11 ms·

The evolution of Steve Albini

70 points by arp242 3y ago

pinewurst 3y ago
https://archive.ph/rGhbd https://archive.ph/rGhbd
dayofthedaleks 3y ago
Guy who once fronted a band called Rapeman finally grows up. Kind of inspiring really. I don't think we'll be seeing this sort of turnaround from Jim Goad.
- demondemidi 3y ago
  Right? He's totally upfront about being x-phobic doesn't need a cultural context to hide behind because he was still being x-phobic. While the targets of the phobia are making a collective "no duh!", it is great to hear someone just honestly admit they did something shitty and try to do better rather than digging in their heels and denying or hiding or dodging (see also: every "cancelled" dude who is still famous)
fullshark 3y ago
Beastie Boys also did this kind of apologizing for their early career that made them famous. I kind of admire guys like John Lydon and Jello Biafra more for just sticking to attitude that got him there, even while they both have obviously matured dramatically. Edgy provocation has its place too, even if it makes you roll your eyes when done artlessly.
- tptacek 3y ago
  It's hard to think of someone less anchored in their original identity than John Lydon, unless you subscribe to the (plausible) idea that everything about the Sex Pistols was an an act and they were just a boy band. Martin Short has more credibility than Lydon; at least he was in the Queen Haters.
  - notahacker 3y ago
    Yeah, Albini's "sorry, I'm not quite as much of an arsehole as I used to act" reinvention is way more 'authentic' than Lydon's "I'm still the edgy antiestablishment punk your great grandma told you not to listen to, I just think people misunderstood God Save the Queen as an attack on the Royal Family. P.S. I love that respect Britain attitude Jacob Rees Mogg has"
- zimpenfish 3y ago
  > I kind of admire guys like John Lydon and Jello Biafra more for just sticking to attitude that got him there John Lydon was recently advertising butter on UK TV. I'm not sure you can call that "sticking to [the punk] attitude".
  - rocketbop 3y ago
    He also entered Eurovision.
  - hackandthink 3y ago
    John Lydon is such a nice person. His autobiography is worth reading. Both are great artists and Jello's Label was really important.
dfxm12 3y ago
One unfortunately unique thing about this is Albini listened to people. He listened to his friends/family, like his wife. He listened to the people he was insulting. Coming to an understanding, he was able to recognize what he was doing was accomplishing nothing but dehumanizing people in out groups, and this was equally dehumanizing him. I think most people understand this instinctively, but some are just taught to behave differently and some doubting Thomases need to see to believe. They need to see that these people in the out groups are just trying to live their lives in ways that are not meaningfully different from their own. If more people would listen, we would recognize this.
- dkarl 3y ago
  It's unfortunate that he summed up this realization by saying, "When you realise that the dumbest person in the argument is on your side, that means you’re on the wrong side." It begs the question of how you decide who the dumbest person is, and it seems like it would reinforce whatever a person's current attitudes are, rather than move them to change.
  - jstanley 3y ago
    > When you realise that the dumbest person in the argument is on your side, that means you’re on the wrong side I don't think this is necessarily a good rule of thumb in general. Lots of topics have 3 levels of understanding, where the dumbest level and the smartest level have the same answer but for different reasons, and there is an incorrect middle level that is tempting if you know just enough to be dangerous. Take flat earth for example. It's not the very dumbest people who think the earth is flat. The dumbest people just repeat what they learnt at school! The dumbest people are not remotely open to adopting new and strange ideas. The people who fall for flat earth are those who are smart enough to entertain an unusual perspective, but not smart enough to refute it.
- daydream 3y ago
  He listened to people… 35 years later! 35 years! In the meantime we were treated to a huge pile of pseudo intellectual babble he used to defend his position.
flobosg 3y ago
I’m a big fan of his music and his writing. Check out his cooking blog (inactive since 2013): https://web.archive.org/web/20190227102420/http://mariobatalivoice.blogspot.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190227102420/http://mariobatal...
vr46 3y ago
