STEVE ALBINI

Luke Haines?

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Ian M.'s been a vegetarian for awhile and a parent for a few years so maybe he could do some interesting blog posts

in some recent henry rollins interview (on wtf i think) he was talking about how he basically hates the whole 'eating' thing and mostly eats oatmeal.

The only time I have ever followed a musician's recipe was when I made spicy bean burgers from Richard Youngs' vegan cookbook. They were horrible btw and my family hated them.

Please tell me that somewhere in the comments on the Albini blog, Michael Gerard has complained about the quality of his hamburgers.

Man, I get this all part of Albini's cranky old man persona, but I call bullshit on this (from his Gothamist interview):

I’m an exceptionally lucky man in that I’ve never heard a note of Lady Gaga’s music and you could sit her on my lap and I wouldn’t recognize her. I know that she’s a cultural force at the moment but I’m quite satisfied in having dodged that one. It’s like a truck drove by spraying shit from a nozzle over the entire neighborhood and I happened to be under an awning. You know?

I bet he has a Lady Gaga poster above his bed.

Did you know he was a poker ace?

Yeah; he can get dangerously close to "the guy at parties who loudly tells people 'I don't even OWN a TV'" at times.

His whole "You know what I can authoritatively declare sucks? This thing I've never heard/experienced!" schtick is getting old(er).

Someone needs to tell him that shouting this kind of thing hasn't earned anyone "cred" since at least 1995.

love this guy--he's prolly not worried about his cred either at this point. he's having a laugh you know?

Too bad it's not a funny laugh.

i'm going to drive by his house and play lady gaga really loud.

lol this is a quality zing imo

I remember when I saw Shellac last year play at Bell House that it was pretty striking to see a band live that was playing really direct, aggressive music that wasn’t trying to be pretty or poppy. It just seems from my perspective that there aren’t many bands that are making dark or ugly music anymore. Well, it sort of depends on the idiom really. There’s a lot of sort of grungy metal and punk stuff where every single band is trying to make aggressive music.
Yeah, I guess I’m referring more to the... Bands that play at the clubs you go to.

not a zing imo

also Albini is awesome

He'll go through what the rest of us went through a few summers ago: "Bad Romance" will be playing in the background somewhere, and someone will tell him that it's Lady Gaga, and he'll have the thought "Oh, that's Lady Gaga? I hear that at the supermarket, etc."

getting mad at Steve Albini for being cranky about pop music seems like an eternally losing bet, like getting mad at Henry Rollins for going to the gym

I'm not mad at him, I accept it as part of his "thing", but I don't buy this particular one at all.

man if you don't get some lols from that Gothamist interview then you are crankier than ol' Steve A, that shit is full of guffaws

My brother actually played in a pretty well known ska band and he claimed that ska is more popular now than it ever has been. Oh, which band was it?
They were called Mephiskapheles. I was going to say please let it be Mephiskapheles. Was he horn?

okay lol

I'm not mad at him, I accept it as part of his "thing", but I don't buy this particular one at all.

really? you seem kind of furious at him, man

no, I'm more lol @ him

this is all better if you imagine he was wearing a Hello Kitty cardigan during the interview

So this is an interview for Gothamist, which is a New York-centric website.
I believe you.
Do you have any New York stories that you’d care to share?
No.

lol

seriously, as a guy who thankfully does not have to interview as many musicians as much as he used to, i appreciate anyone who provides good copy, even if it's at the interviewers expense. at least if you ask albini an asinine or boring question you're going to get a zing out of it.

I wouldn't recognize Gaga either, but then I don't recognize ILXors I know unless I see em at least once every 6 weeks.

saw Shellac for the first time last week and was genuinely surprised at how good they were. stage banter itself worth the price of admission.

yeah shellac rules, i've seen then...god...over dozen times at least

also Albini is awesome

― great zing-balls (crüt), Monday, October 3, 2011 1:49 PM (9 hours ago) Bookmark

pity most of their albums since AAP are patchy as hell

really? i like terraform the best by far

greyhound was pretty patchy though

how does he know shes shit if he hasnt heard a note?

dunno

though sometimes i feel pretty weird cuz i could say the same thing about a lot of big hits

at home i listen to records and at work i listen to spotify and my ipod and in the car i listen to college radio and sports talk and the local classic rock station, so i haven't heard, for example, "party rock anthem" by lmao

That I can understand, but I honestly feel like its really difficult to be that unaware of Gaga in 2011 - she's a special case. I mean, there are thinkpieces all over the fucking place about her, she's in several different ad campaigns, her songs pop up everywhere, she's the closest things to a cultural phenomenon we've got right now. And, given Albini's past remarks, its hard not to imagine him saying that to get a rise out of people.

Hard not to imagine it working, as we've proved.

Sure, doesn't make it less of a pose if true though. Don't get me wrong, I love Shellac and I love a lot of what Albini's done, just rmde at his schtick at this point.

I actually do buy his ignorance, and if it weren't for a supermarket situation as mentioned above, I'd have no idea what she sounds like. Still am only aware of one bit from one of her songs. It's really easy these days to not listen to the radio, watch regular tv, etc. without being a hermit. Spotify+Netflix+Pandora etc. as noted above.

how does he know shes shit if he hasnt heard a note?

do you really have to ask?

I only know one Lady Gaga song and only know what she looks like because of the video for that song...Telephone?

there are thinkpieces all over the fucking place about her

i'm perfectly happy for albini to keep churning out these uh, albini-isms. dude seems destined never to mellow, and i'd argue that he simultaneously serves as a luminary for the cantankerous inner cynic in all of us and a bit of a reminder to keep our pessimism in check, so as to not take things quite as far as he has. in other words, the consistency of his message has been kind of comforting over the years and a rather noble counterpoint to the voice of those who take most everything at face value.

He should get a free pass forevermore for his Santa escapades with his wife.

OMG what are his Santa escapades? I thought I was pretty filled in on Albini's exploits!

he did the nicest, most awesome thing for my friends who are huge shellac fans and was super gracious and nice and polite that I see him alot differently

Oh I have no doubt that he's a really nice dude, heard that a lot actually.

he gave our chalet their beer stash at ATP one year, claiming they were "too old" to want to drink it. They were in the chalet next door to us.

I once saw him silenced by a heckler, at the Garage in London.

He was introducing - I think - My Black Ass with a long spiel about Satchel Paige being the greatest ball player white people never saw play. Someone shouted: "What about Geoffrey Bloody Boycott, eh?"

Albini was baffled, started laughing and told the heckler: "Sir, you have the advantage."