ok, so the j mascis show last night was pretty cool. i got to the club a few minutes before the doors opened; i was actually first in line. i would have been first in, but some ratty-dreaded woman with her kid and boyfriend and some other old guy (with white sneakers for god's sake!) sort of wormed their way in front of me. i didn't get particularly upset, but i was still a tiny bit annoyed that just because there was physical space between my body and the locked door that they could just sort of wander in front of me and then go in ahead of me.... i always wish that i was a bigger guy, but last night really crystallized it for me. if i was some 6'4" 220lb lummox, they probably wouldn't have done it. "take karate and learn how to kick ass", you say? well, i wouldn't actually want to hurt anyone... just would want to look menacing enough that nobody would fuck with me. a good friend of mine from my old hometown has been taking all sorts of street fighting classes, and he's stopped just shy of a brown belt, because apparently when you hit brown belt, you are legally a deadly weapon, which would have much graver implications if you were to get into a fight, which my friend does occasionally.

anyway, get in, get a good table (the SLF was going to be meeting me there), and wait.

the opening act was cobra verde, and they were pretty friggin' awful. it's kinda hard to tell from pictures on their site, or from the ones i took, but half the guys looked like someone famous.... ....'s brother. the lead singer looked like a fat eddie vedder. the one guitar player looked like a cross between charles manson and the unabomber, but was so skinny that his face looked like beaker from the muppet show. and the other guitarist looked like that greasy irish dude dominic from the real world.

so, they start, and the singer is jumping around like an idiot... holding his arms in all tight to his body, and in general flopping around like a prissy idiot. he was acting like robert plant at the end of a 3-hour zep show, but they had just started. he also did this thing where he would wave his full beer bottle around like a crazy tamborine or something, but he was smart enough to put his thumb into the neck of the bottle... a "real" rock star would have just sort of let the beer fly, you know? i think he just did it to build up the carbonation, so when he took his thumb out it would make an impressive spray.

thankfully they were done after an hour, and j mascis came on. first of all, he is looking old. his hair is quite gray, and he looked a lot like smokey from the big lebowski.

his performance was fantastic, however. his voice is as good as it's always been... as good as on "martin + me", and that's going back 6 years or so. he played a lot of cool older stuff; "thumb", "so what else is new", "repulsion", as well as some things off of his newer albums. he was playing with an acoustic guitar, but would occasionally turn on some distortion to rawk out a bit more. he actually had some sort of cool digital real-time looping stomp box, which he would use to record himself playing a rhythm part, and then kick on the fuzz and throw down a solo over his own accompanyment.

when he finished his solo set, he had the drummer and singer (now playing bass) from cobra verde come out and help him do some heavier songs... "ammaring", "freak scene", etc. at one point, someone yelled out from the crowd for him to play "keeblin", at which point he said "i already played keeblin"... nice of that guy to be paying attention, right?

all in all, a very good show. have some pictures: &nbsp