VAST Fast Forward Jon Crosby of Vast talks about self-censorship, sex and Van Halen


"If you're a good artist, you'll scrutinize yourself," declares Vast founder and braintrust Jon Crosby. "Being critical of yourself helps to pull out all the coolest stuff. Although sometimes I spend too much time working on the smallest, stupid shit."

On Vast's second album, Music for People, such close attention to detail appears to be the twenty-four-year-old Crosby's trump card. "I could lie, and say I don't doubt myself," Crosby says about the record that he wrote and produced, "but I'm always dissecting what I do. When I've exhausted everything and I still don't feel something's working, only then will I back off."

Despite titles like "The Last One Alive" and "I Don't Have Anything," the persistent Crosby insists that his new album -- an amalgamation of modern mope rock, electronica, Eighties' New Wave, classic rock and classical music -- is less reflective than its predecessor, 1998's Visual Audio Sensory Theater.

"The first record was more introspective, and this one is much more extroverted," he says. "To me, it's more emotional and less cerebral. I'm not trying to be clever with it. Rather than be cold or harsh, it's more about love and longing."

For the new album, Crosby, who scored alternative radio hits with the debut's "Touched" and "Pretty When You Cry," abandoned the solo approach he used on the first album and compiled a full recording and touring band -- guitarist Justin Cotter, drummer Steve Clark and bassist Thomas Froggatt. "The band format didn't really change things too much from the first record," notes Crosby. "I still wrote the songs and because I was so heavily involved in the production, in many ways I had more control. The band just added to what I was trying to achieve."

Rather than relying on the orchestral sampling of his last set, Crosby enlisted England's premier string arranger Andrew Mackay to help him record the New Bombay Orchestra. "I wanted to do some live recording, whether it was a singer or percussionist, or whatever," he explains. "So when the idea came up to travel to India to record the orchestrations, it was just perfect for us."

Born and raised in Humboldt County, Calif., Crosby relocated to San Francisco in 1992 at the age of sixteen, marking a drastic change in environment. "That was such an exciting time for music and for me," he says. "With the advent of computers, coffee shops, the Seattle scene, alternative music, Clinton coming into office and gay rights, it was a great time for new ideas. Growing up in that time and moving to San Francisco -- which is a very open, liberal city -- I have a lot of fond memories. It opened me up so much more than if I were anywhere else."

As a child, Crosby was originally drawn to classical music, discovering the genre through the film, Amadeus. "I hear a lot of stories where kids say that one day they heard Kiss and they were dancing in front of a mirror with a broom," he says. "That never happened to me. It was classical music that really touched me."

It wasn't until he heard Van Halen's 1984 that Crosby really connected with rock & roll. "My friends and I used to listen to that and cuss," he laughs. "We wanted to break the rules, but we were so young, there were no rules we could break with the exception of cursing. So we'd go, like, out in the field and curse and listen to Van Halen because no one was around. Like Huck Finn or some shit."
Vast began when Crosby was seventeen, when he recorded his first demos. "By the time I had completed my sixth demo I was hoping to get a cheap publishing deal and go forward independently," he says. "Somehow, the tape got sent around and people got interested in it. Getting signed to Elektra was a very unexpected twist of events."

Looking toward the future, Crosby hints that he'd like the next record to be longer, possibly a double album. "That way I could have some songs recorded entirely by me, and then have some songs done completely as a band, and maybe even written as a band," he says. "I'd like to have no rules."
"I don't feel like I've accomplished very much," he continues. "I feel like I need to become this great humanitarian force, this amazing person. I don't know what kind of fucked-up shit goes on in my brain that makes me feel like I have to be such a great person. But I'm always pushing and I'm never satisfied."

JOHN D. LUERSSEN
(November 10, 2000)