The man that hath no music in himself,- Shakespeare (via CAN)
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils,
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus;
Let no such man be trusted.
Mark the music!
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.
So what’s the back-story to this seemingly unlikely get-together? It turns out there is history there. Maureen of Worcester, Mass. is mother to Megan Jasper, General Manager of Sub Pop Records, the label who’ll release Mascis’ new solo album, Several Shades of Why, on March 15.
The three of them go way back. To high school, in fact. In a 2008 interview posted on the Sub Pop web site, Megan Jasper describes an early encounter with the future indie rock guitar god, who she called “Chemo Boy” (“because he cut chunks out of his hair right to the scalp.”) Said Megan: “We didn’t quite care for each other at first. I thought he was a freak and he thought that I was kind of gross. The first time he came to our house, he got in a screaming match with my mom. The visit ended with J standing at the front door yelling, ‘YOU’RE FUCKED!’ to my mom… However, in time he became close friends not only with my sister but with the whole family and now we refer to him as, the ‘third Jasper sister.’”
