Songfacts®:

• J Mascis, Dinosaur Jr.'s fuzz architect, took a left turn on "Start Choppin'." Here was Dinosaur Jr., stripped of a layer of their signature ear-splitting feedback, wielding a mere couple of riffs instead of their usual arsenal, and – gasp! – a discernible chorus. Mascis even unleashed his inner banshee on the song's hook, his shrieking falsetto reaching for the stratosphere.
• The song title does not appear in the lyrics. Mascis, ever the studio samurai, got the title from the literal process of "chopping up" the tapes, splicing choruses and verses from different takes.
  
  "I said I'd edit a master," engineer John Agnello recalled to Uncut magazine. "J looked at me and said, 'Sounds good, start choppin.'" When the record came out the song was called 'Start Choppin.' It's got nothing to do with a song. It's the edit."
  
  It's not the first song with a title stemming from its laborious edit process. "Frankenstein," a #1 hit for Edgar Winter in 1972, was named because it was pieced together like Frankenstein's monster.
• "Start Choppin'" was the lead single off Dinosaur Jr.'s 1993 album, Where You Been, marking drummer Murph's final recording with Mascis for a good long stretch (until 2007's Beyond). Notably, Where You Been was also the only album between Bug (1988) and Beyond where Mascis didn't handle most of the instrumentation himself.
  
  "I don't remember much about writing 'Start Choppin,'" Mascis told Uncut. "It was just one of the songs I had for the record. It would usually start with a riff, melody and drums. The drum for me is part of the song, so there's not much room for Murph to come up with stuff but I'd always keep in mind his style when writing the song."
  
  "I do remember what amp and guitar I used," he added. "I have a good memory for equipment. I had this '58 Telecaster that became my favorite guitar and this tweed Fender bandmaster amp that sounded really cool and became the sound of the album. It's what Pete Townshend used on Who's Next."
• For Mascis it's the song's vibe that is important and the words tend to be an afterthought. "I have no idea what I was writing about," he said of "Start Choppin'." "I need lyrics because I have to sing them, so I do my best, but I wouldn't write lyrics otherwise. It's not that lyrics aren't important, but I wouldn't do them unless I had to. It's like when you are at school and cramming for a test, lyrics are like that - doing your best in the time you have got."
• Murph said most of Mascis' songs are about relationships, "things going on with him or among his circle of friends, but you never found out who or what specifically."
  
  He added that the frontman never talks about what his songs are about. "He doesn't even talk to his wife about it. It's in his head all worked out while on the outside he is totally silent."
• "Start Choppin" shows up in the 2012 biographical drama movie Chasing Mavericks and the 2002 comedy romance movie True Dreams. It also appears in the TV show Cold Case ("Hood Rats" - 2009).