Amazing article. I made a specific point to go and see Shellac when I was at Primavera in 2018, a bucket list gig. Complicated guy. I was hoping he'd also renounced his hatred of jazz when I opened the article, but no such luck it seems.
- arp242 3y ago
  People are allowed to hate music styles; and IMHO his criticism of "jazz snobbery" is pretty dead-on. Frank Zappa made a similar point decades ago, although he was much nicer about it, and hell, even SpongeBob parodied this in a episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlmZ05LfAxQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlmZ05LfAxQ
Spinnaker_ 3y ago
Big Albini fan. Maybe the most principled person in the industry. I'm not so sure about the article though. There is a simpler explanation: Albini will act in the way that pisses off religious right wingers the most. When that meant being rude and vulgar, he did so in the most over the top ways. When it means self flagellation for being a white male and "making space" for others, he will do that. You can be sure that however culture evolves in the next 20 years, he'll be doing whatever enrages Fox News the most.
- andybak 3y ago
  That's your simpler explanation?
  - Spinnaker_ 3y ago
    Yes. "Piss off the GOP" is a very simple and accurate description of Albini's life.
- dfxm12 3y ago
  Well, he alludes to simply not wanting to be a "cunt who wants to indulge bigots". In my experience, passively espousing this attitude tends to be enough to enrage the Fox News crowd without even actively trying.
  - drewcoo 3y ago
    Saying it out loud is "actively trying."
- ctrlp 3y ago
  Accurate, Steve doesn't actually have any more complicated principles than hatred and resentment against the small-town community that his family settled him in as a child. He's 60 and still hating.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
I think the music scenes move away from punk tropes of "as long as you're loud and vulgar it doesn't matter that you can't actually play your instrument" has been an incredible positive. Not just as a music enjoyer but in terms of setting positive examples about how to lead a fulfilling life. Angst for the sake of it is now seen as lame. Albini is a very interesting persona to me because he was largely a proponent of that style but he actually is quite talented, and more importantly seems to be extremely thoughtful.
- tptacek 3y ago
  The subtext I get from this is that you saw Albini as a proponent of big dumb hardcore DIY punk, and Big Black really wasn’t that, as even Christgau acknowledged. There was a lot of artistry in they way they managed to be repellent.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    > There was a lot of artistry in they way they managed to be repellent. There was a lot of artistry in early Lou Reed too. I still think it's lame that the velvet underground not only were bad musicians but that they took pride in sounding unpracticed. That whole ethos pervaded the punk scene from the very beginning and I think a lot of Albini's choices about his vulgarity and whatnot have a lot to do with wanting to be like those dudes even though he did practice.
    - andybak 3y ago
      I'm not sure I accept your premise here. I've spent years of my life listening to the Velvets and I'm also fond of many traditionally "virtuosic" artists. And I don't really make a huge distinction between them. The first Velvets album doesn't feel like anything about it was diminished by the musicianship. (I wish I could play that badly!) Also let's not forget John Cale was classical trained, and was probably the biggest proponent of "noise" in the band.
      - HDThoreaun 3y ago
itqwertz 3y ago
Big Black is a great band if you haven’t heard of them (sorry, not available on Spotify). There’s enough melody amongst the noise to keep it interesting, and the youthful finger-pointing aggression and characterization makes it unique.
- flobosg 3y ago
  Roland the drummer really does a great job there.
  - singingfish 3y ago
    Yep, combination of Steve and Roland totally defined what the "heavy" sound is for me, and mostly nothing since Big Black has come close. One of my favourite bands (The Crooked Fiddle Band - check them out) have a very dense acoustic heavy sound in that they're a traditionally instrumented folk band with other instruments. When I learned Albini was engineering one of their albums (he did two), I couldn't think of a better match.
  - jghn 3y ago
    I see what you did there. :)
- tinyspacewizard 3y ago
  Sonic Youth apologized that their release wasn't as good as Atomizer.
  - ctrlp 3y ago
    Sonic Youth were art school asslickers. Their "apology" was performative tribute to buy cred.
    - tptacek 3y ago
