STEVE ALBINI

Hmm I want to go into this more bc this feels like an unusually uncritical approach to someone who’s made this a cornerstone of his rhetorical approach for much of his career (and in more harmful ways in the past)

Hating Prince is a capital crime in Minnesota iirc

I'm guessing he just heard a Don Henley song in the CVS this morning and decided to be a crank about it. I've done worse.

Someone's going to emergency, the other's going to ILX

Because we can't embed bsky posts...

https://i.imgur.com/gJBCT3D.jpg

I don't know about the others, but I got the sense Albini's Prince-hate was informed more by Prince apparently beating women. There's a video where he's doing some weird commencement speech and he sort of randomly drops that in there, but that section was scrubbed and I always wondered if he walked that back or the venue did.

Fwiw, here’s his elaboration on Prince:

https://i.imgur.io/KMb0AgG_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

…and for completeness (since I mentioned both), the Stones:

https://i.imgur.io/lSH8YSg_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

It’s the snidely maximalist rhetorical flourishes that set me off, more than the opinions themselves (his take on ’80s production techniques could obv even be “interesting,” if it weren’t delivered in a way that just makes me think, “OK, man”).

fwiw he elsewhere scorns prince as being a shitty person and domestic abuser

which . . .

Music journalism, 1986: "The "R#peman" vocalist took time out from recording "Pray I Dont Kill You F#gg#t" with his "Run N#gg#r Run" project to express his distaste for Prince's attitudes towards women."

The true irony is that a lot of Electrical Audio's gear is from the 80's. Especially studio B

God, you guys

If he posted here you’d be like “ban St3ve Alb1ni” and be done with it

As a business consultant for lower tier musicians, let him speak. As any kind of critic- musical social or political, he has no cred.

As a rock (or music in general) critic, he just doesn’t have any really interesting takes even when I agree (as with his Steely Dan tweet and I’m sympathetic to hating the sound of ‘80s radio). His stance on everything is entirely predictable in the mode of early ‘80s record store guy.

Henry Rollins is the same sort of cranky guy but when he talks about music he’ll start praising plenty of stuff that doesn’t slot into the outward appearance of hardcore mook.

Litigating Steve Albini relitigating Prince to relitigate Steve Albini

Sidebar from Old Man Tweets at Cloud --
The Paul Giamatti show Billions latest episode inexplicably opens with a Shellac song. I wonder if they took Albini at his word that he'd prefer people not ask for his permission to use his music and do whatever they want with it as long as he doesn't have to get involved, and what the rest of the band might have to say about that.

Disappointing cantaloupe (morrisp) at 3:52 3 Sept 23

I think I’m just mildly triggered by dudes who very bluntly express “this is terrible, I hate it” opinions with little or no analysis (or interest in actually *talking* about it), and you can sense how much they relish doing it.

Sidebar from Old Man Tweets at Cloud --

I believe he was skeeting at the cloud, technically.

God, you guys

If he posted here you’d be like “ban St3ve Alb1ni” and be done with it

― Snoopy is a cat, who lives in a cage (flamboyant goon tie included), Sunday, September 3, 2023 12:32 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

I have no patience whatsoever for this dude

Why on earth would anybody expect Albini to like Prince or Madonna? His original post was about hating 80s popular radio, which, of course he hates. He lists the instruments that he feels makes it sound like shit from a production standpoint.

Not about expecting him to like them, more about having to hear about it and the way he says it.

You have the choice of ignoring Steve Albini's social media presence

Albini: Wrong about some things. otm about some things. Contains multitudes of cranky dudes.

You have the choice of ignoring Steve Albini's social media presence

He does not! Yes I wish he'd stick to techie/industry subjects but he was cranky in his 20s so hardly likely to change now. Better this than some smarmy twat who treats everyone like shit in private, have known people like that and it's not pretty.

I’m sympathetic to hating the sound of ‘80s radio

― papal hotwife (milo z), Sunday, September 3, 2023 12:51 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Same! I've always hated it too and actually glad he's laid out the recipe there for reference. Seemed like the point was originally to comment on the techie aspect.

