STEVE ALBINI

He won his second World Series of Poker bracelet last night, taking first out of 773 players. $1,500 entry fee led to $196,000.

pic.twitter.com/vzWCXWmIe4

— steve albini (@electricalWSOP) June 18, 2022

That'll buy a lot of Travis Bean guitars.

Or go towards the staff at Electrical's take-home.

presumably gets his poker face from bands asking “how did you like that?” after a take

presumably gets his poker face from bands asking “how did you like that?” after a take

10/10!

It was a HORSE tournament too, that’s awesome

xxp hahaha kudos

Steve's 24-hour Letters to Santa fundraiser is livestreaming until 6 p.m. Central on Tuesday 12/20.

Scroll down for the music schedule -- Fred Armisen in a few minutes (9 p.m. Central), Will Oldham at 5 a.m., David Pajo at 10 a.m., Nina Nastasia 4:20 p.m., lots more in between.

The funniest thing about the fundraiser is that when you buy a ticket iirc you don't get to pick when during the 24-hours you get to be seated.

Bummer they moved it from Second City. I just don't understand how anyone could sit in the seats at Constellatioon for more than a couple hours. My back hurts thinking about it.

er, Constellation

It used to be that the ticket allowed you entry at any point in the 24 hours. Have seen some great acts (Jason Molina, Oldham, Nina Nastasia, Shellac, John D.) at odd hours. Never tried to make it in during the Tweedy prime time.

I snagged tickets to one of Tweedy's May all-request charity shows. He can be pretty funny.

He has not budged an inch since 1985/86, a time when he inveighed against "horrible beatbox rap" to John Leland in Spin… going forward to eight years ago, when in consenting to let an electronic musician use something he did, simply HAD to let it be known that he still considers dance music to be dogshit and exclusively the province of Al Jourgenson and other insufficiently punk rock Chicagoans he disliked in the 1980s… there was also a guy from Tortoise talking about that he was bewildered unto indignation re: house music (as pure an underground musical phenomenon as there has ever been) and remixes…

in my experience, it was very commonplace for his ilk in the 1980s to sneer at all black music as showbiz, sellout, pandering pop crap… has he ever evinced enthusiasm for any black music ever? other than the Bad Brains or Mick Collins? Does he like Chuck Berry and Little Richard, or jazz music? Or does those acts sound too much like the SNL band?

he is a big bill withers fan

Not always a fan of Steven Hyden, but I thought this was pretty lol in response to one of Albini's recent mini-rants:

You're a 60-year-old poker player from the Midwest. You're more Steely Dan than punk at this point. https://t.co/nVjhEKOhNG

— Steven Hyden (@Steven_Hyden) February 6, 2023

Saw 2 tweets mentioning this . One was from 2015

Steve Albini:
"[Jazz] is a signifier for musical adulthood. To embrace jazz is to don a kind of graduation cap, signifying a broadening of tastes outside 'mere' rock. This ostentatious display of 'sophistication' is an insult & I find the graduation cappers transparent & tedious

— giant fossil (@dolgthvari) October 13, 2020

My all-time favorite Steve Albini rant. In which he compares jazz to a squalid, drug-filled string of alleys pic.twitter.com/tkrzmfXOJC

— Zach Schonfeld (@zzzzaaaacccchhh) September 29, 2015

like a lot of people, albini's weakness is that he has a narrow set of aesthetic preferences that he treats as Musical Law

My girlfriend got me into soul music, certainly more than I ever have been, Bill Withers in particular

https://www.imposemagazine.com/features/an-interview-with-steve-albini

like a lot of people, albini's weakness is that he has a narrow set of aesthetic preferences that he treats as Musical Law

Nah. He has a narrow set of aesthetic preferences that he brings to bear professionally and occasionally mentions on Twitter, and other people treat them as Musical Law because they really like Shellac or the Pixies or whatever. I wouldn't have wanted to hear a Ramones album engineered by Rudy Van Gelder, would you? (Don't lie just for rhetorical points, please.)

Anyway, he's not quite as hard-line as he claims to be. He's recorded an album — a good one! — for Mats Gustafsson's The Thing, and even played guitar on a Ken Vandermark record once.

tbh i do now want to hear that ramones album

ha i was just searching actually i was like he HAD to have worked with Vandermark at some point

i mean i'm a big fan of him, and generally it seems like he's sort of the inverse of a lot of musical figures, the people who have worked the most closely with him tend to speak the most highly of him as opposed to his public image

I've interviewed him — he's smart and self-aware. And funny. People always seem to take everything he says super-seriously, like he's some Old Testament prophet.

