RIP Steve Albini

[groovaholic]

Thanks, I'm aware. I still maintain it's stupid.

It is stupid - I agree with you.
Just wanted to provide context for folks who were less familiar.

I used to have a sticker from a San Francisco band called The Smut Peddlers on the front of my amp.
The sticker said "It's okay to be straight".
I thought the irony of San Fran having a 'hetero counterculture' was indicative of social progress toward equity.
But when some gay friends asked me what I meant by it, I removed the sticker.

Message transmitted is not always message received, and when the reception causes harm, the message needs to change.

That's probably what Albini realized about R@peman.

 

[superheavyfunk]

I grew up in Chicago and he was a huge inspiration for me. I still make punk rock. Wow. This one hits hard. I was planning on reaching out to him next year to record my band.

My rock band reached out last year but after completing our budget (including lodging, travel, etc), we realized that we couldn’t do it. We’ve been saving up ever since, with plans to go later this year or early next… guess that’s another dream that’ll never come true

 

[MidnightRadio]

RIP Steve - you are a music hero and are already missed. Our singer/guitarist took our recorded tracks to Electial Audio earlier this year and he hung with Steve for 4 days as Steve mixed our stuff down - he said it was a masterclass in engineering, is a really nice guy, and our record turned out amazing. I am a mediocre bass player at best and he said about my tracks "very clean playing...well done". I will cherish that forever.

 

[WG Plum]

RIP Steve - you are a music hero and are already missed. Our singer/guitarist took our recorded tracks to Electial Audio earlier this year and he hung with Steve for 4 days as Steve mixed our stuff down - he said it was a masterclass in engineering, is a really nice guy, and our record turned out amazing. I am a mediocre bass player at best and he said about my tracks "very clean playing...well done". I will cherish that forever.

That's a real treat, glad you all got to work with him!

 

[definenredefine]

Good man. Thanks for a lot of the music that has brought me to here.

My wife showed me that this morning. I was in hysterics.

 

[lermgalieu]

RIP! Here’s what I just posted on FB about this (the “you” is directed to a pretty uninformed public, not you good TB ppl):

To those of you crying crocodile tears about Steve Albini, please give me a break. Lots of us actually are upset about this, but it’s not because he engineered Surfer Rosa and In Utero (fun fact: they didn’t use his mix of Heart Shaped Box). No, for me, it’s because I’ve been listening to his music since 1985 in Big Black, ____man and Shellac. It’s because he engineered Flower Power by the Poster Children and a bunch of other records you never heard of. It’s because he was complicated and confrontational, and because he said purposefully conflictive things that just a couple of years ago you were all deriding him for. And because he was, unbelievably, a champion poker player. And yes, I say “engineered” not “produced” on purpose because it was his badge of honor. But many of you get it twisted - he didn’t “invent” the engineer-as-producer role, and neither did Spot, but I daresay Spot was doing it before him. So, fond farewells to Albini’s complicated legacy, and hopefully someone will write something that encapsulates his contradictory, very human life better than all the ******** I’m reading.

EDIT/PS: when I first heard Big Black in 1985, the first thing that struck me, even more than the cutting, acerbic vocals, was THAT guitar tone. All treble,
all violence, like a knife cutting through ********. And then you heard it here and there and everywhere through the following decades (even on the first track of the Flaming Lips’ 2013 album The Terror). That guitar tone embodied why Albini was so compatible with bands like the Jesus Lizard.

 

[lermgalieu]

And the man just had a way with getting great drum sounds…

 

[WG Plum]

Just got this email:

We just shipped your order via USPS Ground Advantage. We hope you love it. Here's what we shipped:

• 1 x SHELLAC To All Trains - Compact Disc

 

[definenredefine]

Just got this email:

We just shipped your order via USPS Ground Advantage. We hope you love it. Here's what we shipped:

• 1 x SHELLAC To All Trains - Compact Disc

I slept on it but I gotta order the LP...

 

[LowendG]

You won the genetic lottery. I have lived a reasonable life, generally vegetarian and always healthy diet, not super active like you, but not sedentary. However, I lost the genetic lottery. With an HDL that can't be coaxed over 30, even though the rest of my cholesterol numbers are reasonable, that ratio is terrible and I found out at the age of 45 that I had a calcium score in my right coronary artery of 99. I was told that unless I got it together, the likelihood of a major event in 10 years was over 80%. I watch my friends who weigh more than me, eat terribly, and drink like fishes manage to have better numbers and better cardiac health. Since then, I've also developed diabetes and all the other medical issues of my forebears. Intense exercise has helped you, but genetics are the prime predictor of these kinds of metabolic issues, so you also got a good genetic inheritance, which you could call luck. I've been on medication and exercise regularly, so I'm not in any danger of keeling over, but if I hadn't gotten checked out in my 40s, there's a good chance I wouldn't be here now. I make sure my situation is carefully monitored. With an 11 year old while I'm 63, I need to be around. Gigging keeps me young, too!

