STEVE ALBINI

omg this dude is so boring

Im a fan of him as like a pundit weirdly but a lot of ppl here are bending over backwards to make someone who doesn’t fit into the current discursive paradigm seem like they fit in lol

Like, he’s clearly been super wrong and the test of time has embarrassed him but ppl want his framing of shit to remain righteous & central so they rewrite everything

xp Give me a break with "obvious thrill". How could you know that? He should have said "n-bomb" in his messages, but his words could easily be interpreted as a person repeating to convey the offense/shock he felt as a captive audience in the situation. I don't care one way or the other, but to say he experienced a thrill from writing it is projection.

― beard papa, Wednesday, October 13, 2021 12:34 PM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Lol I’m sorry, no

Give me a break with "obvious thrill". How could you know that?

https://www.discogs.com/artist/2431412-Run-Nigger-Run

Stoically and sternly turning in my track with Nash Kato to Tellus intending to convey the offense and shock I feel as a captive audience in a situation

I remember seeing him talk about House Music (maybe in that Grohl series?) and say that even though he dismissed it at the time he can now see that it was as revolutionary as punk rock

Have y'all seen him in "The Art of Sampling"? Has he made a similar mea culpa with the dumbass opinions he made there?

Sometimes he's still right though

"Pop music is for children and idiots" - my chat with Steve Albini for @2ser:https://t.co/Kor1oBOIEI pic.twitter.com/4qBzisI8td

— Longform Editions (@longform_ed) December 8, 2015

I think it’s fair to say he’s not really in a position to have the Dave chappelle conversation considering

Have y'all seen him in "The Art of Sampling"? Has he made a similar mea culpa with the dumbass opinions he made there?

I love the editing in there where he's complaining that sampling requires no talent or ability to play an instrument and it cuts to Shock G playing the piano.

I love the editing in there where he's complaining that sampling requires no talent or ability to play an instrument and it cuts to Shock G Piano Man playing the piano.

― joygoat, Wednesday, October 13, 2021 3:00 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

xps holy shit at that compilation track

This is still funny (and the track in question is great).

https://pitchfork.com/news/61410-steve-albini-e-mail-about-how-much-he-hates-dance-music-turned-into-billboard-advertisement/

I had the same 'ewwww dance music' attitude as Albini when I was 16 and going to ska-punk shows every weekend, hearing it from a 60 year old guy who's been involved in recording for forty years just seems extra pathetic.

I am absolutely the wrong audience for this kind of music. 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...

Bob Weston is a big dance music fan. I wonder if he has ever tried to entice Steve out to a night of dancing?

Steve Albini dances to Abba

There’s something about the way he maps out these concepts of “war” and “this music is the enemy of what I believe in” that is just ridiculously OTT, as if those making such music are equally invested in dogma and making taste some sort of aesthetic battleground where everyone wants to tell everyone else why this or that music is the worse thing ever, and here’s why (at length)

His whole thing of “it’s not for me, but here’s 50 reasons why I absolutely hate it and consider it the grossest thing possible” is zzzz

“The electronic music I liked was radical and different”….ok Steve

Big Black and "Work That Mutha Fucker" are very close on a continuum to me.

Big Black and "Work That Mutha Fucker" are very close on a continuum to me.

Same!

“The electronic music I liked was radical and different”….ok Steve - this is / was such a common attitude back in the day. i had SO many friends who just couldn't make the leap when House music arrived, perhaps because it was popular and also as they felt it wasn't radical. It was of course way more radical than a lot of electronic music they were into, and a lot of electronic music they loved then went down a cul de sac of no return.

This will sound stupid and reductive, and I’m not defining SA or haters of dance music, but:

I wonder how much of this just comes down to “I don’t like to dance and as such this music is confusing to me”

(Note: I do not like to dance and do enjoy some electronic/dance music)

Defending, not defining

I wonder how much of this just comes down to “I don’t like to dance and as such this music is confusing to me”

This was exactly the line Chicago radio dj Steve Dahl used in his vicious anti-disco rants in 1979, which culminated in the Disco Demolition record burning/riot at a White Sox game.

the world has never recovered

I wonder how much of this just comes down to “I don’t like to dance and as such this music is confusing to me”

This was definitely an obstacle for me until I bought a drum machine and started trying to make electronic music - no one can see you dance poorly to your own 808.

You’ll dance to anything, milo

I kid. A Dead Milkmen lyric

_I wonder how much of this just comes down to “I don’t like to dance and as such this music is confusing to me”_


This was definitely an obstacle for me until I bought a drum machine and started trying to make electronic music - no one can see you dance poorly to your own 808.

i’d respect him a lot more if he just proactively did some ‘splaining rather than (condescendingly) being charmed by people outing him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLr5EXyoQCE

_I am absolutely the wrong audience for this kind of music. 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..._

Oh sorry, I just traced the comment back to the song in question. Lmao, Steve.

I always wondered about that last bit in particular "the battles they fought amongst each other", as opposed to the complete lack of conflict and backbiting in indie rock circles?

my favorite part of that has always been his reference to Xenakis before lamenting "When that scene and those people got co-opted by dance/club music I felt like we'd lost a war." yeah, it was really sad when dance music co-opted the Xenakis scene. we all shed a tear.

Guy’s eternally narrow view of what counts as “worthy” music is kinda sad at his age. I have to imagine some great affront happened to him at a dance club that he will never, ever forget.

I don’t think his public reckonings with wokeness have been bad though on the whole. Been unusually insightful and honest when it comes to these things kinds of things, particularly for someone from that space and age. He was from birth a cantankerous old man and he’ll forever just Not Get certain things, but I don’t doubt he’s trying.

I'm not Captain Save a House but I actually remember Powell sounding closer to the noisy artists that Albini was praising than the 'stupid simplistic' club music he probably had in mind. I imagine he didn't actually listen.

I did discover Powell bc of this incident so there's that.

I'm not Captain Save a House but I actually remember Powell sounding closer to the noisy artists that Albini was praising than the 'stupid simplistic' club music he probably had in mind. I imagine he didn't actually listen.

xpost

Captain Save A House heh.

I’d be fine if I never had to listen to that track Insomnia again (Powell has his moments tho). But Albini was name checking early Cabaret Voltaire while poo-pooing the song? It sounds quite similar.

That whole Odd Future thing tho, my god. Maybe there’s some grey area about his intent there but that’s a pretty fucked up hill to die on in 2021.

Also Circa1916 otm and yes Al Jourgenson may well have turned more than a few peeps away from electronic music. Big Black opened my ears to Ministry tho so screw ‘em both.

That’s funny to me as I don’t think there is a huge gap between Big Black and Revolting Cocks and post-Twitch Ministry!

Narcissism of small differences etc.

Well yea I mean “stigmata” was like a flip of “racer x”

In Chris Connelly’s book he puts it the other way — says Steve albini’s “piously heterosexual” indie rock threw down the gauntlet in a way that had a trickle down effect on jourgensen that lasted for years (sort of, it seems to me, implying albini made jourgensen kind of insecure and it explains his push toward metal)

A journalist took Albini's Twitter declaration "I'm overdue for a discussion about my role in inspiring 'edgelord' shit" and asked him for an interview. The results are worth a read.

I admit that I was deaf to a lot of women’s issues at the time, and that’s on me. Within our circles, within the music scene, within the musical underground, a lot of cultural problems were deemed already solved — meaning, you didn’t care if your friends were queer. Of course women had an equal place, an equal role to play in our circles. The music scene was broadly inclusive. So for us, we felt like those problems had been solved. And that was an ignorant perception.

That’s the way a lot of straight white guys think of the world — they think that it requires an active hatred on your part to be prejudiced, bigoted or to be a participant in white supremacy. The notion is that if you’re not actively doing something to oppress somebody, then you’re not part of the problem. As opposed to quietly enjoying all of the privilege that’s been bestowed on you by generations of this dominance.

...

In our circles, nothing was off limits. So, it took a while for me to appreciate that using abusive language in a joking fashion was still using abusive language. And it was genuinely shocking when I realized that there were people in the music underground who weren’t playing when they were using language like that and who weren’t kindred spirits. They were, in fact, awful, and only masquerading as intellectuals. That was one of many wake-up moments.

...

That was the fundamental failure of my perception. It’s been a process of enlightenment for me to realize and accept that my very status as a white guy in America is the product of institutional prejudices, that I’ve enjoyed the benefits of them, passively and actively. And I’m responsible for accepting my role in the patriarchy, and in white supremacy, and in the subjugation and abuse of minorities of all kinds.

...

I’m less concerned than I was 30 years ago about trying to make an experience extreme. Specifically regarding the anti-woke comics today, the uncomfortable truths that they’re expressing are genuinely, almost exclusively, childish restatements of the status quo. Or they’re pining for sustaining the status quo that they feel is threatened somehow. I can’t think of a more tragic or trivial comic premise than: Things should stay the way they are. That’s the absence of creativity — it’s a void rather than a creative notion. It’s fundamentally conservative and anti-progress. And I strain at finding humor in the idea that things should not get better.

I wish that I knew how serious a threat fascism was in this country. At that time [the 1980s under Reagan], there was a phone-in hotline for the America First committee that you could call; they were on the South Side of Chicago, and it would play a racist diatribe as the phone message. Everyone in our circle was dismissive of those as being these ridiculous country bumpkins. There was a joke made about the Illinois Nazis in The Blues Brothers. That’s how we all perceived them — as this insignificant, unimportant little joke. I wish that I knew then that authoritarianism in general and fascism specifically were going to become commonplace as an ideology.

That was interesting, thanks.

Seconded

thirded.

and i'm sure there may be some skepticism but in this year of lowered expectations, nice to at least see someone with a problematic past not revert to the "uh oh cancel culture, folks!" response

he has been working to redeem his past for a long time.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-i-havent-had-a-conventional-christmas-in-20-years_b_8614568

also supporting women. he took my ex wife on the road with shellac as tour support on a uk tour a few years back. she was more or less completely unknown and it was a life changing experience for her.

that's great!

That's a really good interview, he's obviously thought about all of this a lot and seems very sincere.