      Albini doesn't agree with you, or didn't at the time they were making the records anybody cares about. They were tight in the '80s. sec later (But, from your other comment on this thread, that might not make a difference to you! I'll note that this an artistic judgement though, not a moral one, and you seem to value his artistic output.)
ctrlp 3y ago
Albini was, is, and always will be the same asshole he's always been. If you want to elevate a resentful, antisocial, mean, jerk, he's the poster boy. This essay is gross. That this writer thinks Missoula, Montana was a "cultural vacuum" because it didn't have a CBGB speaks to his cultural narrowness. Even aside from his lickspittle praise for Steve, it discredits him. Long and short, Steve is townie royalty. He and his ilk are as status-conscious as the people they despise. People like Steve are, in the end, parasitic on society as a whole. There is a role for them but it's very small and can't and shouldn't scale. Just imagine a world full of Steve Albinis! "Reject Authority" says the micro-controlling authoritarian. Very persuasive. "Be Authentic" but don't like music or bands I don't approve of. Inspiring! "Think for Yourself!" but we only want "people that politically basically think like we do" at our concerts. Steve is a guy who actually hates music and artists. He's mostly about his politics, but his politics are simplistic to the point of stupidity. His "punk" principles have become mainstream and now he openly serves power. He is still the same guy who's never wrong even when he's saying "I was wrong" because now he's on the right side of history (which is just the right side of power). The idea that he has the "knowledge of self that billionaires pay to discover on ayahuasca retreats" is hilarious. The funny thing about this redemption-of-Steve piece is it focuses on all the wrong reasons for what makes him off-putting. His abrasiveness was his vulgar affect, fine. But the problem with Albini is that he was always a tedious, scold who never said a thing that wasn't entirely predictable, who happened to be a capable verbal bully with ice in his veins. Nothing essential has changed about him. Steve's a talented audio engineer who's helped make some great albums and that's pretty much the only good thing about him.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
  I think the type of person who thinks there's no culture in small towns just never goes to places like that. Montana is great and has its own culture. When I travel I try to hit up small towns and out of the way places. Some of the best times of my life were spent traveling around rural New South Wales, specifically the Bega Valley. If there's people, there's culture.
  - drewcoo 3y ago
01100011 3y ago
I don't have much to add to this other than to say Big Black produced some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard and that probably says something terrible about the way my mind works. It's hard to explain Albini without the context of the 80s. You can watch Stranger Things all you want, if you weren't someone who grew up in the 80s political-cultural-social-economic environment the statements and actions of guys like Albini(and much of the punk and even thrash movements) are going to seem bewildering and/or purely offensive.
- Solvency 3y ago
  Albini. Torvalds. What other two names can round out the four horseman of the surly rantiness?
  - potta_coffee 3y ago
    Buzz Osbourne of the Melvins. Dave Mustaine.
  - TylerE 3y ago
    Lenny Bruce was the OG.
  - jtode 3y ago
    I dunno if Torvalds gets in there before St. Ignucius. That said, somewhat obsessed with answering that lol
- darkwraithcov 3y ago
  I was just talking about this with my other genx/millennial friend on how fucked the 80s were and how very little media nostalgia reflects this. The Reagan era was like the Trump era on steroids basically, but the colors were nice I guess.
  - jtode 3y ago
    It was the start of the decline. America caught a real wave for about a hundred years, and that's when the wave started to recede, the shoreline not so lush, getting dryer by the year...
locusofself 3y ago
I find his crabiness and rants pretty funny, I have not really enjoyed his own music, but definitely enjoy his production of course Nirvana, but also Jason Molina and J. Tillman (before we was "Father John Misty").
amysox 3y ago
Albini wrote one of the most biting indictments of the music industry I've ever read: "The Problem with Music" aka "Some of Your Friends are Already This F*ked." https://archive.org/stream/TheProblemWithMusic/TheProblemWithMusicBySteveAlbini_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/TheProblemWithMusic/TheProblemWit... (The formatting is kind of messed up, especially in the breakdown of a band's first album and all the revenue and expenses, since this copy is all plain text.)
