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What:
J Mascis & The Fog w/ Garage Deluxe
When:
Thursday, Nov. 11, 8 p.m.
Where:
Blue Cats
Cost:
$15
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Grave Rocker
Fog frontman J Mascis exceeds expectations
by Mike Gibson
J. Mascis is a notoriously poor interview. Mention that you have an appointment to speak with the former Dinosaur Jr. and current Fog frontman on the phone, and you’ll receive knowing looks from journalists and musicians who’ve traveled in his circles, often accompanied by suppressed giggles that seem to say “Better you than me, pal,” or “Let me know how that works out for you.”
So it was no great surprise to me when, during our recent phone conversation, Mascis lived down to his reputation as a staid, laconic—not to say “verging on catatonic”—interviewee. It’s not that Mascis is rude or uncooperative, or that he doesn’t make any sense. It’s just that the man doesn’t have very much to say, and what he does say rarely bears repeating. (Typical Mascis response: “Uh, yeah... I’ll be finishing a new record, sometime, hopefully... Don’t really know how it’s gonna turn out, yet...”)
But I did nonetheless manage to glean a couple of moderately interesting tidbits from our conversation, including the fact that he’s only finished about “one-seventh” of the third J Mascis and the Fog recording, due out in 2005; and that he wasn’t even aware of new Fog bassist Dave Schools’ old outfit Widespread Panic when the two first partnered in early 2004.
“Yeah, I met him in a club, somewhere,” Mascis says of his introduction to Schools. “He wanted to jam, and we jammed and it seemed to work out. I didn’t know anything (about Widespread). None of the people I know knew much about them.”
His taciturn tendencies notwithstanding, Mascis is still an alterna-rock giant—a singer, songwriter, and guitar hero whose influence is writ large on the face of popular music today. For better or worse, critics credit the murky, guitar-heavy pop he pioneered with Dino-Jr. as a principle precursor of the Alternative Nation sounds that swept over the early 1990s.
While his more recent recordings with the Fog—their 2000 debut release More Light and 2002’s Free so Free—haven’t broken any new ground, both records recapture the soaring spirit and songwriting excellence that marked the best work of Dinosaur Jr.
Not surprisingly, Mascis says he sees all of his work—with Dinosaur, Jr., two solo records, and with the Fog—as part of the same grungy continuum. “I don’t see it (the Fog) as different,” he says. “It’s just different people. It’s got a good chemistry.”
The day of this conversation, Mascis and the Fog are set to play the annual All Tomorrows Parties Festival in Long Beach, Cal., an indie-rock throwdown headlined this year by band-o’-the-moment Modest Mouse, and also featuring other ground-breaking alt.-acts such as the Flaming Lips, the Cramps, and Lou Reed.
The coming months will see him tour throughout the South and the Eastern seaboard with the Fog, then oversee the first in a series of complete Dinosaur Jr. reissues. (The re-releases begin with remastered versions of Dinosaur, Bug and You’re Living All Over Me in early 2005.)
And then, of course, there is the vexing business of finishing the next Fog record, which Mascis is recording and (mostly) self-producing in his new home/studio in Amherst, Mass. “Yeah, I’m doing a lot of it myself,” he says. “But I’m gonna get some people to help, at some point. Not sure who.”
Mascis seems at best dimly aware of his status as an underground rock icon. Though his influence is pervasive (it’s worth noting that he was hand-picked by headliners Modest Mouse for the ATP show), he says he rarely notices the echoes of his post-punk songcraft, wheezy, murmured singing, and gonzo avant-blues guitar solos heard so often in music today.
“It’s hard for me to tell where I’m an influence,” he says. “Once in a while, I hear something that sounds like a rip-off. But not that often.”
There is, however, a single moment in our conversation—maybe instant would be a better word than moment—where Mascis shakes off the lethargy that is his default setting and responds to a question with something that sounds suspiciously like enthusiasm. When I ask him about his joyously excessive guitar playing—the one area of his life where fluent self-expression seems to be rule rather than rare exception—he snaps to, affirming with some resonance the presence of the indie-rock guitar geek who still resides within him.
“Oh yeah! I still love playing. I still love pedals, and amps, and guitars!” he says. Then he pauses, relaxes, exhales. And once again, he is J Mascis, world’s most somnolent rock icon.
November 11, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 46
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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