STEVE ALBINI

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.

steely dan are a super weird and singular band doing like "high art short story writer" stuff. being triggered by expensively produced studio polish after you exit your 20s seems like a rather underdeveloped stance... to me the analogy is being some kind of more "raw, honest" filmmaker who throws out all golden-era hollywood films as being aesthetically invalid because they were expensively made, including hitchcock or whoever.

I thought it was interesting in Kelefa Sanneh's book that he saw punk as kind of his formative ideological impulse that informed his latter genre-ist leanings. it makes me wonder about how other ppl can come through the same experience and latching themselves to certain tropes or cliches that develop from it, harden into orthodoxies, and never develop curiosity beyond what are ultimately aesthetic surfaces that have no necessary attachment to ideology

like, recording music a certain way as an ethical stance is 'interesting to me' but also has a limitation in terms of its transmissibility to people without your exact background

He's also openly accusing them of taking the lion's share of credit for the work of other musicians. That seems relevant to Albini's whole thing, being the guy who famously preferred to be credited as a "recording engineer," not a producer

I'd compare it to the Motown sound (orchestrated, correct) vs. the Stax sound (immediate and live).

Deep in the replies:

somehow i always end up talking to the one hipster at the party that hates the beatles
snoooooooooze 💤💤💤💤💤

— jenny lewis (@jennylewis) February 6, 2023

i think there's a solid connection between studio time being very expensive and gatekept, and the sound that ultimately emerges from that process, especially if you're a real outsider. but yeah at a certain point the outsider becomes the insider and the whole outside/inside binary seems kind of cynical and hypocritical. like, there's a connection between material process and aesthetics but it's far from one-to-one.

i wd simply not be provoked by a random Steve Albini quote in 2023

idk why exactly but i think it's fun to think about steve albini in 2023! like, this weird guy who seems to regard recording music as a kind of sin that has to be confessed still riding for this shit today. and then just kind of imagining the aging punk rockers vehemently nodding at being anti-steely dan, like fuck you dudes in your 30s, you're wrong! and it's ultimately a battle of the needy children. and hopefully donald fagen, bless him, isn't even aware of any of it.

it's fun to think about sure, he's just not pushing my buttons

does ian mackaye like steely dan? I wouldn't be surprised

recognizing that many things are not for you is not the same as insisting that anything other than G/B/D on indie labels is false, coupled with a gleeful contempt towards idioms that do not resemble (or in his view oppose) his preferred method, which is my point…I've never noticed unperson evincing an attitude as such…

1. a few years ago, he tweeted some shit wherein Spotify and/or some of the other streamers were being criticized, and he made a point to say that the major labels still sucked worse… my recollection was that major labels had no specific bearing on this topic, but in his mind, even the unprecedented usurious of Spotify and Big tech were no patch on major labels, as if it was still 1987…

2. it is very OTM that he and his ilk had a puritan self-righteousness inculcated by Maximum R&R and "the scene"…and yet I think almost any of his peers have moved on from that attitude and would have been hideously embarrassed by the full, proudly bigoted remark on jazz music —from 2015, no less! excerpted above…

3. his business practices and his belief in keeping costs down for clients who want or need that are beyond reproach…and yeah, he clearly likes winding people up, and I certainly fall for that pretty easily…

You know, Steve Albini is Steve Albini.

still one of my favorite replies pic.twitter.com/21eV0Q8a03

— Good Steely Dan Takes (@baddantakes) February 6, 2023

Which seems glib to say, but at a certain point I just accepted that he’s a prickly dude who’s annoying in certain ways but has mellowed out in others. (Seek out some of his zine writing from the 80s! It ain’t pretty, he’d probably disavow that now.) He kinda is who he is and I decided to just accept that and love Shellac with a full heart, because it makes life happier.

For an example closer to home - and rest his soul, not to rankle anyone - Morbs’ posts used to drive be absolutely nuts. His proclamations, his responses; to me, a conflict-averse guy, he was a desert cactus. But at some point I just embraced that Morbs was Morbs.

I want to know when and why albini went to christiania, it seems like the total opposite of his vibe, I just picture him scowling at all the crusties and dealers the entire time

ha, I kind of agree with the stance on record labels, they are after all on the other side of the deals with streaming services that cheat artists out of money, and they are the ones that are supposed to be representing the artists!

more power to anyone who can extract joy from his music it must take some serious alchemy

1. a few years ago, he tweeted some shit wherein Spotify and/or some of the other streamers were being criticized, and he made a point to say that the major labels still sucked worse… my recollection was that major labels had no specific bearing on this topic, but in his mind, even the unprecedented usurious of Spotify and Big tech were no patch on major labels, as if it was still 1987…

This seems accurate? Part of the context where I’ve seen him make this argument was about Eve 6’s royalties, like they get nothing from streaming because of unrecouped advances from 1996. Label deals are still pretty bad for most artists AFAICT.

