some smart comments about Dino/J

[FlyingCloud]

… to find on this site: air

some explanation from the author of the following quotes:

"I was the staff writer for On Air, which basically meant I wrote all the promotional copy. The show featured concerts by and interviews with Alternative musicians. It was my job to hype the upcoming act, and one way I did it was with interesting tidbits about the musicians.

Marketing is a tough one for a writer. It is the quintessential hack work, never quite respectable no matter how polished and clever it is. Nor should it be. Truth, capital T, the unattainable ideal of all writers, is to say the least an inconvenience to the marketer. This is not a condemnation of marketing; I quite enjoyed writing the pieces included here, and even approached a few small-t truths along the way. But such truths are adventitious to marketing. It is, after all, propaganda. Persuasion is the ideal."

…so here is some Dinosaur Jr./ J Mascis marketing

Quote:

Slack Metal

Spend any time listening to Dinosaur Jr. and sooner or later you’ll say, "There but for the grace of god goes another heavy metal band." J Mascis loves metal guitar, the warm, ponderous chord progressions and grimacing guitar solos, and if it weren’t for the strutting, cocksure attitude of metal he’d have probably gone spandex long ago. But attitude is everything, and the Mascis attitude is one of slack. For all the massive power of his guitar, his voice drags along beside it in a strangled drawl, as if he were too weary to breathe. In the choruses, when he really pushes it, he manages a thin falsetto. That’s it. So don’t even bother thinking heavy metal; J Mascis is the king of metal fatigue.

Quote:

Lone Star

Maybe it’s true that no man is an island, but J Mascis is certainly testing the waters. Not only is he the sole writer of Dinosaur Jr. songs, he also seems intent on single-handedly recording them. When he’s not playing all the instruments himself, he’s working out the parts and making sure his compadres play what he wants. It’s his vision, after all—yet even the vision is generally one of solitude. While his songs share pop’s preoccupation with romance, Mascis seems mainly interested in examining the fragments of shattered relationships, like a lone anthropologist investigating a dead civilization.

Quote:

He’s An Inspiration

It’s a strange thing to hear J Mascis referred to as a guitarist’s guitarist. His guitar education seems to have consisted primarily of noodling around in his bedroom to Stones and Deep Purple albums. He avoided the hard things like barre chords and went for instant gratification—the solos. And you know what? It paid off. He imitated and invented until he sounded better than the real thing. At some point along the way he quit school because, hell, who needs a 9 to 5 when you can play like that? He still doesn’t know scales (so he says) and finds alternate tunings confusing. A guitarist’s guitarist? No way. He’s a guitarist for the rest of us, he’s an air guitarist’s guitarist

[AGAP]

Gotta love those, have to dig up some of my fav’s to add to the list :aliensmile:

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