STEVE ALBINI

i like you less every time you post

also, for the love of God, and of all His children, and of His grand creation, its splendor, its radiance, its indescribable sweetness -- in the name, I say, of all that is good and holy in this world: new board description

no i get it JCLC - i'm not saying that i don't have problems with stuff he says, but people read one thing and all of a sudden the perception is that he's vampire bill maher, like i read the red hand files quite often and he's not always going on about that stuff at all.

but i know the stuff you're talking about and he can be lazy as a thinker for sure. but i think it's unfair to characterize as the sum total of what he's about. (and obviously dealing with that much grief is never completely dignified for anyone, it's a messy thing)

or like i dunno sometimes when you're in a dark place it's also easy to start caring about other stuff to avoid thinking about the real stuff

Maybe it’s not a giant shock to see a white Australian dude slide rightward in his 60s?

and obviously dealing with that much grief is never completely dignified for anyone, it's a messy thing

otm

that Cave piece you posted is really good UMS. He's similar to Albini in that he seems willing to talk about stuff in an open way and reflect on past mistakes and how his attitudes have changed, and that's good even if I may not personally agree with everything they say

I've read Cave's comments on cancel culture before. No, I don't like them, but I think he's reacting more to the toxic underbelly of the internet than what most people would consider a good example of cancel culture.

Forget the name, having a system of calling bad actors out that actually sees material consequences is an absolute necessity. and despite many wailings about its destructive harms, we still haven't achieved it. powerful people feel mild discomfort, sometimes even surge in popularity due to reactionary folk who view holding people accountable as an unpardonable sin. the people who wind up suffering actual material harm from organized mobs on the internet are the same people 'cancel culture' is meant to empower. Women, minorities, LGBTQ+ folk peppered with death threats, doxxing, etc. it still happens.

so on that end, no, I don't have a lot of patience for people whinging about 'cancel culture'.

What I suspect Cave is referring to, otoh, is not that (or at least not primarily that), but some of its less defensible usages. People who go crate digging into people's very distant pasts (i.e. teenage years) to find mild offenses to encourage people not to support them now, regardless of whether they're the same person or have even proactively owned up to and disavowed these views. and then there's the purity policing, like people swooping in to say "you saw THAT movie? but it had a key grip that was anti-semitic" as some people do.

but tbh, I haven't really seen many instances (outside of Doja Cat) where such campaigns gained any real traction, and even that one fizzled out fast. just view it as "toxic people looking for cheap likes and retweets". it's definitely not the norm, nor does it typically result in real harm. so using it as the face of cancel culture and objecting due to things like that is sort of bad faith.

but he also seems to take issue with the idea of people feeling as if they can speak in any manner possible to somebody because they are 'right', and tbh i'm a lot more sympathetic there. I've saw someone who was severely depressed about the state of the world and made the unfortunate statement "we deserve this" when one of the many bad things happened in America last year, and being told "fuck you, kill yourself if you feel that badly, leave everyone else out of it", and this being cheered on as an appropriate response. this affects not celebrities but everyday people.

I don't believe in tone policing, as harsh reactions to things I said in my 20s were how I learned my words hurt people and that I needed to consider what I was saying or even believing. but some of the toxicity is well out of bounds in proportion to what the other person said, and it's not coming from strangers, but people who know each other IRL where the shit is likely to be heavily internalized.

I can definitely see how grief would perhaps play into these views as well.

My wife hates Steely Dan so much she’s starting a fan group called the Albini Babies

— Jason Isbell (@JasonIsbell) February 7, 2023

Hmm.

swear to God one of my fav bands but Twitter is gonna make me hate Steely Dan by the end of the week

are these the two extremes of the white dude muso spectrum?

jacob collier and gg allin; both suck

your mistake is thinking there are only two extremes

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/24/Vanilla_Ice-To_the_Extreme_%28album_cover%29.JPG

But you could say that Steely Dan represents white dudes who appropriate black music
and Albini represents white dudes who think authenticity means removing all traces of black influence from your music

swear to God one of my fav bands but Twitter is gonna make me hate Steely Dan by the end of the week

If you need your faith restored, read any of Becker's letters to Jann Wenner, Wes Anderson, et al.

