J Mascis Quotes

I don't think anyone has exhausted the range of sound possible in a conventional rock band, but people do become slaves to their own easiest techniques.

With a computer, there are too many choices, and I always liked working within limits. You know, if you look at Mozart, who had this strict classical framework - an allegro, an andante, a scherzo and a finale - you see that within that formula, he got results he might never have gotten if he had all the options in the world.

It was important for me to remind people that there's no formula... there's no boundary to R&B music.

I found the blues too limiting, and classical was too disciplined.

But recently I began to feel that maybe I wouldn't be able to do what I want to do and need to do with American musicians, who are imprisoned behind these bars; music's got these bars and measures you know.

Music, as long as it exists, will always take its departure from the major triad and return to it. The musician cannot escape it any more than the painter his primary colors or the architect his three dimensions.

I don't know that I could play a complete and total mess. After awhile, I think I would be like, 'No, none of that!'

I never excluded any genre on my first record.

You have to work with what you are given, even in Shakespeare. we have our form and it is important that we free ourselves through it.

Usually I like to improvise. Sometimes, depending on the nature of the piece, I like to improvise because I think it brings certain freshness and a reality to it, as long as it doesn't go too far out of the box.

Improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing. That's a kind of paradoxical thing about improvising.

But you can't extend, or go beyond any point musically, without the basic fundamentals.

Your limitations create your sound.

Listen, man: I am not the industrial godfather, king, whatever. I don't relish that title. I don't like it. I think it's limiting. I do country, I do blues. I don't just go straight.

Music is music; you don't have to put a label on it.

Being an American musician means being adventurous.

Musically, I always allow myself to jump off of cliffs. At least that's what it feels like to me. Whether that's what it actually sounds like might depend on what the listener brings to the songs.

I'm an untrained musician. Untrained musicians don't really have any music theory, they don't have a lot of rules. We break the rules, but it's mostly because we don't know what the rules are. It's easy for us to go to certain places, so I'm not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style.

I think there have to be Bachs and Beethovens. We may have - there are so many more people. Musical training is available to so many more, but it may be that we've hit a right wall in terms of accessible styles and since we demand innovation as a criterion of genius, there may not be more innovative styles to be found.

One of the mistakes I made was believing that the rock n' roll genre as a genre was much more free than the whole pop or R&B scene.

To do an extreme metal record is something that is well within my capacity as a musician to write stuff out of the box, write stuff that's probably more extreme than the band I'm in at the present time, and it's something that needs to come out of me one way or another.

I love a lot of music that's considered folk music, but I also love a lot of music that's considered punk or considered rap. I don't mind being called a folk singer. But it seems a bit limiting. I want to be able to write whatever kind of song I want.

Free form jazz means absolutely nothing to me. Because there are no boundaries.

Although I dig my guitar playing, I think it's kind of an obvious situation; I play what I want to play within my own restrictions.

My general take on American music since 1969 is that it's just getting stiffer and people are getting more uptight - audience, performance, and palace guard.