STEVE ALBINI

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/037/310/CjQ-v9oWgAAuoiO.jpeg

xps my opinion is steely dan and albinicore are two of the more unpleasant forms of music out there and why bother with ether

or either

having read the journal or whatever it is above I'd rather this dickhead just went away forever instead of making a performance out of this whole thing

Quite a condescending interview with Gillian Gilbert in there.

Trying to stay above this but still somehow sort of nursing a grudge, a wound about this. Think I have had to deal directly with this kind of incurious disdainful lashing out one too many times, if that's how I want to describe it today.

I promise you that the path that leads you to Steely Dan is more "incurious" than the path that leads you to Zeni Geva

what if you went through zeni geva and still ultimately ended up at steely dan?

Drinking scotch whisky all night long?

xp

unless you've already been to zeni geva and found them hugely uninspiring

snap!

Heh, maybe. I hated Steely Dan for a long time myself. Can't remember what changed my mind exactly.

Not sure what "pathway" got me there. It wasn't via Jimmy Buffett, if that's what you are implying.

Azita is the only artist who can heal the Steely Dan/Albini rift

Also I love Steely Dan but honestly like this rush to defend maybe the two smuggest zillionaire dicks that ever existed is funny to me

I def still recognize the inspiration in hearing Zeni Geva or whatever other album that is still in my collection despite not haven't listened to it in ~20-25 years. It's really not interesting to me today to outright dismiss all sorts of stuff that I never would have listened to *on principal* when I was 15 or 20 or 30. And I'm glad that I don't draw the black/white lines that I did back then.

It's not just the two guys, though. It seems that much related music is implicated including, ahem, jazz. (xp)

unless you've already been to zeni geva and found them hugely uninspiring

This is kinda where I land. I admire Albini's aesthetic in theory, and he's absolutely a talented and knowledgeable engineer, but too often the actual records (Zeni Geva, the Jesus Lizard, Shellac, most of Big Black even except for Atomizer) bore and disappoint me.

What about, say, backup singer Catherine Russell, whose parents were both musicians- in particular her father, Luis Russell, was Louis Armstrong's musical director for many years - and who herself is keeping alive certain older musical traditions? (xp to me)

B-b-but he couldn't have been dissing her, he doesn't even know who she is! In fact, her was trying to free her from her bondage! You're the racist Rhoda!

Henry Rollins’ own music is absolutely dire but he gets a lot of credit from me for the amazing Infinite Zero reissue label and his early championing of Matthew Shipp.

And (re)releasing The Monks album, iirc.

Okay, maybe people are right, playing Cap’n Save-A-Steely is tedious and tricky, too easy to take the bait and get caught in the trap.

Infinite Zero was amazing, also reissued Gang of Four, Flipper, Trouble Funk, Alan Vega, Devo, Tom Verlaine

also when rightfully talking about Albini's misogyny in this thread might be good to keep this in mind

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/steely-dans-donald-fagen-arrested-for-domestic-assault-50634/

I'm sure other people have already pointed this out, but there's a similar proto-edgelord vibe to both Steely Dan and Albini? Sheltered, bookish, intelligent boys who have this fascination with the gritty and the ugly and abject, and a kind of smugness about your unbothered, cool reaction to this stuff. Albini took it to a different level, but I think the impulse that motivates you to call your band 'Steely Dan' is similar to the one that motivates you call your band 'Big Black' or Rapeman, likewise recording a song like 'Everyone's Gone To The Movies' and Albini bragging about how cool he thinks child porn is.

What's this about child porn and Albini?

see my post above

as i said then i'm not here to stick knives in at all, but it provides context for SA's latter contrition and (former) artistic persona

wait is soref your sock?

how dare u do soref like this

oh ok I found out sorry

What did you find out?