vlunkr 3y ago
He produces and makes some great music. I'm not sure why people care about any of his opinions beyond that. He's clearly an effective troll. If you want punk rock thinkers who aren't just in it for the shock value try Henry Rollins or Ian MacKaye.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
jibbit 3y ago
Some albini records made me feel weird - uncomfortable - ill. I always wondered if it was deliberate. I saw pj Harvey a lot, but couldn’t listen to the record
- tptacek 3y ago
  You mean Rid Of Me, right? The 4-Track Demos is a version of many of those songs without the Albini treatment, and, of course, Dry (before that album) and To Bring Me Your Love are both as far as you can get from Albinism.
copperx 3y ago
Fantastic article. Albini went from being a privileged edgelord to an admirable grownup through listening to others and self-introspection and understanding. He was never afraid to voice his ignorant and tone-deaf opinions, which we all have. But he would have never changed if he had kept them to himself or if he was not capable of self-reflection. We are all deeply flawed in our relationship with others; ultimately, the best we can hope for is some redemption of our sins towards others when we mature. He's one of my profoundly flawed role models.
- tptacek 3y ago
  I don't think Albini would agree with the summation here, that his public articulation of edgelord opinions was all for the good. There's a temptation here to view this through the lens of the current culture war, but Albini said a lot of stuff --- ironically, to be sure (see: Rule of Goats) --- that neither side of the culture war has ever countenanced. I think he views those mistakes as mistakes, not as valuable lessons; one of the things that makes his mea culpa authentic is that he doesn't valorize them at all; in fact, he openly mocks the idea that those mistakes could be valorized.
  - copperx 3y ago
    > I don't think Albini would agree with the summation here, that his public articulation of edgelord opinions was all for the good. I agree; a lot of that was puerile garbage. What I recognize from those outbursts is the almost-manic raw juvenile need to be a contrarian and stir shit up. I empathize because I felt it when I was young.
    - tptacek 3y ago
      Yeah, me too. But the best analogue to that behavior I can think of is bullying, which is another popular manic juvenile behavior.
hackermatic 3y ago
It's so rare to get a real apology: > Now whenever any public figure is made to answer for their former bad self, they go on an apology tour where they say all the right things about being a work in progress, and learning and listening, and so on. Rarely do they break down the actual specifics of what they said, why it was wrong and why they regret it. > “The one thing I don’t want to do is say: ‘The culture shifted – excuse my behaviour.’ It provides a context for why I was wrong at the time, but I was wrong at the time.”
prpl 3y ago
I spent a lot of time on the electrical audio forums, maybe 2005-2008. I loved it. Steve was there, so was Bob, so was all sorts of other audio engineers, punks, hackers, the guy from Groupon, all sorts of people. Steve was highly opinionated, quirky, even then, but rarely a dick (to anyone who didn't deserve it). I think he was just Steve Albini. Understandably, I think - the forums weren't moderated in the way hacker news is, it was a bit more like a wild west subreddit.
rurban 3y ago
> Not everyone is a fan of Albini’s work: “For me, the record sounds like shit,” said Elvis Costello in 2020 of PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me. “That guy doesn’t know anything about production. Everybody admits that he downproduced her to shit. Still, he has some golden moments, like a water painter over an oil painter. It's a hit or a miss.
- karaokeyoga 3y ago
  And Elvis Costello produced the first Specials album, beautifully if you ask me.
noobermin 3y ago
As a millennial, watching gen xers age has been a source of fascination to me. It was hard to imagine the cool apthetic kids could grow old but they somehow did whilst staying cool and themselves for the most part. When boomers became reagan voting nimbys you'd think the gen x would become grubby self important dicks themselves but every gen x Ive run into in real life is ironic and self effacing as they were when I was a babe but are now 50
- rufus_foreman 3y ago
  Steve Albini was born in 1962. He's a boomer. Also, a higher percentage of Gen X voted for Reagan than did the boomers in 1984 (Gen X wasn't old enough to vote in 1980).