Layer that with the sweetheart deals majors made with Spotify to get chunks of cash that completely bypassed artists, hurting their own artists and every indie.

Yeah, I mean, Spotify might not pay much, if anything, but no one is in debt to Spotify, and Spotify does not own the rights to anyone's music.

It’s good to pay attention to Albini when he records cool stuff and makes cool albums and wins at poker; it’s really bad to pay attention to him when he’s criticising music he doesn’t like, because he’s awful at it, has always been awful at it, and it makes him look stupid.

the fact that he was a major talking head in the wax trax doc is so interesting to me. im really curious of the politics of that haha. what would jim nash say ?

cretins like Eddie Trunk

...who last night, the very same night BONNIE FUCKING RAITT won one of grammy's biggest awards and STEVIE FUCKING WONDER rocked the fuck out of "higher ground," tweeted that he fast forwarded thru the entire show because he didn't see any "rock" or "guitars." fuck every one of those cretins indeed.

(ok, back to your regularly scheduled discussion.)

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)?

the late dr. morbius

xpost
the Grammys just need to give the band UFO a lifetime achievement award and he might shut up

I want to know when and why albini went to christiania, it seems like the total opposite of his vibe, I just picture him scowling at all the crusties and dealers the entire time

most european bookers sort of reflexively book bands at christiania because they've been putting on shows forever and you can pull a good crowd at the main club there. it's probably a lot less shocking now as a place post-legalization in the u.s. (and post their heavy crackdown on harder drugs, though I assume that waxes & wanes) but prior to the present age it was pretty shocking to pull in & like everybody is white guys with dreads smoking giant bombers in the open. anyhow the main venue there was hosted pretty much every non-mainstream genre you can think of, tour routings for indie bands are kind of like trade routes and it's a stop.

jenny lewis opinions? not a high bar i guess

You are wrong to expect this.

How is veronica moser wrong to expect “minor curiosity and interest in genres they are not daily immersed in”? Isn’t that just basic intellectual curiosity? For that matter, how does your example of trawling through Cecil Taylor’s entire oeuvre constitute “minor curiosity”? For me personally, I never had much use for much of what is considered metal (Black Sabbath’s first four records excepted), but realized the other day that I hadn’t knowingly heard an Iron Maiden song. So I checked out a few, more-or-less dug them, and will probably leave it at that. I had some minor curiosity about them, and didn’t need to listen to their entire catalog to satisfy it. I think we’ve all done that to varying degrees, and I doubt we’d be on this board if we hadn’t.

I recall unperson wrote a piece rating Britney Spears album covers(?)... surely even that qualifies!

ftr the youths have a more developed sense of Minor Curiosity than my generation did -- thanks to modes of distribution.

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.

map otm

Punk rock dudes recording sessions of themselves
They don't give a fuck about anybody else

Yet the refrain would still be LOST WAGES

the thing about his Dan/Boz Scaggs/etc hate is it's just reflexive punk stuff, it's not really more complicated than that. Fuck that music the yuppies like, that kinda thing. It's pretty immune to self-interrogation is you let it bake in too long.

^^^ otm

Learn to work the Travis Bean
Play just what I feel

Yeah, as demonstrated, I doubt Albini, smart guy that knows about music, could clearly put into words his hate for Steely Dan without describing something that is not Steely Dan. He hates the *idea* of Steely Dan. It's just punk reactionary goofing.

I think you can predict Albini liking or not liking an artist's music on purely ideological grounds. Stevie Wonder fought a valiant struggle to wrestle back rights to his catalog from Motown, thus Albini likes Stevie Wonder. Rush were a bunch of quasi-Ayn Rand-heads so he hates Rush. He flip-flopped on hating Trans Am when they decided not to let their music be used in a commercial. I think he posted something like, "Hey guys, I like Trans Am now!"

Did Steely Dan ever stump for Reagan or anything like that?

Weird that this prick hasn’t been cancelled yet

99 new answers

Sixty-Year-Old Man Demonstrates Shitposting Prowess

i mean there are any number of things you can bash this guy for but please stop taking his tossed-off steely dan takes so deeply seriously

is the word 'cancel' ironic or not?

do you have special glasses that make 97% of the thread invisible when you post

They're two entities who take recorded sound very seriously, but have entirely opposite philosophies around it; why should this antipathy shock anyone?

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

― Unfairport Convention (PBKR),

why bother? everyone knows it's Pavement.

great posts, map.