Seems more than a few people bought that whole skydiving deal Interesting line in that bio…’the temporal breadth of Mascis’ musical hairweave has become as obvious as the blackness of John Ashcrofts ass"

Wonderland Promotions

PRESS RELEASE / BIOGRAPHY
You are Here : Home : Press Release / Biography Date : 28/12/2002

ARTIST : j Mascis (Dinosaur Jr)
VENUE : The Limelight, Belfast
DATE: 25/11/2002

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j Mascis (Dinosaur Jr)
In a recent issue of Playboy magazine, a centerfold model was asked what kind of music she preferred.
‘Classic Rock,’ she wrote. ‘Neil Young, the Cure, Dinosaur Jr., Tom Petty — all the classic rockers.’ Miss April
(for it was she) seems to have stumbled across a truth that has eluded many other cunning thinkers. That truth? Classic is as classic d’s. To poorly paraphrase Edward ‘Duke’ Ellington: if it sounds classic, it is classic. In that sense (among others), the music of J ‘j’ Mascis has always possessed classicist qualities. But it is only now — firmly ensconced in the 21st Century — that we can view the musics of the 20th Century as an unstratified whole, making it possible for us to fully appreciate and tag the sounds that Mascis creates as classic-qua-classic.

Era-free styling has always been a central compositional and procedural tenet lurking inside j’s music, but its overt presence has often been tamped down by the contextual tenor of the times. Now, with the release of Free So Free, his third post-Dinosaur Jr. outing, the temporal breadth of Mascis’ musical hairweave has become as obvious as the blackness of John Ashcroft’s ass. And what better way for him to express this grasp of the ungraspable than with a concept album about his latest passion: skydiving.

‘It was sometime last summer I first started thinking about it,’ j says. ‘Bob was going to summer camp while I was touring. When I went to pick him up I found out that his favorite part of the vacation had been doing this skydiving workshop in Orange [Massachusetts]. They had a special Pet and Owner Skydiving Weekend not long after that. We both went, and it was real solid.’

Many of the songs for Free So Free were written in mid-air. ‘There’s something about reaching terminal velocity that really helps you open up,’ j says. ‘The whole freedom idea sorta evolved out of that, and also some of the playing that I was doing with Ron and Scott Asheton. Those guys have some real special notions about freedom. We talked about it a bunch.’

The gigs j talks about with the Ashetons (and Mike Watt) include epic recreations of Stooges riff-battles that have been played out across the globe, most notably at the L.A. All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, where a parade of guest vocalists handled Iggy’s chores. ‘Kim Gordon was the best one,’ j says. ‘She really went for it. Watt usually starts off singing the sets, but he always blows out his throat after a coupla songs. We’re playing with Guns and Roses soon, I’m hoping we can get Axel to do some of the singing.’

Apart from these mock-Stooge battles, j has been playing largely solo throughout the time since his last album, More Light, was issued. ‘It’s easier to be free when you’re playing alone,’ j says. ‘I used a few people to help on the album. John Petkovic and Don Depew from Cobra Verde were around for a few songs. So was Dan McLaughlin. He plays that Wurlitzer Piano on ‘Everybody Let’s Me Down’.’

‘Everybody Let’s Me Down’ was first written and performed in Alison Anders’ film ‘Things Behind the Sun’. But it’s retooled here and will be the first video from the album. ‘We just finished it,’ j says. ‘A buncha people ­ Eninem, Abe Lincoln, Elvis ­ try out for my band, but it d’sn’t work and I end up doing everything myself.’

Which is not far from the truth of Free So Free: the truth of freedom itself.