70 points by arp242 3y ago

https://archive.ph/rGhbd https://archive.ph/rGhbd

Guy who once fronted a band called Rapeman finally grows up. Kind of inspiring really. I don't think we'll be seeing this sort of turnaround from Jim Goad.

demondemidi 3y ago
Right? He's totally upfront about being x-phobic doesn't need a cultural context to hide behind because he was still being x-phobic. While the targets of the phobia are making a collective "no duh!", it is great to hear someone just honestly admit they did something shitty and try to do better rather than digging in their heels and denying or hiding or dodging (see also: every "cancelled" dude who is still famous)

fullshark 3y ago

Beastie Boys also did this kind of apologizing for their early career that made them famous. I kind of admire guys like John Lydon and Jello Biafra more for just sticking to attitude that got him there, even while they both have obviously matured dramatically. Edgy provocation has its place too, even if it makes you roll your eyes when done artlessly.

tptacek 3y ago
It's hard to think of someone less anchored in their original identity than John Lydon, unless you subscribe to the (plausible) idea that everything about the Sex Pistols was an an act and they were just a boy band. Martin Short has more credibility than Lydon; at least he was in the Queen Haters.
- notahacker 3y ago
  Yeah, Albini's "sorry, I'm not quite as much of an arsehole as I used to act" reinvention is way more 'authentic' than Lydon's "I'm still the edgy antiestablishment punk your great grandma told you not to listen to, I just think people misunderstood God Save the Queen as an attack on the Royal Family. P.S. I love that respect Britain attitude Jacob Rees Mogg has"
zimpenfish 3y ago
> I kind of admire guys like John Lydon and Jello Biafra more for just sticking to attitude that got him there John Lydon was recently advertising butter on UK TV. I'm not sure you can call that "sticking to [the punk] attitude".
- rocketbop 3y ago
  He also entered Eurovision.
- hackandthink 3y ago
  John Lydon is such a nice person. His autobiography is worth reading. Both are great artists and Jello's Label was really important.

dfxm12 3y ago

One unfortunately unique thing about this is Albini listened to people. He listened to his friends/family, like his wife. He listened to the people he was insulting. Coming to an understanding, he was able to recognize what he was doing was accomplishing nothing but dehumanizing people in out groups, and this was equally dehumanizing him. I think most people understand this instinctively, but some are just taught to behave differently and some doubting Thomases need to see to believe. They need to see that these people in the out groups are just trying to live their lives in ways that are not meaningfully different from their own. If more people would listen, we would recognize this.

dkarl 3y ago
It's unfortunate that he summed up this realization by saying, "When you realise that the dumbest person in the argument is on your side, that means you’re on the wrong side." It begs the question of how you decide who the dumbest person is, and it seems like it would reinforce whatever a person's current attitudes are, rather than move them to change.
- jstanley 3y ago
  > When you realise that the dumbest person in the argument is on your side, that means you’re on the wrong side I don't think this is necessarily a good rule of thumb in general. Lots of topics have 3 levels of understanding, where the dumbest level and the smartest level have the same answer but for different reasons, and there is an incorrect middle level that is tempting if you know just enough to be dangerous. Take flat earth for example. It's not the very dumbest people who think the earth is flat. The dumbest people just repeat what they learnt at school! The dumbest people are not remotely open to adopting new and strange ideas. The people who fall for flat earth are those who are smart enough to entertain an unusual perspective, but not smart enough to refute it.
daydream 3y ago
He listened to people… 35 years later! 35 years! In the meantime we were treated to a huge pile of pseudo intellectual babble he used to defend his position.

flobosg 3y ago

I’m a big fan of his music and his writing. Check out his cooking blog (inactive since 2013): https://web.archive.org/web/20190227102420/http://mariobatalivoice.blogspot.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190227102420/http://mariobatal...

