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I found two more extensive German interviews with J Mascis which he did for promotion of ‘More Light’ in 2000:
http://www.visions.de
& http://www.trust-zine.de 
Here’s the translation of the visions-interview, the other one will follow in the next days
* * * * *
J. MASCIS & THE FOG: solo for J.
The Beatles and Led Zeppelin seem to be closer to us today than the rough and sentimental Indie rock of Dinosaur Jr, that has been present over the mid nineties. But then their nativeness didn’t fit any longer into the virtual age, they were increasingly harder to place on the market – additionally, a certain lack of inspiration couldn’t be denied. Before precious time was wasted on redundant thoughts, the rough defiant head Mascis and his band were fired by their record company. One of the last big chapters of Indie rock seemed to be closed. But now Mascis is back again and tries to adapt to the new conditions.
What would have been, if Dinosaur Jr. wouldn’t have been dropped? Would Mascis have maintained the old name? Or would the music sound differently to any extent? J. Mascis chews on his vegetable rice in a small New Yorker Thai restaurant and pulls a philosophic comment out of his trouser pocket. "I don’t know. It’s just, I mean, it doesn’t. I don’t know" There he is again, Mascis, as one knows and fears him. Confused about each reply. For this piece of intellectual trashbin notepad he took approximately one minute. Because of this attitude he has been credited in the past to be an arrogant asshole. Of course we will never know for sure, but probably this evaluation is completely wrong.
J Mascis – it sounds almost ridiculous – is shy like hardly anyone else. On the stage or in the studio he gets along, but he doesn’t know how to articulate himself, when he sees himself confronted with a discussion situation. He likes to listen to stories which make him laugh, but as soon as he has to answer questions, his body takes in a defense attitude. Nevertheless, he has to go through it, now. Dinosaur Jr. has been a one-man-project during their last years. What’s the difference between the solo project and Dinosaur Jr?
"Other people might have seen it this way, but that was’t the way I thought about it. Dinosaur Jr. was always meant to be a band. The new band, however, is a solo project at the moment. Sooner or later I will look for musicians, but I didn’t start with it. The vband has a name, but no musicians. The name just sounded good. If you have a band without musicians, at least the name has to sound good [:aliensmile:; FC]. I think, it has something mysterious. It comes out of the darkness and transforms into matter. In the end it’s perhaps the same band as Dinosaur."
The music on "More Light", however, doesn’t sound very mysterious. It’s the continuation of Dinosaur Jr. with the same means. Noisy rock songs with howling guitar solos and languishing ballads, where Mascis’ voice sounds, as if he hasn’t eaten for days. One hears the record and is glad that there is someone who doesn’t care at all about the change of times, who simply makes his own thing, nonwithstanding all the effort it takes or the acceptance it might get. [Word
; FC] If there could be any advancement detected, compared with Dinosaur Jr., then it’s the fact that some of the songs are based on piano sounds. Contrary to his guitar powerplay, bass and drums, on the piano is Mascis uncommonly careful."My piano play is really something very primitive. I play piano, like Mo Tucker played the drums. It’s hard for me to find the right notes. But I think it’s interesting, when musicians try to play an instrument, which they don’t really control. You finally reach the point, where you are well versed nevertheless, and then there’s no return anymore. Live I won’t go so far however – I would probably hardly keep it up through an entire Song. Some people gave me the advice to take a pianist into the band, but I don’t know whether I should really do that. I constantly vary between the desire to make loud or quiet music.
Some people only want to listen to the quiet, acoustic shows. But when I submit to that, they’re with the first who claim to hear the loud things. It’s an eternal cleavage.The strength and dynamics of the album are extremely impressive, but nevertheless it’s the question, whom he wants to reach with this music. When Mascis once set the young dinosaur into the world, his audience was just of the same age. When his calculation comes out right, he stands in front of fans, nowadays who could be his children.
"I never thought about who comes to my shows. Then I would have had to start concerning about why I play this music at all. Still I’m glad that we havel an audience at all. The only instance when I had the impression to play in front of a substantially younger audience, was on the Lollapalooza Festival 1993. I saw it after the show on a video and could hardly believe, how many twelve-year-old boys stood there in front of us. But I felt already damned old, when I was still rather young. Therefore, the difference isn’t that big."
He might not be the only one, who already felt old as a teenager. The only change consists of the fact that one feels old and wise with 20, and with 40 only just old. By the way, it’s not really true that he doesn’t care at all about the public reaction, because the change of the name has something to do with it.
"When I’m standing with a new project somewhere in an American bowling bar in front of 15 people, it’s less depressing, as if it would happen to me with Dinosaur Jr. These things just depress me"Look – and he made the impression in the last ten years, as if he would throw himself almost deliberately into depression with his songs. Mascis stares unknowingly on his rice and puts the fork to his mouth with a movement, which seems to take one hundred years. He smiles, is content with himself and doesn’t know how to say it. He already began with the work for the second album of The Fog. Recently he played a few shows with ex-fIREHOSE-bassist Mike Watt and his old co-saur Murph, where they played old Stooges-songs. Mascis laughs, because he assumes that Murph never in his life heard only one song of the Stooges.
