Tuesday, February 1, 2022

A RANDOM AMHERST MEMORY...


I grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts and I have an immense sense of hometown pride. I sometimes consider myself an amateur historian of the town with a focus on the 80s & 90s. A lot of that pride is rooted in my time playing high school sports (Track & Field to be specific) but I just enjoyed growing up in the small liberal “alternative” overly PC bubble that was/is Amherst. It should also be mentioned that I had parents from outside of Amherst to prepare me for the real world. My Queens-bred Father and Spartanburg-raised Mother always made a point to remind me that while Amherst is a nice place to grow up - it is not a representation of what the real world is (they were right).
Anyway, there are very few celebrities from my small town. But the few we have (Emily Dickinson, Uma Thurman, Eric Mabius, Ebon Moss, etc) are held in high regard. I think it’s safe to say that Dinosaur Jr frontman J. Mascis is our “biggest” celebrity. He’s an Internationally recognized guitar virtuoso/gen-X icon with connections to everyone from Sonic Youth to Nirvana.
He even left his little mark on pop culture as his song “Feel The Pain” has become one of the top 10 stock songs used in any movie and/or TV show to let the viewers/audience know the story is set in the early/mid-90s (this was most recently done on episode 1 of the popular show Yellowjackets).

The other day I was watching Allison Anders’ Gas Food Lodging (which was not only mostly scored by Mascis but features a cameo from the man himself)…



…and I started to think about Mascis’ small yet impactful presence in film over the years and it brought me back to a specific moment from the documentary; 1991 - THE YEAR PUNK BROKE where Kim Gordon playfully interviews Mascis about Amherst…




This moment always stood out to me because even though Mascis is being kind of sarcastic in his responses - what he said is true. A guy really did light himself on fire in the center of town in 1991 in protest of the gulf war (click here to read more)
I always wonder if people outside of Amherst/Western Mass knew he wasn’t joking.
I also wonder if folks from Amherst/Western Mass knew this was mentioned in a documentary.

And what he said is untrue about “no one caring”. It was a really big deal at the time from what I remember (I was in the 4th grade).
Mascis has a small history of painting Amherst in a somewhat negative light (even though he’s lived there his entire life from what I understand).
Years ago when he appeared on WTF with Marc Maron , he said:

Amherst is a very bitter place. No one Wants you to succeed...

This always struck me as odd. In my experience growing up in Amherst between the late 80’s through all of the 90’s, Mascis was the hometown hero who could do no wrong. He wasn’t just the local celebrity. He was the local universally loved celebrity. He is older than me and from a different era so perhaps his experience growing up in Amherst was different (and more negative) than mine.

Anyway, J. Mascis has been popping up a bit in my world recently which triggered some serious Amherst memories that I felt like sharing…

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