Lo-fi legend Lou Barlow has played in three of the most influential indie bands of the last quarter century: Dinosaur Jr, Sebadoh and the Folk Implosion. And while he’s still recording and touring with the reunited Dinosaur (whose Farm was released this summer), his main concern these days is his solo career. Goodnight Unknown (Merge), Barlow’s second album under his own name and the follow-up to 2005’s Emoh, is his best collection of songs in a decade and features guests including Dale Crover (Melvins) and Lisa Germano. Barlow also recently joined Lara Meyerratken in Ben Lee’s new incarnation of Noise Addict, which released It Was Never About The Audience for free last month. Barlow (backed by the Missingmen) is opening for Dinosaur throughout October and part of November. As if that double duty wasn’t enough, Barlow will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with him.
Barlow: J Mascis plays with three 100-watt Marshall full (two cabinet) stacks and one 100-watt Fender combo amp aimed directly at his head. Within the alcove of amplification constructed for him every night, there are 26 speakers firing into him. He has always worn earplugs. For the very first Dinosaur practices, he wore construction worker blast muffs and earplugs. Murph and I scrambled for the toilet paper. Soon we got wise and started packin’ plugs. The white foam variety. After I “left” Dino, I didn’t wear any for a while. When Sebadoh made money, I treated myself to “musician” earplugs, molded to my ear canals. I didn’t like these very much, so I didn’t wear them for very long. They were hard to fit into my ears. As it turns out, I have a weirdly shaped inner ear. There’s a near 90-degree bend in there. Twisting the hard plastic “custom” plug into it was painful. Flash forward 10 years or so: I have a wicked tinnitus, naturally, and it’s definitely permanent. When we decided to do Dino mach 1 again, I knew I had to go back to the white-foam plugs or be deaf. They sucked. The music sounded muffled. Half the time when I put them in, I experienced awful rumbling and distortion from an ill fit. The ringing in my ears became a scream. Many shows were endurance tests. Then I discovered Super Leight earplugs by Howard Leight. At a 33 dB rating, they provide the maximum, can-find-them-at-CVS noise reduction available. They are polyurethane and when correctly inserted (easy, I find) seal up my ears like hot glue. The best part: The sonic range is not significantly compromised, meaning even with these ultra-plugs, the music sounds fairly close to how it sounds without. Noel, our sound engineer, finds them “unobtrusive” (high praise) and superior to the white-foam variety. Murph wears his backward and swears by it. The plugs are fluorescent orange, so I see his bald head with pink nipples protruding from his ears when he plays. It makes the already surreal sensation of being onstage with J even more so. Not everyone likes Super Leights. J says they pop out of his ears. I’ve heard similar complaints. Maybe these naysayers have unusually narrow ear canals. Maybe they don’t want fluorescent orange nipples in their ears. There are models of Leights with a lower dB rating that would more appropriate for “normal” music or sleeping. (I wouldn’t recommend the Supers for sleeping ’cause you wouldn’t hear a smoke alarm). But if you insist on standing in front of the amps at a Dinosaur Jr show, like I do, try Super Leight earplugs.