He didn’t know at the time of the interview. how he will gather the musicians for the upcoming gigs.
"No idea. I think, I’ll book a few gigs and then I’ll stand under the pressure to find the musicians for them. I don’t like castings. Perhaps some friends of mine could recommend some guys. I don’t like practising, either, I just go out on stage and play. That hasn’t got anything to do with laziness. But I spent so much time of my life with practising that I simply don’t like to do that anymore. I’m beyond the age in which I still have to play jam sessions.
I like to sit down and just play an instrument, but I’m often bored after ten minutes."Meanwhile it’s certain at least that the job at the bass at the upcoming shows in Germany will be done of Mike Watt, the drummer is still unknown, and it’s not sure whether there will possibly be a second guitarist. But Mascis will arrange it all somehow. As with "More Light", an album which would have been one among many, five years ago, but which is somehow something special in the year 2000. For the one it may be an anachronism, for others a rare example of creative resistance.
Wolf Kampmann
If you ever wanted to know what J Mascis thinks about Leif Garrett, Marilyn Manson, Metallica …. Or whatever : read this! :aliensmile:
… another extended German interview out of the year 2000 (from http://www.trust-zine.de) & its translation.
* * * * *
Do you think of the dinosaurs?
Or: How J. Mascis once produced a Mike Watt record called "Firehouse" …
Shortly after the date was confirmed, first business considerations like: "whom I can sell this interview nowadays?" came to my mind, but it’s nevertheless rather a personal story. Because, in the time when I was forced to community service, I once stood in a record store and I suddenly got wet hands, I broke into sweat, my knees and other parts of the body started to tremble, when I heard for the first time "You’re Living all Over Me". Because, when I visited a friend in Hannover a few years later, it was spring and we were not free, but we had lots of time and my friend had a credit card and we thus had money, and it was warm and we actually listened the whole time to nothing else but Dinosaur jr. Because, always when I listen to "They Always Come" I think close to the end of the song that this guitar solo belongs to the most beautiful things in music, which I ever heard. Because, at that time I went over some weeks each day to the record store round the corner and asked, if they already had "Bug". Because I hitchhiked to Hamburg in that fall – the driver listened to the audio novel "Oliver Twist" – to see this band, I was forced to sleep in the waiting-room at the station, on the only free space next to a guy who breathed that heavily that I thought, he’ll suddenly start to puke over me. Because It happend more than once, when I put the second Dinosaur jr. record in the player, during the first chords, the drum roll and the following excessive wah-wah action, that at the same time the sun breaks through the clouds. Nostalgia, surely. But still also great music.
And then you should talk to this guy, who is known for the fact not to talk much at all. And
preliminary warning of the agency
the least he talks about his new record.
Fortunately, the other journalists took over that part, we went for a walk with J down to the Rhine, where he sat down for a few songs on the river bank promenade like a street musician, and then he stoically awaited the questions. He didn’t change his mimics. Even when the interviewer asked him everything about Mike Watt, who plays in his band on the tour this winter, and he told them, that he already worked with him previously, for example he recorded a Firehose album – in the translation it became the "Firehouse" album of Mike Watt. He simply sat there and stared through his unbelievably ugly eyeglasses. [Why do they always have to be that mean about his glasses
; FC]On the way back to the hotel, we then talked a little about the time when their opening act Atari Teenage Riot travelled together with them, and whether he plays more often acoustic shows like the one, that he’ll play on the party of the Spex magazine the next evening. At that occasion he mentioned, that he finds it much easier to play shows than to give interviews.
What he should tell in interviews, anyway? Leaving aside the sufficiently brought up cliche that the music speaks for itself. Of course "More Light", the new record sounds like a late Dinosaur jr. record. And in the meantime of course he has done the things, which one can do when one can rest halfways on the percentages of profit of some legendary records. Playing guitar, singing, writing songs – musical handicraft things. Probably all of this is interesting only for those who do it themselves, or at least who’d like to do these things, or for such amusing birds like J Mascis. I wouldn’t really have expected that he could explain to me how they got this specifically fantastic sound on
You’re Living all Over Me, then.
