STEVE ALBINI

Concert prices (in the US, I'm assuming?) are 43% higher than they were three years ago, according to this: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=87981&page=1

OK.

I do wish he'd made clearer that he must think Spotify is a sick joke. It's going to be too easy for people to ignore the bit about "hybrid approaches" and pretend he's signing off on every type of "brave new world" we're being offered

File under new methods of fart collecting.

The answer is: fuck no because of gas prices
--i did it all for the 'nuki (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

I'm sure that hurts but I'd still like to see it all broken down.

A new CD, when The Problem With Music was published, cost $27-31

does anybody know anybody who actually paid 27-31 dollars for a new CD in '92? I had a CD player and bought CDs. They cost about 15 bucks.

i think this is a canada thing

remember thinking it must suck to live in canada when i bought comics as a kid

MSRP on CDs back then was like $18-19, which would get marked down to $12-13 at a big box retailer. What really has dropped was list for doubles, which usually MSRP'd then for $30-40.

Albini was not speaking in North America.

if he was referring to the market in Australia, then i can confirm that new CDs in '92 sold in the ballpark of 30 AUD.

which felt like a substantial rip-off even at the time.

music becoming much much cheaper to record, cheaper to distribute, cheaper to hear is a net win for everybody,

if you consider a market that allows Burger Records to exist / flourish a "net win," sure

ahahaha

what's wrong with burger records

burgers aren't records!

xp sorry I couldn't help it, imo they suffer a bit in the quality control department but I like some of the releases

and yes I consider it a net win overall for people to have cheap access to the means of production, sometimes bad bands get good later

i think they've tightened up their QC quite a bit recently, but tbf that's referring to their own actual releases not when they're acting as the tape manufacturing arm of other labels xp

ah that makes sense, they are pretty big around these parts

Tbh, I haven't really noticed a radical jump in ticket/gig prices, relative to inflation. Would be curious to see stats.

I saw JAMC for £6 in 1987, which is £15.36 in today's money. I'm seeing them again on Friday in the same venue for £31.50 plus booking fee. So prices have doubled for that one band in that one venue.

It's difficult to compare like for like as these anniversary nostalgia tours sell quickly at inflated prices thanks to sad old fucks like me but that's a huge increase.

yes definitely, likewise Reading festival ticket was £78 in 1999, which is £119 in today's money. Last year's festival ticket price was £213.

The first time I saw Fugazi in 89 it was £3.50, the last time I saw them in 2002 it was £7.50 (source: Fugazi live show archive) so ignoring the fact the prices are artificially low even their tickets cost more than doubled in a little over 10 years.

Screw Fugazi, those selfish, money-grubbing jerks!

The Eagles in the mid'70s cost around $6 a ticket. Now, it's more like $1 million. But they're selling fewer records.

Also, t-shirt prices have skyrocket. You can't download a t-shirt.

yet

I conceded the point about ticket prices already, referring to actual statistics.

Fuck statistics, we have anecdotal evidence!

in the DIY punk or 'eternally unsuccessful' sphere of things entry fees to gigs have been stuck around the £5 mark in the UK since time immemorial. attempts to whack it up to a price that reflects the costs involved tends to get raised eyebrows and/or no-one turning up because they think it's too expensive

I'd compare more "price to see a new relatively unknown band" in 1977 vs. "new relatively unknown band" in 2014 instead of comparing ticket prices to see the same band.

Well, new relatively unknown bands are in no position to make any money until they are less new and better known, so comparison is moot.

so is the comparison of a band 3 years into their career and 25 years in.

But i think albinis point is that Shellac now is playing the same sized venues as Shellac then, but getting more money. Right?

Here you can compare ticket prices for bands at the small level.

http://www.bottomofthehill.com/calendar_archives.html

In 1997 you could see bands at a small club for $5 (Dandy Warhols, Blonde Redhead) -$10 (Yo La Tengo, Pavement).
Now those ticket prices have almost doubled...$10-20.
Inflation: $10 in 1997 is about $15 today.

i think it's important to remember he's also fine with this not working for "everybody" - he's not saying that the income loss reported doesn't EXIST, but that he's comfortable with an evolution that still potentially lets cool people make cool music, and lets "the music industry" collapse under its own weight

he even cops to being in the dark about subcultures other than his own - guessing anecdotally the indie rockers he likes are doing their thing better or worse, the ones complaining he thinks are the weak ones in the herd anyway

and to be clear, i'm not arguing the dude isn't to some degree a libertarian "i got mine" jerk, even if i appreciate the context and detail he's provided

More like Albini is in I told you so mode. Like, serves you right for where you ended up, if you had listened to me you'd be lecturing in Melbourne too. Though it is some sort of tautology to basically note the ones losing the most money are the ones with the most money.

what abt the painting & sculpture industry

scare quotes or nixon impression

http://oi58.tinypic.com/t86pf9.jpg

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/kot/ct-second-city-never-sleeps-heather-whinna-steve-albini-20141211-18-column.html

Letters to Santa might bring to mind a school exercise, "like writing a letter to Santa asking for a new GI Joe or Barbie doll," says Albini, who spends most of the year engineering punk-rock records at his North Side studio or recording and playing with his band Shellac. "The reality is that these letters are usually from heads of household with nowhere to turn. What would it take for a grown-up to write a letter to Santa to ask for help? It's not casual want. These are people who have no support on earth taking a random shot. Those were the letters that broke my heart the most."

America is so sad

this mostly made me lol but i'm sure someone will find a way to empathize with this well-told tale of SA's overzealous hero worship
http://thetalkhouse.com/music/talks/marissa-paternoster-screaming-females-talks/

steve is a funny old cove:

http://thequietus.com/articles/18882-powell-vs-steve-albini

"I've always detested mechanized dance music, its stupid simplicity, the clubs where it was played, the people who went to those clubs, the drugs they took, the shit they liked to talk about, the clothes they wore, the battles they fought amongst each other... basically all of it, 100 percent hated every scrap."

Oh dear. Albini continued: "The electronic music I liked was radical and different, shit like the White Noise, Xenakis, Suicide, Kraftwerk, and the earliest stuff form Cabaret Voltaire, SPK and DAF. When that scene and those people got co-opted by dance/club music I felt like we'd lost a war. I detest club culture as deeply as I detest anything on earth. So I am against what you're into, and an enemy of where you come from".

seems so weird having such an entrenched position on this in 2015. unless he's just kidding around of course

"The electronic music I liked was radical and different, shit like the White Noise, Xenakis, Suicide, Kraftwerk, and the earliest stuff form Cabaret Voltaire, SPK and DAF"

^ ironically i can now only hear this in my head in the LFO Frequencies intro voice

I totally agree with him. In 1992, when I was 20 and didn't know shit and thought my opinion on others peoples' lives mattered to them and the world at large.

(Cool that he DGAF about the sample, though.)

That's a very odd way of responding to a sample request. Funny though!

can't figure out what war he is fighting here and why

i think there is something sorta charming about having this position in 2015

"Would you like butter or margarine on your toast, Mr Albini?"

*5-minute rant about the suffering of factory cows and the evils of the petroleum industry. Then:*
"IDGAF, whatever."