke up kinda early. Well, really early, around 7am. I didn’t know what do to with myself so I logged into the ever entertaining and genius messageboard,B9board. One thread that I looked at was so amazing that I had to post a link to it on this blog.

In the thread, members of the b9board created variations of a drawing titled Leisure Time with Mr. Rollins, by artist Brandon Bird. The original artwork is posted above. Here’s my favorite variation:

For more hilarious takes on the drawing go to the thread: click!

Yeah yeah, Elona already posted pictures from this tour. Blah Blah Blah. Well! My pictures are better sucka! Nah, anyways, this show was uh…mixed to say the least. The Riverboat Gamblers were on-point as usual and Mike Weibe did his usual griding with audience member’s heads and threw mic around throughout. They are meant for a more intimate setting but I love seeing them piss off people who have never seen them before.

Rollins Band was so, so, so incredibly boring. I’m sorry but once you get over the intial shock of seeing Rollins in the flesh, there is not much else. It’s just a bunch of meathead noise with Rollins waving his cock at all the apes.I literally had to go to the bar to keep myself awake during the set. I respect the man and his message but come on, Rollins Band is just one of those bands that leaves fans yearning for more. I am sure these sounds like fighting words to their fans but so be it.

X was incredibly sloppy but I dug that. They messed up a few times throughout the night but it showed whose passion for the band was genuine. DJ and John Doe rocked around through the mistakes and actually looked to be enjoying themselves while Exene and the creepiest man alive Billy Zoom looked like they were gonna explode. Interesting to see none the less. X did two encores, which was kinda. X is just one those things that every self-respecting punk-rock fan has to see. However, something bugs me about their performances and its hard to put my finger on it. X will never make another album and most people know that. That’s my one problem with bands like them reuniting. Unlike say Mission Of Burma, it seems like the band is just together for the hell of it. Granted, it’s better to have them around then not but I still wish they had the creative juices they had before.

-Matthew Francis “Some day I’ll figure out my password”