But of course, I asked nevertheless…
After a while there actually arose a thin silky thread of conversation, interrupted once in a while by a kind of yawning – or did he practice some narcoleptic breaks? But nevertheless the conversation developed constantly. More than once there was a point, at which I thought, "next he will suddenly sag", and I read somewhere, how he said after a similar break to his interlocutor: "Sorry, my mind is blank…"
I’ve been lucky, it seems. Even though, as said, there were long breaks, he always contiued to speak, and towards the end of the conversation he even seemed to be properly interested – that was when we discussed Free Jazz and his buddy Thurston Moore and that guy he knows, who organizes Jazz concerts in Amherst – Amherst was a good place for progressive Jazz…
Anyhow we had talked about everything possible, only losely connected, for example about SST, about what he just knew that Greg Ginn makes records from time to time, answers the telephone and was an amusing guy. Or about the other old comrades.
Joe Baiza has told me once about a Mascis project with the incredible name
Wank Factor Seven and Rising
"That was only me and another guitarist and a keyboard player. Together with Mike Watt we played a few shows. Nothing too seriously. It went over a few years that we played from time to time. Then we extended the line up. The last Show was, when Kevin (Shields, My Bloody Valentine) helped me with recording. We took him into the band. And Luisa (J’s girlfriend) played in that band, too, therefore we had six people in the band, but then there was a a rumor, it went was Kevins new project, and all these people became crazy and came, in order to see him. That was the last show."
Is he so well-known?
"Yes, certain music nerds wanted to see what happened there."
In real time already some minutes passed. It seems that eons passed since the two got to know each other …
"Errrr, I believe, when we were in England, someone told me about them, I got a record, he came to our show (yawn) … I don’t know, I just met meet him, when we were over there, when was that…? I think, the "You Make Me Realize" EP was just out. I stayed in contact with him, went on tour with him. We finally landed on the same label in America, Sire records. I know his brother and his sisters. A brother and a sister live in New York and I know them. I know nearly the whole family."
After this in double regard exhaustive reply, he takes a sip of water and is silent.
Why does he play now as
J Mascis & the Fog?
"To try new things, I think. It felt, as if Dinosaur were at their end."
But you could have appeared simply as J Mascis…
"Oh… And The Fog… Now, I wanted somehow… you know, it sounds like a band, and it is something different when I play solo acoustic shows, then it is J Mascis, if it is called The Fog, you know, then it’s rather an electric gig or something like that… "
The precise inaccuracy of his statements, I think you can find it throughout in the music of this man. Just listen to the way he plays the drums. Often he slightly increases the speed. Listen to the way he plays guitar, carelessly, noisy, but never "uninspired". Listen how he sings. You understand only small bits of the lyrics – they are naver printed – and nevertheless you always know, what they are about, because the words "I’m not feling well" – occur over and over again – literally or not. Of course this is completely according to his intention, because on the one hand it’s an act of will to print the lyrics and secondly one doesn’t always need a reason not to do something. Mascis, however, has got a reason:
"I never really appreciated it. I simply never wanted to. I rather like it, if people connect it with their own words because they don’t get the lyrics. Then they rather find things, that have to do with their own lives. Therefore everyone likes REM, because people can invent their own lyrics. And if you write them down, then that isn’t any longer possinble and that sucks somehow… "
Some people wrote down your lyrics – or what they think they understand – and published it in the interet. You can get all the lyrics on fan sites.
"Oh yes, the Japanese write them down. It’s always funny to see, how it comes out. Sometimes it is quite precisely, sometimes not. It’s amusing. It reminds me of hard core records, which always have lyric sheets."
Some bands even write comments about their lyrics, which are longer than the lyrics themselves.
"many of my friends in New York are artists, and it seems to be as much important to talk about your art than about the the art itself. It’s not so much the object of art, than rather what you’re saying about it. I don’t understand this whole game. I was also always disappointed, when I found lyrics of dongs, which I sang along with, and then found out that they were differently, worse, than I have thought they were.
Therefore I didn’t like that and I that did it myself."we remember hard core,
Deep Wound
occurs, a hard core band in which Mascis played with Lou Barlow before Dinosaur …
"I was fixed very much on hard core at that time. I even sold several records, because I didn’t listen to anything else. I was taken away by it at that time. I couldn’t imagine to listen to something else. I had a big amount of records, Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Humble Pie, whatever… Credence Clearwater Revival, Neil Young… Mainly the Rolling Stones " and he laughs quietly.
Which era do you prefer?
"I like the Mick Taylor era most. I listen to that the most. It was cool: The Beatles split, while the Stones became better and better. Mick Taylor and Keith Richards had a large influence on my guitar play. And Ron Ashton, Greg Sage of the Wipers."
Thus we come from one to the other, Nirvana and the Melvins, and I ask whether he has already heard their version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with Leif Garrett.
"VH1 has a Show "Behind The Music", where they show one hour about biographies of bands or artists. And his (Leif Garretts) show was quite good. Normally they make the show about old things. His TV show was great, because he has been involved in this car accident, and its friend is paralysed since then, and he has been the driver and they didn’t talk ever since.", and again he laughs quietly.
