Dinosaur jr frontman J.Mascis is my spirit animal and guitar hero , and Dinosaur Jr is my favorite band (because of J) . I’m not going to get into Dino right now but I want to talk about one track that has gotten me through stressful times for the last 6 years.
In the winter of 2017 I was a few things: an assistant manager at GameStop, a sober alcoholic in regular AA meetings, my brother’s roomate and someone’s boyfriend. Balancing all of that shit stressed me out. The manager to my assistant manager position was this 20 year old girl who was way out of her depth and I found myself doing everything to hold the store together, even dealing with problems when I wasn’t even there (I wasn’t salaried or anything I don’t know why I was so married to that shit). AA wasn’t really stressful, I just found it was something I had to keep making a priority, with all of the other things going on. The girlfriend that I was a boyfriend to was maybe the most stressful of the 3 , as she was quite clingy and demanding of my time and attention often requiring immediate texts back when I was busy working or doing whatever I was into (she apologized for that a few years later, and it’s all good, I was very impressed when she acknowledged it). I was coming to the end of my time as my brother’s roommate, as he was going to go exploring the country with an RV, and I needed to figure out where to live. I felt like I was going to give myself an aneurism, like, all the time.
“Amma What Now?” is a track on the J and Friends Sing and Chant for Amma EP, which I believe is a benefit for J’s Hindu guru Mata Amritanandamayi (or Amma, the hugging saint). The track came up on my dinosaur jr. radio on spotify and hit me hard. I looked into who Amma was, and found out that she hugs people and just shoulders all of their suffering for them. How amazing is that?
It’s just some kind of Indian drums with acoustic guitar, some electric soloing and lyrics asking for Amma’s guidance. I can’t explain it, I’m not Hindu or any other religion but the song just slowed my roll and let me mellow out. I was moved to tears by the effect it had on me.
So if I’m in that state again I can pull up “Amma what now?”. It works every time. I’d like to find out when I can get a real hug from Amma, I just read an interview with Mascis where he said he’s had around a hundred hugs. I don’t know why, but the concept of taking suffering for people is beautiful to me.
“and the pain is all i knew. can i give my pain to you?”
I want to also just include a favorite live J.mascis solo set from YouTube. Just watch him hit the big muff fuzz pedal and fuck shit up all beautifully and melodically with that acoustic guitar… it’s sick. watch it, thank me later.
and of course i made a J. Mascis playlist:
