This guy’s the limit

The one thing I remember most about Ireland is that all the streets smell of puke,” deadpans J Mascis, drawling down a crackly phone line. J returns to our pebble dashed streets this month to plug his third post-Dinosaur Jr outing, Free So Free, another collection of grade A squawling rock from the Freak Scene King who also occasionally moonlights as a producer and film-maker.

“It’s easier to be free when you’re playing alone,” J opines of his bachelor status. “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 a Wurlitzer Piano on ‘Everybody Lets Me Down.’”

Contrary to the press release blurb and urban myth, Free So Free is not a concept album about sky diving. “I made up the skydiving thing because for the last record I went with scuba diving,” J explains. “Nobody believed that I recorded an album underwater so I claimed this album was all recorded mid-air this time. More people have fallen for it.”

The video for ‘Everybody Lets Me Down’ is another Mascis flight of fantasy. “A buncha people – Eninem, Abe Lincoln, Elvis – try out for my band, but it doesn’t work out and I end up doing everything myself,” J mutters. ‘Everybody Lets Me Down’ was written for the Alison Anders’ film Things Behind the Sun. J also scored her memorable 1991 movie Gas Food Lodging that starred Ione Skye, Fairuza Baulk and Brooke Adams.

Mascis will be accompanied at his Irish shows in the vomit comet capitals of Cork and Dublin by a new duo consisting of Jimi Shields, formerly of Rollerskate Skinny and Suzanne Thorpe, who sometimes plays with Mercury Rev. “I’ve heard the new stuff they are working on – it’s great,” J enthuses. “They have played a few shows around New York which have been good.” J also worked with Jimi’s brother Kevin of My Bloody Valentine/Primal Scream fame on the 2000 album More Light.

J also claims that a recent Playboy centrefold model claimed that she digged “classic rock” “ Neil Young, The Cure, Dinosaur Jr., Tom Petty — all the classic rockers,” J not so much giggles as intones in the same voice he probably employs to ask for a newspaper. “It was, uh, weird.”