"And Leif looks terrible. A really melodramatic meeting, they cried, but his paralysed friend thanked him, and it was the best, what ever happened to him, although he is paralysed. Crazy. A great Show. (…) the Bay City Rollers were also in that TV show. Their show was depressing, they are really bitter and freaked out. The Show is rather depressing, most of the time, that’s the reason why people watch it."Over various branchings and side streets we also come to talk about Dave Lombardo, about whom I say that his decisions about his musical style aren’t always secure.
"Well, he’s a drummer…"
Mascis laughs, so I point out that he’s one himself.
"However, I didn’t play for a long time. I wasn’t on tour as a drummer. I think it shakes and rattles your brain that much, that there’s something happening. Because all drummers are kinda crazy after a while and aren’t sane any longer (laughs). I’ve been protected from that."
Break.
Just when I think, it was time again for a new question – as I’m not here for drinking beer – , the man continues with his thoughts.
"very interesting… drummers. I don’t know why. They begin okay, I think, but then something happens. Perhaps it is like boxing. You are ‘punchdrunk’ after a few years. It’s interesting, to see, what happens."
Mascis is lucky. He plays guitar. And on tour with J Mascis & The Fog, George Berz (former Gobblehoof drummer and also drummer on the last Dinosaur jr. tours) is playing the dangerous part, even though there were rumors, that original Dinosaur Murph would take over this part.
Mike Watt, as already mentioned, plays the bass.
"Let’s see, how it works. Some weeks ago, I played a few shows with him and Murph. We played Stooges Covers and Mike sag. That was quite good. There were three shows, and we became better. Quite cool. It was cool to learn all the Stooges songs. It was easy for me, because they were a main influence for my guitar play. But I can’t play any Williamson songs at all. I don’t get them. His entire style is completely strange to me. But all the Ashton Songs are rather easy. We tried a few things of ‘Raw power’, but I can’t play that, it’s too funny, a kind of Rockabilly or something. It’s rather dependant on the mind than an irrational decision. Seems I simply don’t have the right mindset. We tried ‘Shake Appeal’… Very funny. And even ‘Search and Destroy’. It didn’t sound right. ‘I Got A right’ was easy. Thus we played only the first two albums."
Even ‘Now I Wanna Your Dog’?
"Yes. But Watt doesn’t sound at all like Iggy, therefore it went well."
Will Mike Watt actually record the record with organ and songs about his cat?
"I don’t know."
"As kid I really digged SST. Therefore it was weird to play with Mike Watt from the Minutemen, because at that time we really wanted to be on SST."
Most of the bands don’t exist anymore.
"I’ve heard, the Meat Puppets play again. I think, it’s only Kurt, the singer."
That doesn’t sound, as if it would make sense…
(By the way, there is actually a new record of the Meat Puppets, who are now four-way and their sound is a ittle more Pop-orientaded, than on their last record.)
"the Descendents play from time to time. I like the record. They were good, the last time. We played a few shows with the Descendents, Metallica, Marilyn Manson, Bush… And the Descendents were defintely the best. Marilyn Manson wasn’t bad, either. At least they rocked.
[:aliensmile:; FC]Metallica were simply shit
Unbelievable. They didn’t have any contact with reality. They were the most far out guys I’ve seen within a long time. Even Marilyn Manson seemed to be one hundred times more steady than Metallica. Their world is completely cut off from reality. They think, everything they do is great. Lars Ulrich was good, when they still played fast, that’s what he could do quite well. But when they began to play slowly, it became simply terrible!"
I think it’s also suitable, that the best Song on the last cover album is a song of Bob Seger. The Discharge songs are completely stupid.
"Discharge… Discharge were a large influence on my guitar play (now, who elsel? I ask myself). I was a Discharge fan. But live they were terrible. All English bands of that time were a disappointment live, contrary to American bands. Minor Threat, Bad Brains were totally awesome live. Discharge were pathetic. Strangely, how bad they were. They stood there and it was bizarre. It made no sense. Do you like any new Rap bands?"
Did I mention already the interlaced, or rather: saltatory character of the conversation?
More than once the responsible guy of the agency looked in the room.
Well now, that was it, I guess.
Now I met The person who made my favourite record. On the next evening he plays between two bands in the venue ‘E-Werk’ in Cologne, while around him the stage is converted under full lighting. That doesn’t bother a J Mascis, however. He produces big art. With a quite awful guitar sound he plays a few songs. Stoically. From time to time he steps on the Distortion pedal, which is plugged between his acoustic guitar and the amplifier,and he plays a solo. Of course no metronome could keep up here. Precisely inaccurate, that is, if I get the quote right from a movie with Werner Enke. Also a slacker. In real life, this kind of people probably would drive me insane, if I had them around me daily.
I’ll go and see the show of J Mascis & The Fog, of course. And I’m looking forward to it like I didn’t look forward to a gig for a long time.
words & some of the pictures: stone
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