Seeing recent headlines about Paul Schrader dissing The Last of Us (and the Sight & Sound Poll)--same Albini Energy there.

"Dominion sucked"

But you could say that Steely Dan represents white dudes who appropriate black music

please explain how they do this any more egregiously than literally any other predominantly white rock band of this era

Yes, please.

you realize that "represents" means they are not the only ones who did this

"ha ha, these people I cannot stop trolling say the 'the dan,'" says the be-fedoraed midwestern neo-puritan, despite the fact that as a dorky cub reporter for the Helena Hog Testicle (or whatever the paper was) he referred to the corporate rock band he loved in a live review as "the Halen."

Keep a movin; Dan
Don't you listen to him, Dan

What are his thoughts on the Lt. Dan Band?

No legs

One of the oddest early Albini raves I'd read was for UB40. Were they weird noise reggae before red red wine?

https://i0.wp.com/www.swanfungus.com/blog/matter1/matter_7.jpg

first UB40 album and adjacent singles is neither weird nor noise but it is excellent in a way they moved away from when the hits got bigger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKEqGcES4Xw

I was scrolling thru Albini's tweets... they're sure a mix of poker, politics, and declaring popular music to be irredeemable. He won't even let his Reply Guys off the hook, when one of them's like – "Well, Steve, you must admit that it may be a gateway to blah blah..." NOPE

"I was 55 when my wife got me into soul music" Jesus christ! and Bill Withers? does he not know that he's the one black artist that shitty James Taylor/David Crosby, no dancing folkie singer-songwriter people can countenance? Not a good look for Mr. MX-80!

Not sure I'm entirely comfy with yr last point there, at least the way you phrased it

Hey, I thought he never drives 55!

uh

I mean, Bill Withers is great

totally great

Steve seems like

(1) pretty sound on politics, even on calling out people who you might expect him to be tribally loyal to
(2) boringly obsessed by a hobby I have no interest in
(3) conservative and reactionary about any music that isn't exactly his thing, in a way that can come across as pig ignorant, because it is pig ignorant.

These three traits were all very much the standard for most of the American punks I knew about 20 years ago. So I don't know why he's treated as some kind of special case.

xxxpost yeah, that post read creepily adjacent to Withers is 'not Black enough' as an artist to count or something. not that I'm defending Albini's musical tastes but idk maybe take another avenue to crack at them.

i'm down with all pro-Withers sentiment itt.

He makes good money off poker, hardly a hobby! Unless you meant recording albums by ex members of the Jesus Lizard et al.

he's stated in interviews electrical audio would have gone belly up without his poker winnings

neanderthal otm and that idea is as pernicious as anything albini has said

when's that UB40 piece from?

I think it's not "conservative and reactionary about any music that isn't exactly his thing" about music as much as it is the context around how the recording was made. Even in that thread, his dislike of Steely Dan has to do with how it got made, related to his general perspective on how major-label albums get made (see The Problem with Music and also the ethical choice to take a flat fee on In Utero rather than points).

Also, he followed up the tweet by saying he was riffing on Laura Jane Grace's tweet about being the kind of punk who hates football.

CaAL otm

Yeah I'd say "conservative and reactionary about any music that isn't his thing" would seem often spot on e.g. "I detest club culture as deeply as I detest anything on earth."

September 1983 xxxpost

https://swanfungus.com/2008/11/matter-music-magazine-volume-1-number-5-september-1983/

Interesting, that was about the time Labour of Love was released

his reactionary bit about big musical pronouncements is the antithesis of other grouchy old authenticity punk Henry Rollins, who really only seems to talk about music to praise things he likes these days.

^which is in general a good approach if you can manage to pull it off