vr46 3y ago

Amazing article. I made a specific point to go and see Shellac when I was at Primavera in 2018, a bucket list gig. Complicated guy. I was hoping he'd also renounced his hatred of jazz when I opened the article, but no such luck it seems.

arp242 3y ago
People are allowed to hate music styles; and IMHO his criticism of "jazz snobbery" is pretty dead-on. Frank Zappa made a similar point decades ago, although he was much nicer about it, and hell, even SpongeBob parodied this in a episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlmZ05LfAxQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlmZ05LfAxQ

Spinnaker_ 3y ago

Big Albini fan. Maybe the most principled person in the industry. I'm not so sure about the article though. There is a simpler explanation: Albini will act in the way that pisses off religious right wingers the most. When that meant being rude and vulgar, he did so in the most over the top ways. When it means self flagellation for being a white male and "making space" for others, he will do that. You can be sure that however culture evolves in the next 20 years, he'll be doing whatever enrages Fox News the most.

andybak 3y ago
That's your simpler explanation?
- Spinnaker_ 3y ago
  Yes. "Piss off the GOP" is a very simple and accurate description of Albini's life.
dfxm12 3y ago
Well, he alludes to simply not wanting to be a "cunt who wants to indulge bigots". In my experience, passively espousing this attitude tends to be enough to enrage the Fox News crowd without even actively trying.
- drewcoo 3y ago
  Saying it out loud is "actively trying."
ctrlp 3y ago
Accurate, Steve doesn't actually have any more complicated principles than hatred and resentment against the small-town community that his family settled him in as a child. He's 60 and still hating.

HDThoreaun 3y ago

I think the music scenes move away from punk tropes of "as long as you're loud and vulgar it doesn't matter that you can't actually play your instrument" has been an incredible positive. Not just as a music enjoyer but in terms of setting positive examples about how to lead a fulfilling life. Angst for the sake of it is now seen as lame. Albini is a very interesting persona to me because he was largely a proponent of that style but he actually is quite talented, and more importantly seems to be extremely thoughtful.

tptacek 3y ago
The subtext I get from this is that you saw Albini as a proponent of big dumb hardcore DIY punk, and Big Black really wasn’t that, as even Christgau acknowledged. There was a lot of artistry in they way they managed to be repellent.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  > There was a lot of artistry in they way they managed to be repellent. There was a lot of artistry in early Lou Reed too. I still think it's lame that the velvet underground not only were bad musicians but that they took pride in sounding unpracticed. That whole ethos pervaded the punk scene from the very beginning and I think a lot of Albini's choices about his vulgarity and whatnot have a lot to do with wanting to be like those dudes even though he did practice.
  - andybak 3y ago
    I'm not sure I accept your premise here. I've spent years of my life listening to the Velvets and I'm also fond of many traditionally "virtuosic" artists. And I don't really make a huge distinction between them. The first Velvets album doesn't feel like anything about it was diminished by the musicianship. (I wish I could play that badly!) Also let's not forget John Cale was classical trained, and was probably the biggest proponent of "noise" in the band.
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago

itqwertz 3y ago

Big Black is a great band if you haven’t heard of them (sorry, not available on Spotify). There’s enough melody amongst the noise to keep it interesting, and the youthful finger-pointing aggression and characterization makes it unique.

flobosg 3y ago
Roland the drummer really does a great job there.
- singingfish 3y ago
  Yep, combination of Steve and Roland totally defined what the "heavy" sound is for me, and mostly nothing since Big Black has come close. One of my favourite bands (The Crooked Fiddle Band - check them out) have a very dense acoustic heavy sound in that they're a traditionally instrumented folk band with other instruments. When I learned Albini was engineering one of their albums (he did two), I couldn't think of a better match.
- jghn 3y ago
  I see what you did there. :)
tinyspacewizard 3y ago
Sonic Youth apologized that their release wasn't as good as Atomizer.
- ctrlp 3y ago
  Sonic Youth were art school asslickers. Their "apology" was performative tribute to buy cred.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    Albini doesn't agree with you, or didn't at the time they were making the records anybody cares about. They were tight in the '80s. sec later (But, from your other comment on this thread, that might not make a difference to you! I'll note that this an artistic judgement though, not a moral one, and you seem to value his artistic output.)