It could be argued that without these narrow-minded blind spots he might not have had the same focus to establish a uniquely identifiable sound. If he suddenly decided Steely Dan sounds amazing and added some of their studio methods to his own, it would immediately stop sounding like a Steve Albini recording.

I know discourse these days is intentionally set around drawing battle lines but, ftr, it is possible to generally like Albini and think he's a good guy (his charity work for one, is really respectable) but also think it's funny when his twitter persona gets punctured a little.

I remember a Big Black interview in melody maker where he was asked what his thoughts were on hendrix - the interviewer suggested that albini might be a fan due to hendrix using his guitar as some some of noise weapon - and albini's response was something along the lines of eh, he's terrible, anyone can play that widdly-widdly guitar wank shit

Remember it well!

I was sixteen at the time and very impressionable and in thrall to US noise rock, and even I thought that was one of the dumbest things I'd ever read

I wonder if Woke Albini still has all these notions about blues, jazz and house music.

I never got why American indie musicians of Albini's generation(ish) were so hung up on punk. I remember at the time thinking why are they still going on about punk?

I could explain at length but am on phone, basically they had all come out of the USHC scene which was obsessed w/ "authenticity"

I kinda like Boz Skaggs tho

— steve albini (@electricalWSOP) February 6, 2023

JJ is vocalist for the hardcore band Daddy's Boy:

fun fact jon was wearing his aja sweatpants when we recorded with steve and it was a Topic of Conversation (in a collegial taking the piss sort of way) https://t.co/B8GSmMzCK7

— jj skolnik (@modernistwitch) February 6, 2023

yall wanna think for a moment he might be trolling jeez just a bit about steely dan

steely dan is also the whitest music imaginable

whitest? not sure what that means

I can imagine whiter

this is massive Skrewdriver erasure

When someone says something is "the whitest [x] imaginable" I think it's fair to ask them to name "the blackest [x] imaginable." So whaddya got?

Venom

i don't accept your rhetorical challenge sorry

people really get mad though when you come for steely dan

It's a sad state of affairs when musicians like Chuck Rainey and Bernard Purdie are forced into making the whitest music imaginable

I think it's just his opinion as a self-professed "non-dilettante." Now, I don't agree with him about, say, jazz's supposed failings or indulgences (in his opinion), but just as I wouldn't expect a baseball fan to like football, despite them both being sports, I wouldn't expect a rock fan to like jazz (or country or rap or anything else, and variations on vice versa).

What's sort of weird is that he is a producer/engineer, so should have an interest in staying at least open minded enough to attract different projects, but I guess he isn't interested in that. Compare that to, say, I dunno, Rick Beato, who every once in a while on his channel goes through the top 10 songs and offers commentary. He's the first to admit when something is not to his taste, but he says he wants to stay open to new ideas so that if he's ever put in the position to work with someone in those musical fields he at least has a base knowledge. But if ever there was a person *not* open to new ideas it's Albini, a dude who knows what works for him and doesn't feel the need to go beyond that, which is I guess truly the definition of a non-dilettante.

xxpost well when you come at them in the whitest way possible...

https://www.complex.com/music/2017/09/hip-hop-reacts-to-death-of-steely-dan-co-founder-walter-becker

he's a fall fan, including the late 90's to early 00's material it seems, so he's right on my book

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8maHil8GKY

liberalism is the zeotgeist. its always the tendency for its radicalization isn't it?

steely dan is also the whitest music imaginable

― a (waterface), Monday, February 6, 2023 12:26 PM (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah this isn't even remotely true

I remain baffled by the fact that this pitiful edgelord continues to get a pass from many of the same people who gleefully go for the throats of other boomer and Gen X icons with past crimes nowhere near as severe or despicable as Albini's. Dude has become the equivalent of everybody's racist friend who "doesn't really mean it, he just has a weird sense of humor, you just need to get to know him, he's actually a sweetheart, also he has so many black friends." Fuck this guy

His whole reiterated hatred of house and pop in the mid-2010s also made me suspicious - as a mere observer who found Albini insufferable anyway - there may be a troubling underlying context for it all. Does the man like black music at all? But apparently he has worked with black musicians (I don't pay close attention).

Anyway fuck Albini