He’s definitely said some pretty provocative things about cp. Not so much advocating for it, more gleefully defending its appeal. There are plenty of links to tour diaries, book reviews and interviews if you want to go looking, but I’m not going to post them here.

imago posted a link up above, the CW is warranted. i didn't even really become aware of Albini until his work on In Utero and At Action Park, so I missed out on those years. i never really listen to the pre-Shellac stuff anyway, but even less likely to do so now - in other words, imago pretty otm

pic.twitter.com/Ig6H1zzC8r

— skip intro (@chuchugoogoo) February 13, 2023

Like Steve wouldn't be the virgin in that meme

some good news re that meme, the patriarchy already exists

Songs About Fucking The Patriarchy

New Nick Cave missive out, sort of cheekily pro-cancellation:

I was dismayed to hear that my namesake, Tom Jones has had his murder ballad, Delilah cancelled by the Welsh Rugby Union, and roundly condemned by Police Chiefs and Politicians, for imagery of violence towards women and the fear it will inspire such acts. Research of course consistently shows this to be nonsense, but there are always certain types of, media attention seeking, public figures who love to perpetuate such myths. Therefore, as an artist who released a whole album of murder ballads, actually called "Murder Ballads", just how worried are you about your future cancellation, and what is your view on such censorship?
TOM, BRISTOL, UK

How do you feel about the banning of the song Delilah sung by Welsh choirs at the Rugby? As someone who has written many murder ballads, do you think these sort of songs turn people into murderers?
DYLAN, SWANSEA, UK

Dear Tom and Dylan,

I just went online and found a Welsh male choir singing their rendition of 'Delilah' and I’m sorry to report that listening to this version of the song did make me feel like murdering someone, primarily the Welsh male choir. Or maybe it wasn’t the choir, but the song itself that disturbed me. I just don’t like it. I mean, I like Tom Jones. I sang a duet with him ('Green, Green Grass of Home' – a far superior murder balled) at a charity event a few years ago, and I like his version of 'Weeping Annaleah' which The Bad Seeds recorded on our Kicking Against the Pricks album, and his blistering version of 'Venus' which was playing at a party during my first teenage kiss, and his almighty scream in the middle of the na-na-na-na bit at the end of The Beatles' song, 'Hey Jude' – all this is good stuff, but 'Delilah', despite the fact that it was awarded the Ivor Novello in 1968, just sort of sucks. As someone who knows a thing or two about murder ballads, for my taste, it’s all too waltzy and strident and hammy and mariachi and triumphant. And the words are ugly – “I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more.” Really? Most damning of all, even The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll bands of all time, couldn’t do anything with it, although there is a wonderfully perverse attempt on the Old Grey Whistle Test. The inimitable Australian comic, Norman Gunston, lest we forget, also did a very funny parody of it back in the late seventies, which at the very least made you laugh.

So, I don’t know, Tom, I can’t get too animated by the fact that 'Delilah' has been banned. I understand there is a principle here, but on some level I like the fact that some songs are controversial enough to be outlawed. It fills me with a kind of professional pride to be a part of the sometimes contentious business of songwriting. It’s cool. I like it. I just wish it was a more worthy song to be awarded that greatest of honours, indeed that supreme privilege, of being banned.

Love, Nick

I suspect it's only a matter of time before Nick gets to Steely Dan.

Like Steve wouldn't be the virgin in that meme

I dunno, the weirdest factoid in Our Band Could Be Your Life was that early '80s Steve Albini was dating a Playboy model.

oh yeah that was funny

he's been married for a long time

the redeeming things about steve are his exemplary work ethic and business conduct - it's unarguable that he has facilitated a great deal of possibilities, space and creative license for recorded music and community, but i feel his own creative output has very little depth. it's a nasty taste in your mouth to read these tour diaries and whatever else from someone who's ethic you admire so much. however, it's evident (from interviews/tweets) that steve is remorseful, apologetic and embarrassed of his past. at any rate, the 'cancellation' of someone makes sense to me when you're making an effort to remove/de-platform someone who is knowingly abusive from an active community, but otherwise... i feel that it's an individual decision whether you engage with or consume the person in question's media or engage with them in business while understanding/forgiving their past mistakes. actions speak louder than words as far as i'm concerned, and professionally/untoward others, steve has showed a great deal of selflessness. idk. for someone who is in constant work with a broad palette of artists, i think it would be quickly become evident if they were a truly bad person. i am trying to understand and navigate these things.