ctrlp 3y ago

Albini was, is, and always will be the same asshole he's always been. If you want to elevate a resentful, antisocial, mean, jerk, he's the poster boy. This essay is gross. That this writer thinks Missoula, Montana was a "cultural vacuum" because it didn't have a CBGB speaks to his cultural narrowness. Even aside from his lickspittle praise for Steve, it discredits him. Long and short, Steve is townie royalty. He and his ilk are as status-conscious as the people they despise. People like Steve are, in the end, parasitic on society as a whole. There is a role for them but it's very small and can't and shouldn't scale. Just imagine a world full of Steve Albinis! "Reject Authority" says the micro-controlling authoritarian. Very persuasive. "Be Authentic" but don't like music or bands I don't approve of. Inspiring! "Think for Yourself!" but we only want "people that politically basically think like we do" at our concerts. Steve is a guy who actually hates music and artists. He's mostly about his politics, but his politics are simplistic to the point of stupidity. His "punk" principles have become mainstream and now he openly serves power. He is still the same guy who's never wrong even when he's saying "I was wrong" because now he's on the right side of history (which is just the right side of power). The idea that he has the "knowledge of self that billionaires pay to discover on ayahuasca retreats" is hilarious. The funny thing about this redemption-of-Steve piece is it focuses on all the wrong reasons for what makes him off-putting. His abrasiveness was his vulgar affect, fine. But the problem with Albini is that he was always a tedious, scold who never said a thing that wasn't entirely predictable, who happened to be a capable verbal bully with ice in his veins. Nothing essential has changed about him. Steve's a talented audio engineer who's helped make some great albums and that's pretty much the only good thing about him.

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
I think the type of person who thinks there's no culture in small towns just never goes to places like that. Montana is great and has its own culture. When I travel I try to hit up small towns and out of the way places. Some of the best times of my life were spent traveling around rural New South Wales, specifically the Bega Valley. If there's people, there's culture.
- drewcoo 3y ago

01100011 3y ago

I don't have much to add to this other than to say Big Black produced some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard and that probably says something terrible about the way my mind works. It's hard to explain Albini without the context of the 80s. You can watch Stranger Things all you want, if you weren't someone who grew up in the 80s political-cultural-social-economic environment the statements and actions of guys like Albini(and much of the punk and even thrash movements) are going to seem bewildering and/or purely offensive.

Solvency 3y ago
Albini. Torvalds. What other two names can round out the four horseman of the surly rantiness?
- potta_coffee 3y ago
  Buzz Osbourne of the Melvins. Dave Mustaine.
- TylerE 3y ago
  Lenny Bruce was the OG.
- jtode 3y ago
  I dunno if Torvalds gets in there before St. Ignucius. That said, somewhat obsessed with answering that lol
darkwraithcov 3y ago
I was just talking about this with my other genx/millennial friend on how fucked the 80s were and how very little media nostalgia reflects this. The Reagan era was like the Trump era on steroids basically, but the colors were nice I guess.
- jtode 3y ago
  It was the start of the decline. America caught a real wave for about a hundred years, and that's when the wave started to recede, the shoreline not so lush, getting dryer by the year...

locusofself 3y ago

I find his crabiness and rants pretty funny, I have not really enjoyed his own music, but definitely enjoy his production of course Nirvana, but also Jason Molina and J. Tillman (before we was "Father John Misty").

amysox 3y ago

Albini wrote one of the most biting indictments of the music industry I've ever read: "The Problem with Music" aka "Some of Your Friends are Already This F*ked." https://archive.org/stream/TheProblemWithMusic/TheProblemWithMusicBySteveAlbini_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/TheProblemWithMusic/TheProblemWit... (The formatting is kind of messed up, especially in the breakdown of a band's first album and all the revenue and expenses, since this copy is all plain text.)

vlunkr 3y ago

He produces and makes some great music. I'm not sure why people care about any of his opinions beyond that. He's clearly an effective troll. If you want punk rock thinkers who aren't just in it for the shock value try Henry Rollins or Ian MacKaye.

