Interview Link The Mission of Mars When I told a friend of mine I had lunch with Mars, the hugely popular trance DJ she nearly strangled me out of jealousy. Not that I don't enjoy inspiring sadistic forms of affection in my friends, but I had no idea that Mars would elicit such strong emotion. But like the planet he's named for, Mars has something of a gravitational force that pulls in people as diverse as Alicia Keys and Mickey Hart. Oh, and the music is only one part of the Mars enterprise. You catch him in orbit on the west coast this month. As for my near strangulation, after some sandwiches on the Groove, I can confidently say Mars isn't like the other DJs. Which is probably how he landed some of the high-profile and somewhat unlikely projects he's got on his plate at the moment. When we met up a few weeks ago he was in town working with George Clinton on his upcoming record. Hairstyles aside, there isn't much apparently in common between these two artists, sharing instead, a common vision of a boundary-free musical world. Clinton has lately invited artists like Q-Tip into his creative milieu, a relatively safe choice as the intersections between classic funk and rap are traditionally found in the ever-growing land known as hip-hop. So how did Mars get on board with the p-funk? I'm happy to say it actually does go back to hairstyles. As Mars aptly notes, if you look at the p-funk kids, and you look at the raver kids, there's not much difference. Brightly colored creative outfits, glow sticks and pacifiers, feet that seem genetically programmed to perpetually move to beats, and of course those nature and gravity-defying hairstyles… it's the image of a club kid that we all know and love. While some enjoy music, the p-funkers and the ravers live for it, so a Mars/Clinton collabo is just giving the people what they need. This is not to say the man plays it safe. His other main recording project of 2005 centers around June “JuPo” Pointer, of the Pointer Sisters. The youngest of her so excited siblings, Pointer shares a Bay Area provenance with Mars, and aside from one Top 30 R&B solo single in the early 80s and a backing vocals gig on Bruce Willis' one and only contribution to popular music (no, I'm not lying), her solo career hasn't been much to speak of. Mars hopes to change that by infusing her vocal talents with some trance-inspired beats to create what he's describing as a futuristic digital-age 50s doo-wop singer with a good beat. As if that's not enough, Mars has been tapped to remix Alicia Keys' latest single, “Karma,” for release later this year (draw your own cornrow/dreadlock hair comparisons yourself). All this and the man still has time to play live dates around the US, run a record label (Frequency 8), clothing company (F8 Gear), and have lunch with music writers. We'll be hearing more from this man from Mars soon, but in the meantime, you'll want to check him out live, before his ship boldly goes where no man has gone before.