Looks like he's doing some sort of ... guest podcast?

https://www.nts.live/shows/steve-albini-residency

cheer accident!

Episode last week with Robert Rolfe Feddersen was hugely entertaining but Steve doesn't like Steely Dan so I didn't mention it

that just appears to be regular NTS twin-streaming, not a podcast?

internet radio y'all

(should be archived on mixcloud though)

This is a long but really good Twitter thread. Rather than embed, I will quote.

Thread:
I work in an arcane field where the job requires specific technical knowledge, built on a ladder of understanding and breakthroughs going back over 100 years. It's not immunology but it's not nothing.

A couple decades ago there was a christian panic about something the press started calling "backmasking," an outgrowth of the similarly absurd panic about subliminal messaging and advertising, about which I could also talk about for too long but will not now.

According to the panic, Satanists were hiding messages in music by recording secret messages, only audible if the music were played backwards, but somehow still perceivable and persuasive on listeners. Such messages were blamed for drug abuse, teen suicides and cult behavior.

This became a Big Deal. There were articles and TV shows about it, proponents mounted conferences, did public demonstrations and lectures, and eventually there were a core of believers who were convinced of the problem and adamant in outrage.

There is an excellent inclusion of this in J0hn D@rni3ll3's excellent novel Wolf in White Van. Of course people like me, professionals in the recording field intimately familiar with the process and technology of recording, knew it was all horseshit.

Regardless, "secret messages" retained popular appeal and a few lawsuits were even pursued, one against the band Judas Priest, lent credibility by the passion of the people who believed in it, despite that they had no expertise or evidence, and an unlearned and credulous public.

In order for something to appear on a record, forward or reverse, it would need to be recorded onto the master tape, and debunking it should be as simple as going through the tape track by track and demonstrating that there was no demonic message there.

So this is exactly what Judas Priest did. They played their master tapes in court, showed the track sheets and other documentation, had their engineer testify that he was never asked to record any satanic messages, all that. You would think that would put an end to it but no.

It was actually kinda close. link to Rolling Stone article

As an expert in analog recording, I know there is no way for these things to have been done surreptitiously or other than by the normal methods of recording, but lay people don't know any of that. They could be convinced there was some other, secret, conspiratorial way.

Judas Priest are a good example of why debating the willfully ignorant is a fool's errand. It's expensive and exhausting to have to disabuse people of patent bullshit they are attached to. You have to educate people who do not wish to learn and do not trust you.

You have to start with Maxwell's equations and the theory of electromagnetism, teach them about the persistence of polarity in magnetic domains, explain the mechanics and design of magnetic recorders, the process and handling of masters in a studio and the chain of custody...

for master tapes that represent an investment of sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars. You have to answer their ignorant objections continuously. And in the end they will just shrug and say, "I don't think so," and that will be that. They will remain unconvinced.

Okay, maybe that record didn't have backmasking and secret messages, but what about *this* one, or *this* one, or *this* one. Maybe that master tape didn't have a secret message track, but what about all the tapes we haven't examined?

You say there would be some evidence of the recording having been done, but couldn't it be done some other way? I recall a lawyer in the Judas Priest case arguing that the message in question was made as a composite of sounds including the vocal, guitar and hi-hat...

...ie the engineer did a cryptic reverse-speech soundscape collage, hidden within the apparently-normal recording of a rock band, for the purpose of inducing teen-agers to commit suicide. Every aspect of that argument is beyond absurd, yet it had its day in court. Literally.

So this fact-averse mindset persists, whether about evolution, vaccine efficacy, gun control or cryptic satanism. No matter how thoroughly an absurdity is shown to be bullshit and nonsense, its advocates will insist that didn't happen.

Indulging the "DEBATE ME!" shitheels does nothing to further the truth. It is exhausting because its purpose is to exhaust you and no credible person should do it.

The evolution of Steve Albini: ‘If the dumbest person is on your side, you’re on the wrong side’

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/aug/15/the-evolution-of-steve-albini-if-the-dumbest-person-is-on-your-side-youre-on-the-wrong-side

premise flawed, surely even dumb people believe that Zeppelin rules