Mass Giorgini

Massimiliano Adelmo "Mass" Giorgini (born 1968) is an Italian-American bassist and record producer, who rose to fame when several of the bands he produced experienced huge gains in popularity during the pop-punk boom on the mid-‘90s. Among these bands was Giorgini's own Squirtgun, which received minor MTV rotation and several soundtrack appearances in major films in the 1990s. Mass Giorgini is also the son of renowned Italian artist Aldo Giorgini.

Mass Giorgini at work in his Sonic Iguana Studios in 1996.

Music career

Giorgini has played bass guitar, alto and tenor saxophones, and sung backing vocals for a number of punk rock bands including Screeching Weasel, Common Rider, Squirtgun, Rattail Grenadier, The Mopes, Teeth and the Man, Torture the Artist, and Sweet Black And Blue.

As a composer, Giorgini has written songs primarily for his band Squirtgun, but in addition has lent writing assistance to several bands he has produced. His songwriting work also appears in the films Mallrats (Gramercy Pictures) and Bubble Boy (Disney).

As a producer, he has worked in conjunction with leading punk rock figures such as Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day and Kris Roe of the Ataris, and produced music by bands such as Rise Against, Anti-Flag, and Alkaline Trio. Since 1990, he has owned and operated Sonic Iguana Studios in Lafayette, Indiana. He has been involved in creating the recordings of many bands (sometimes recording, mixing, mastering, and producing). His production work has taken him all over the globe, including production stints in Australia, Spain, Canada, and the Cayman Islands, as well as in numerous states of the United States.

Discography
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Academics and background

Giorgini is the son of artist Aldo Giorgini. Prior to his career in music, Giorgini earned a degree in Psychology from Purdue University and began a course of graduate study in that same field. When his father became terminally ill with a form of brain cancer, Giorgini suspended his studies in order to care for his ailing father. Following his father's death, Giorgini abandoned his doctorate studies in psychology, and dedicated himself to music. A pair of articles co-authored by Giorgini were published in respected psychology academic journals from Giorgini's period prior to his departure from the field.

Giorgini later returned to academics in the area of Spanish Literature, in which he earned both a Master's and Ph.D. degree from Purdue University in Cervantes Studies at the same university. He has published several articles in academic journals and chapters in book-length studies on literature and film. Most of his research has been on the investigation of encoded messages protesting the Inquisition written between the lines of the novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. In March 2014, Giorgini delivered a TEDx Talk at Purdue University summarizing some of his research on the same topic.

Giorgini was the model for the fictional character "Max" in the novel Weasels in a Box by John Jughead. In the novel, the character "Max" is a punk rock producer who also studies the literary figure Don Quixote.

Giorgini has taught Audio Production Techniques in the Theatre Department at Purdue University, as well as Italian and Spanish in the Foreign Language Department of the same institution. In addition to his ongoing research on Cervantes and his production work, Giorgini presents at symposia on forensic techniques in the analysis of coded language.

Footnotes
  1. In addition to engineering and producing the album, Giorgini played keyboard parts under the pseudonym "Teakettle Jones."

An article by Mass Giorgini for an academic psychology journal:

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