Probably because I mentioned J Mascis in the Devo post last week, I ended up with this haunting memory of the music video for their song, “Feel the Pain.”

Not because it’s their best song ever. Not because it’s a single. Just - in the peak, alt-video styles, which of course are epitomized by Spike Jonze in a million ways (amongst others, he’s a genius), this is one of the videos that strangely lives in my brain and I randomly think of it.

Kind of like how Billie Corgan will always be the ice cream man, and the dancing bumble bee from Blind Melon will always be an emotional little birdhouse in my soul that can make me start to cry as an adult.

Oh and this video is better, in a different way mind you but I have to shout it out, than say, “Everybody Hurts” (the original and the Wayne’s World parody). It leaves a weight on you that you can’t make light, and that contrast somehow is part of what makes this song and video so perfect.

As a non-golfer, the idea of “just play through” is more Happy Gilmore’d in my brain than anything else. The idea that this gentlemanly sport could be so casually and caustically violent is ingenious to me.

Because how much of everyday life can be so casually and caustically violent if you stop and think about it? More than you stop and think about. Or, more than I stop and think about, at least. Maybe that’s part of why this video sticks with me.

“I feel the pain of everyone… then I feel nothing.”

I was still just a kid watching this video. I loved the guitars. I’ve always loved J Mascis’ guitars though and hearing it fresh again is a reminder of how hypnotic they still are. Even the “cheep cheep” post-chorus is somehow not corny when he plays it, but sounds corny if I imitate it. I tell myself it’s that fuzzy bass underneath doing some type of voodoo I can’t understand, that it’s more than the guitars, but it is and it isn’t all at once.

And like the video meanders through the city, tracking them as they wreak havoc and confuse bystanders which is pretty much as good a metaphor for alternative music as you get, I’m reminded just how non-gridded up and click tracked they were.

This is also where they deviate from the songs mentioned above. Not that those didn’t have some actual rock and roll swagger to them, but the “Is it up to me” recurring section in this song gets so fast before the song settles down again. The tempo switch is actually insane. Does anybody do this anymore? It’s so cool and so anti-dance floor groove.

I don’t think so. It was special when they did it.

And then they end up on the roof at the end. They roof’d it. I always wondered if that playground metaphor mattered to them like it mattered to me. At school, roofing it was a threat. It’s what you’d do so nobody could play with a ball anymore. Once you put it on the roof, nobody could play anymore, and whoever’s ball it was - they weren’t likely getting it back.

But Dinosaur Jr. ends their round on the roof. And as the ball goes into the hole, they celebrate victory, high above mid-90s New York City, and I go back to life with the ideas and images still stuck in my head, singing, “I feel the pain of everyone, then I feel nothing.”