Freakscene The Story of Dinosaur Jr.: Reverential Rock Doc Strictly for Fans

By Kim Hughes

Rating: C

It’s curious that a band with no hits, debatable impact on the larger rock milieu, and zero charisma on-stage or off is the subject of a feature-length documentary that takes none of those things into consideration even as they might have made for a compelling storyline about their strangely exalted status.

Nevertheless, here comes Freakscene: The Story of Dinosaur Jr., which plays in select theatres for one night only (tonight, May 31 including Toronto’s Revue Cinema) before releasing digitally June 3.

While it’s tempting to call the film a vanity project — directed as it is by Philipp Reichenheim, Dinosaur songwriter-guitarist J Mascis’ brother-in-law, and coproduced by Dinosaur Jr. Inc./J Mascis — that doesn’t easily square with Mascis’ apparently towering indifference to almost everything. Except perhaps his legacy.

I can already hear the faithful howling. You don’t get it Hughes! Dinosaur Jr. were brilliant, too brilliant for you, brilliant enough to inspire Nirvana and Sonic Youth. Go back and listen to Backstreet Boys, you heathen knuckle dragger.

Sure, yeah. But here’s the thing: I happen to have been waist-deep in music during the Dinosaur Jr. era, saw the band play multiple times and interviewed them and many of their cohorts. So, I have frame of reference.

If the intention of Freakscene: The Story of Dinosaur Jr. was to illuminate the band’s artistry, it does the opposite. What’s mostly illuminated is their pointless, incessant inter-band squabbling, Mascis’ dour worldview, and the fact that they were press darlings in the golden — but now defunct — age of music magazines like Spin, Q, NME, Melody Maker, Alternative Press, Kerrang! and countless others.

All of them competed fiercely for eyeballs, often creating “stars” in order to snag coverage of them ahead of their rival. Like many 90s-era artists of varying distinction, Dinosaur Jr. benefitted greatly from that trend. It’s a topic the film, predictably, does not explore.

On this point we can maybe all agree: for a so-called classic band, Dinosaur Jr. didn’t write many classic songs. After a while, Freakscene feels like a Dinosaur Jr. live show: muddy, same-y, and pointlessly loud. Despite the reverential talking head interviews with a genuinely NME-worthy roster of musicians — Bob Mould, Frank Black, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Kevin Shields, Henry Rollins — what comes through is Dinosaur Jr.’s comparative lack of innovation.

Would anyone seriously rate Bug on par with Loveless or Daydream Nation or Copper Blue? I’d bet my entire vinyl and CD collection they wouldn’t. I guess it’s fair to say I have a basic beef with the notion of this film ever having been made. But I also respect the craft of filmmaking enough to recommend this to the faithful.

Had the filmmakers added voices outside the super-rarified alt-rock arena, Freakscene might have felt much more rounded, with Dinosuar Jr’s place firmly established in the context of fleeting contemporaries like Better than Ezra, Blind Melon, and Collective Soul, to name three actual hitmakers of the times. But this is a valentine, not a discerning look at the band or the era that defined it.

That heretofore mentioned lack of charisma is especially evident via interviews with members Mascis, drummer Murph and multi-instrumentalist Lou Barlow, whose subsequent work with Sebadoh and The Folk Implosion was arguably more ground-breaking, inarguably more listenable.

But let’s agree to disagree. Fans will enjoy 82 minutes of cinematic Dinosaur Jr. worship laced with concert footage and memorabilia. For fence-sitters like me, Freakscene is as exciting as the band it depicts. Enough said.

Freakscene: The Story of Dinosaur Jr. Directed by Philipp Reichenheim. With J Mascis, Murph, Lou Barlow, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Kevin Shields, Bob Mould, Frank Black and Henry Rollins. In select theatres May 31, and available digitally June 3.