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Lou Barlow
Biography
Arguably the most prolific songwriter of his generation, Lou Barlow was also the one of the most influential; thanks to his lo-fi legacy, any geek with a guitar, a four-track machine and an unrequited crush on a girl could become an underground pop star. Although born in Dayton, Ohio on July 17, 1966, Barlow was raised primarily in Amherst, Massachusetts, where during high school he joined forces with fellow introverted outsider J Mascis in the hardcore band Deep Wound. After the group's break-up in 1983, Barlow and Mascis reunited in Dinosaur (later Dinosaur Jr.), one of the most acclaimed indie-bands of the era.

Long-simmering tensions between Mascis and Barlow, who rarely spoke to each another, hastened the latter's exit from the group after 1988's superb Bug. After his dismissal, Barlow turned his focus to Sebadoh, a side-project which he had begun with multi-instrumentalist Eric Gaffney several years prior. While Dinosaur Jr. had won acclaim for its monolithic guitar sound, Sebadoh was initially conceived as a bare-bones, deliberately low-fidelity home recording project spotlighting Barlow's pensive, emotional songs and Gaffney's noise collages. Over the course of a barrage of singles and sprawling albums like 1989's The Freed Man, 1990's Weed Forestin and 1991's Sebadoh III, the group -- which later added drummer/songwriter Jason Loewenstein -- matured and expanded its scope; while still defiantly anti-commercial, their music grew more complex and fully-developed, and moved progressively away from its primitive origins.
Selected Discography

Emoh
2005