Even the most stoic hipster boulder was reduced to a blasted sack of gravel under the year-round Christmas lights at the 40 Watt. Oh, and The North Face crowd had reason to get excited, too. A generation removed from their initial relevance, the reunited Dinosaur Jr. was passing through town on a Monday night.

Opening act Barbecue Pants was making its live debut. The cocksure local four-piece featuring Dave Schools on bass and Kyle Spence (Harvey Milk) on drums initially rubbed listeners in a cheeky, live, professional karaoke kind of way, opening with a less-than-stellar rendition of the oft-covered “Train Kept A Rollin’.” But ultimately the quartet became responsible for the musical highlight of the evening when Dinosaur Jr. guitar wizard J. Mascis joined the band for the thunderous and delirious version of comic Andy Kaufman’s “I Trusted You.” This featured vocalist Nick Bielli (Japancakes) channeling his inner Kaufman and repeating those three, and only those three words in a variety of volumes, tones and inflections for nearly 20 minutes over a bombastic bass line and dueling guitars—one syrupy and atmospheric (Mascis), the other pure high note arena rock (Kevin Sweeney), and the result was epic.

 Lou Barlow (bass) and Murph (drums) joined Mascis onstage a short while later, affirming that and the power trio is far from extinct. The group received a warm reception for the new stuff early on—especially the rollicking “Almost Ready” from the band’s 2007 release Beyond. But it was the trips down memory lane that made most of the crowd almost want to, uh, mosh?  “Feel the Pain” is still the soundtrack for the alarmingly apathetic youth of America, even if most kids don’t know the tune. A bit later, Mascis groaned, “Sometimes I don’t thrill you/Sometimes I think I’ll kill you/Just don’t let me fuck up will you/cause when I need a friend it’s still you” suggesting that he wasn’t being as cryptic or coy as we thought in 1988. Standing 20 feet from a stack of Marshall amps for a song such as “Freak Scene” provided a pleasant, albeit deafening experience, much like the evening as a whole.

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