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jibbit 3y ago

Some albini records made me feel weird - uncomfortable - ill. I always wondered if it was deliberate. I saw pj Harvey a lot, but couldn’t listen to the record

tptacek 3y ago
You mean Rid Of Me, right? The 4-Track Demos is a version of many of those songs without the Albini treatment, and, of course, Dry (before that album) and To Bring Me Your Love are both as far as you can get from Albinism.

copperx 3y ago

Fantastic article. Albini went from being a privileged edgelord to an admirable grownup through listening to others and self-introspection and understanding. He was never afraid to voice his ignorant and tone-deaf opinions, which we all have. But he would have never changed if he had kept them to himself or if he was not capable of self-reflection. We are all deeply flawed in our relationship with others; ultimately, the best we can hope for is some redemption of our sins towards others when we mature. He's one of my profoundly flawed role models.

tptacek 3y ago
I don't think Albini would agree with the summation here, that his public articulation of edgelord opinions was all for the good. There's a temptation here to view this through the lens of the current culture war, but Albini said a lot of stuff --- ironically, to be sure (see: Rule of Goats) --- that neither side of the culture war has ever countenanced. I think he views those mistakes as mistakes, not as valuable lessons; one of the things that makes his mea culpa authentic is that he doesn't valorize them at all; in fact, he openly mocks the idea that those mistakes could be valorized.
- copperx 3y ago
  > I don't think Albini would agree with the summation here, that his public articulation of edgelord opinions was all for the good. I agree; a lot of that was puerile garbage. What I recognize from those outbursts is the almost-manic raw juvenile need to be a contrarian and stir shit up. I empathize because I felt it when I was young.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    Yeah, me too. But the best analogue to that behavior I can think of is bullying, which is another popular manic juvenile behavior.

hackermatic 3y ago

It's so rare to get a real apology: > Now whenever any public figure is made to answer for their former bad self, they go on an apology tour where they say all the right things about being a work in progress, and learning and listening, and so on. Rarely do they break down the actual specifics of what they said, why it was wrong and why they regret it. > “The one thing I don’t want to do is say: ‘The culture shifted – excuse my behaviour.’ It provides a context for why I was wrong at the time, but I was wrong at the time.”

prpl 3y ago

I spent a lot of time on the electrical audio forums, maybe 2005-2008. I loved it. Steve was there, so was Bob, so was all sorts of other audio engineers, punks, hackers, the guy from Groupon, all sorts of people. Steve was highly opinionated, quirky, even then, but rarely a dick (to anyone who didn't deserve it). I think he was just Steve Albini. Understandably, I think - the forums weren't moderated in the way hacker news is, it was a bit more like a wild west subreddit.

rurban 3y ago

> Not everyone is a fan of Albini’s work: “For me, the record sounds like shit,” said Elvis Costello in 2020 of PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me. “That guy doesn’t know anything about production. Everybody admits that he downproduced her to shit. Still, he has some golden moments, like a water painter over an oil painter. It's a hit or a miss.

karaokeyoga 3y ago
And Elvis Costello produced the first Specials album, beautifully if you ask me.

noobermin 3y ago

As a millennial, watching gen xers age has been a source of fascination to me. It was hard to imagine the cool apthetic kids could grow old but they somehow did whilst staying cool and themselves for the most part. When boomers became reagan voting nimbys you'd think the gen x would become grubby self important dicks themselves but every gen x Ive run into in real life is ironic and self effacing as they were when I was a babe but are now 50

rufus_foreman 3y ago
Steve Albini was born in 1962. He's a boomer. Also, a higher percentage of Gen X voted for Reagan than did the boomers in 1984 (Gen X wasn't old enough to vote in 1980).