I treat albini like some guy I know who only listens to 90s German techno (like Tresor and almost nothing else), he is sound and interesting to listen to on almost any subject but you just wish he would learn to stfu about music he doesn't like.

otm

I deeply resent his masculinist alpha nerd persona and the permission he gave to a generation of indie boys to indulge their worst selves - I relish every opportunity to take shots at him now since people were afraid to do so for ages because he and his fans were so toxic

If everything on the radio in the '80s sounded like the Jesus Lizard, he would probably consider it the best sounding decade in the history of music. The dude has changed his mind about a lot of things, but he's really never wavered from his ideal studio sound, and hates most stuff that deviates from it, whether Prince or Steely Dan or whatever. Has he ever had a bad thing to say about '80s Cheap Trick? He'd probably posit them as victims of a predatory industry.

all '80s pop would've been immeasurably improved by slathering it in a bass guitar fret-buzz, relegating all low end to the bass drum, and having someone mumble about serial killers over the top, of course.

Otm

The sound of young American testosterone.

i hate to get hermeneutically suspect, but nothing sounds more insecure than the I AM A MONSTER fronting of
boom
bap
boom
bap
bassline stolen off tracy pew
“He was so quiet, he always kept to himself, we never even heard him raise his voice.”
trebly discordant guitar figure
shouting
*
30years ago i loved that shit - can barely go near it now

i thought about doing a 50 point (and i hate this term) "pigfuck" poll, but most of the options were
"i'm a lumberjack and i'm ok"

One must first determine the boundaries of the pigfuck genre before embarking on such an undertaking.

you just wish he would learn to stfu about music he doesn't like.

I don't think 140 characters or whatever is a good medium for it, but I mostly enjoy Albini's petty hatreds and the subsequent awkward interactions

e.g nardwuar: "Why didn't you like MDC?" / albini: "They were stupid and bad."

mackaye: "You gave Rites of Spring a sort of slag" / albini: "yeah, they were awful" / mackaye: "yeah, uh huh" ... "well that's a nice guy even if he wrote a mean review of Rites of Spring which was one of the greatest bands of all time"

Henry Rollins writing in his diary about wanting to beat him up -- also gold! Did they ever have a roundtable together now that they're both of the getting invited to the same conferences stage of life?

When people employ “that pig won’t fuck” as a rhetorical mic-drop, are you persuaded?

Having just read Bateman’s glowing analysis of post-Gabriel Genesis in American Psycho, I really want to check out their ‘80s material for precisely its ‘80s-ness.

tbf some of albini's most fruitful production projects have not been macho dudes: Low, PJ Harvey, Breeders, Nina Nastasia ...

That may be, but there’s still something about someone who just can’t keep their tired-ass opinions to themselves and continually expresses them in what is basically a hateful way.

*waits for someone to googletrump with my own tired-ass opinions*

To be fair, most of the time someone's pestering Albini for his opinion on this or that (for Nardwuar that was quite literally the case)

The true irony is that a lot of Electrical Audio's gear is from the 80's. Especially studio B

So true, haha. Neotek? If anything he's STUCK in the 80s.

Who doesn't admire the drum sounds he's gotten over the years, Nirvana/Pixies/PJ all rule. I feel like at one point I understood his general (lets call it) anti-80s thing, insofar as, bands shouldn't assigned to some producer they don't know, who vastly alters the way the poor band already sounds (ostensibly what got them signed in the first place), especially if its in service of whatever fancy studio shit came out that month. That's noble and sensible. But at the same time, doesn't Eliminator kind of rule?

Tbf I was pretty disturbed by hearing about Prince assaulting Sinead when she first went public with it. Of course there was no follow up from the press or internet or metoo movement at the time and everyone decided to just talk about how brilliant Prince was for the next 30 years.

yeah but do you expect me to believe that's albini's actual problem with him

plenty of people have talked / are talking about it ime

maybe not so much in the press because they need their social justice heroes to be clean but plenty of prince fans / ex-fans (including me) have been very critical of his abusive and predatory behaviour

however if albini's diary entries are to be believed he should probably reserve more of that outrage for himself