J Mascis Quotes

With Zeppelin, I tried to play something different every night in my solos. I'd play for 20 minutes but the longest ever was 30 minutes. It's a long time, but whenI was playing it seemed to fly by.

We really never know what we're gonna play when we get on stage.

The musicians in the band, and myself as a performer, love the risks of the unpredictable and the feeling of jumping off cliffs musically.

In the past, we never really had that kind of spontaneity on record. When you start touring, you play songs in a certain way and then I start to feel like it's tough to really get lost in my playing.

I've always done very 'composed' music and worked-out solos. But sometimes it's fun not knowing where you're going.

I wouldn't be interested in just doing a show that's mapped out and choreographed with a set list. That would've been boring so long ago it just wouldn't be any fun.

It's so liberating to play a song in front of 50,000 people that you've never played before. Not something you played a long time ago and have forgotten: Never. Played. Before. There's something magical about it.

When I'm performing music, it's like I'm doing a big improv.

I didn't know how to play lead guitar. There was a freedom in not knowing how to do it.

I like to improvise so much live because I get bored playing the same thing over again. It's like the kid at school that already knows all the answers so doodles all over the paper. I do that a lot live.

You want a solo to be structured, a song within a song, but you want it to sound like it's the first time you're playing it, too.

For me, something will come in my head and I'll either end up calling my cell phone to record it, or I'll just pick my guitar up and see what comes out. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't. So there's really no set method behind it.

The apparatus has to serve our improbability and improvisation. Being good and playing the songs is not enough.

Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.

When you're playing the same dirty dozen night after night, the moments that keep it fresh are those when you just let go and trust everyone.

What I always try to do is to respond to the song; I've always rebelled against theory.

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.

What's interesting about the process of acting is how often you don't know what you're doing.

Classical stuff takes a lot of rehearsal time and preparation, but with stuff that involves improvisation, you can over-rehearse it and it gets stale. You don't want it to be too comfortable. In fact, a good sound check, a good rehearsal usually means a bad performance.

Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.

And more than anything, I like the improvisation of jazz. That's the same thing with DJ-ing. There's so much improvisation you can do with cuttin' and scratchin' that's reminiscent of jazz music, because it's all about how you feel. You're capturing a vibe and just going with it.

I never set out to write a certain kind of song, I just play my guitar and see if I catch something.

I play as I feel.

When I start playing I'm just a rollercoaster of sound. I don't know what's coming next, I never do, and I sit and sign and talk to the people afterwards.

I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.