STEVE ALBINI

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

Those Days Are Gone Forever: Steely Dan’s Grumpy Old White Guys’ Blues
Kevin Fellezs
Pages 265-286 | Published online: 25 Nov 2021

ABSTRACT
Steely Dan has always been a grumpy old guy’s band. In this essay, I listen to the ways in which Becker and Fagen turn their critical misandry on middle-aged American boomer generation males, adrift in vats of self-pity, marinating in melancholy and regret, and fermenting inexorably into elderly obsolescence. The duo masked their baleful assessment of white masculinist anxieties in music which blended jazz and rock sensibilities painstakingly polished to a smooth glossy aural sheen – all of which articulated an adultification of rock music culture in the 1970s.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19401159.2022.2008164?journalCode=rrms20

he has evidence!

I have evidence for both sides tho

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/my-high-school-crush-on-steely-dan

steely dan is also the whitest music imaginable

Feel like the whitest music imaginable is the poll that would end ILM and we have to do it.

as far as I can tell Albini's entire discography would fall somewhere between the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Barry Manilow

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

― sleeve, Monday, February 6, 2023 5:14 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah, this. in a lot of ways the u.s. was getting more reactionary and hostile, the music business was becoming more neoliberal, and punk rushed in to fill a void for a generation, it was a meaningful identity and then a means of living and was guarded with almost a religious zeal. like everything in america it was shaped by white supremacy. i think albini's set of tics reflect all of that, and also that maybe he's savvy enough to perform for his aging audience, it's probably good for business.

on steely dan, i hear primarily jewishness and the american songbook.

the most Soros-funded globalist music imaginable

the beatnik culture that steely dan emerges from was much more liberal than the options afforded to young men in the 80s, but that didn't translate into a more liberal environment after 1970 - things got worse. i think the anger from punk reflects that.

People should look at the complex link I posted

that's a cool article. one similar example i like in house music is anthony shakir building a 7 minute banger from the drum outro of "aja"

x-post good post from map up there! but yeah, in general feel us 80's punk stuff is overtly puritanical about authenticity, hard work, in a sort of a weird smash of protestant/diy feelings.

1. about anywhere from 20-10 years ago, one of his fondest hopes came to pass: rock music (he, much like cretins like Eddie Trunk, is focused on "rock music" when he chooses to go past "punk rock" —it's never "rock and roll") ceased to have a significant presence in mainstream culture. G/B/D became a niche activity, all the better for his ideological preferences: the kind of bands that are meaningful in his view are no longer on major labels and slug it out indie-style all the way: let the horrible pop, r&b and hip-hop miscreants prostitute themselves for the almighty dollar! if one can only afford to be in a touring and recording act due to an upper middle class safety net, so be it!

2. Is there such thing as a baseball fan who showers gleeful contempt on football or other sports, as if they are illegitimate (notwithstanding the injuries that render football often perilous for players)? I do expect fans of music, such as every single solitary poster on ILM/ILX, to have at least minor curiosity and interest in genres they are not daily immersed in, and above all I think people who, whether punk rock dead enders or goons like Trunk who are forever offended that hard rock and metal don't get enuff respect from the RRHoF, doggedly insist on the primacy of "rock music" are the ones deserving of contempt.

found a baseball fan like that:

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frenchclub71
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11 yr. ago

Just wanted to say that your description of baseball v. other sports (ie baseball v. trying to get an object into/through/across a line) on episode 37 of the Baseball Prospectus podcast almost kind of changed the way I look at sports.
25

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steve_albini
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11 yr. ago

Yeah, once you get into baseball other team sports just look like variations on a theme. Dogs fighting over a rag doll.
41

I do expect fans of music, such as every single solitary poster on ILM/ILX, to have at least minor curiosity and interest in genres they are not daily immersed in, and above all I think people who, whether punk rock dead enders or goons like Trunk who are forever offended that hard rock and metal don't get enuff respect from the RRHoF, doggedly insist on the primacy of "rock music" are the ones deserving of contempt.

You are wrong to expect this. I recognize that there are whole universes of music that are Not For Me, and I choose to spend my finite mortal lifespan exploring the music that is For Me in depth, rather than trying to find the one or two records in *insert genre of your choice here* that might appeal to me. And it goes both ways — I don't expect some 17-year-old Harry Styles fan to go trawling through Incantation's catalog, or Cecil Taylor's, to find something they like! Why should they?

the kind of bands that are meaningful in his view are no longer on major labels and slug it out indie-style all the way: let the horrible pop, r&b and hip-hop miscreants prostitute themselves for the almighty dollar! if one can only afford to be in a touring and recording act due to an upper middle class safety net, so be it!

i see this kind of heated pushback against albinism (lol, albini-ism?) from people on this board and used to agree with it wholesale, but now it's like.. there's a point here, just like albs has a point, but there's a problem of perspective and suitably issued blame, like it's not albini's fault that politically america is next-to-impossible for people to be creative and make art, in a slightly different set of ways every few decades or so.

Steely Dan does suck though

It's pretty common, but it still amazes me when a critic or well-regarded musician who is clearly well-versed in music proudly spouts their prejudice against a large part of it - jazz, classical, hip-hop, whatever. It just seems strange to me - I'm not sure I can think of anything analogous in other popular art forms. The closest may be the debate over Marvel films in cinema, but even then that's directed at a particular studio rather than a whole genre (plenty of comic book or graphic novel adaptations went on to great acclaim before Marvel blew up).

steely dan is also the whitest music imaginable

I can only assume predictive text intervened when you were typing Steeleye Span.

xp idk didn't painters do it all the time from like the 18th century onward? i think it's a part of the discourse of modernism.

He's said that, as an engineer, judgment/taste can only get in the way of the job -- he's there to record the act that paid him to be there. He's not a Rubin or Lanois curating his partnerships, he's not an arranger, and his ethos goes against shaping the band he's recording to fit his tastes.

And Steely Dan as the antithesis of punk has to do with putting chops and polish at the forefront.

my first exposure to steely dan was The Royal Scam, which was solidly misleading; right before they went to the far end of the slick and polished sound, they were at their most abrasive. really loved them right away though, still think they're pretty far out in front of a lot of bands and it's a shame that their brand of blackly comic lyricism hasn't really found an heir in an equivalently clever current act.

steely dan also the antithesis in being a storytelling band, sort of a noir narrator type thing, vs the angry acerbic venting. it's a bit more sad and wry, and while punk also has self-loathing, SD's presents itself in a different manner.

xps That is a good point. I kind of understand it in that context because it's part of the motivation to break from the past and do something innovative or even revolutionary. I guess that's comparable to what the French New Wave did - I don't think they were always right and they unfairly torched some great filmmakers who didn't deserve it, but it was part of the mentality that drove them to be revolutionary filmmakers.