Yes, that is so true, genetics are possibly the biggest factor. I know I'm lucky (until perhaps one day I'm not!). A couple of the guys I ride with who are more hardcore than myself have issues that belie their lifestyle and attention to self-care. "Older" dad here too--I'm 64 now and just sent my kid off to college last year---I still gotta be around too for quite a while he gets his feet on the ground!

 

[evanrunyon]

My personal experience with Steve Albini was in a session for which the band had forked out some serious dollars (the kind that would have really wrecked them if the record didn't do well). From what I saw, he mostly spent the session silently playing Tetris on his phone, but evidently the pressure of having him there really put everyone on the top of their game and most of the skeleton of the eight tunes came from first takes. I was a hired gun, there for one day and my only interaction with him was me asking if he’d sign my “McLusky Do Dallas” record. He said no. Politely.

 

[31HZ]

....

Message transmitted is not always message received, and when the reception causes harm, the message needs to change.

That's probably what Albini realized about R@peman.

Very well said. Take the ego and the fear of being wrong away, and the logic behind "BUT I GREW UP SAYING THAT" (etc.) utterly dissolves.

Thanks for willing to face having been wrong, Steve.

 

[Wood and Wire]

I grew up in Chicago and he was a huge inspiration for me. I still make punk rock. Wow. This one hits hard. I was planning on reaching out to him next year to record my band.

My rock band reached out last year but after completing our budget (including lodging, travel, etc), we realized that we couldn’t do it. We’ve been saving up ever since, with plans to go later this year or early next… guess that’s another dream that’ll never come true

My friends band did record with him as engineer and producer.

Unfortunately, about eight months before the sessions, their original drummer quit, and they decided to ditch all their old material, and write new songs with the new drummer.

Their original material was utterly f*©#ing brilliant, but the new stuff was just completely forgettable.

So they made an album with Steve that sounds terrific, but you'll be bored before the first song is done (I've never listened to the album in its entirety).

 

[ulvs]

King of no-bull*hit has been taken away from us. The world is now a colder, more stupid place.

 

[Ralph Manak]

Good man. Thanks for a lot of the music that has brought me to here.

He wasn't kidding. That's the basic Brownshirt haircut, a symbol now in style.

 

[Jefus]

My rock band reached out last year but after completing our budget (including lodging, travel, etc), we realized that we couldn’t do it. We’ve been saving up ever since, with plans to go later this year or early next… guess that’s another dream that’ll never come true

I'm envious how close you got to working with him. I've lived all over the Southwest, so nowhere near Chicago. But with each new band I've been in I've always hoped that this is the band, this is finally the one that will wipe awesome music and have a good enough plan that we could justify traveling to Chicago to record with Albini. Obviously it never came to fruition.

I'm sure we all live different aspects of the man and his work. I will say he recorded what I consider to be the most perfect album ever made, and it wouldn't have been possible without him. It was the 4th album the band had done with him and the band and Steve synergized in a way that nearly made their earlier works irrelevant.

I hope whatever waits for us on the other side has great taste in music and treats him well.

 

[Lugan]

I will say he recorded what I consider to be the most perfect album ever made, and it wouldn't have been possible without him. It was the 4th album the band had done with him and the band and Steve synergized in a way that nearly made their earlier works irrelevant.

Which band?

 

[Spectrum]

Steve's dad was apparently an aerospace engineer.

 

[gpTron]

Steve's dad was apparently an aerospace engineer.

There's a video from a Shellac show where, and for those who don't know Shellac would do a Q&A during their set, someone asked about the perfect mashed potato recipe - and he went over it in detail. I always use that recipe now when I make them and everyone goes crazy for them.

 

[Grinderman]

Despite the stupid name, the Rapeman Two Nuns and a Pack Mule album is a brilliant work of modern minimalist production. He will be missed.

Per the liner notes (IIRC): "We don't hate vegetarians; we just think they're funny." Quoted me, the vegetarian ...

It is stupid - I agree with you.
Just wanted to provide context for folks who were less familiar.

I used to have a sticker from a San Francisco band called The Smut Peddlers on the front of my amp.
The sticker said "It's okay to be straight".
I thought the irony of San Fran having a 'hetero counterculture' was indicative of social progress toward equity.
But when some gay friends asked me what I meant by it, I removed the sticker.

Message transmitted is not always message received, and when the reception causes harm, the message needs to change.

That's probably what Albini realized about R@peman.

Steve later acknowledged regrets about all of this recognizing he was obliviously indulging in his privilege. I've known David Sims well enough to have no doubt he regrets that name too. I don't know Rey Washam but I presume the same.

The thing is, R@peman was FAR from the worst of it. He and Nate Katrud, AKA "Nash Kato" (Urge Overkill) made some recordings when or just after they were students at Northwestern University under the name "Run N______ Run". It's not the most well-kept secret. They were insecure white young adults--basically still kids--from Nowheresville Minnesota and Montana colliding with big segregated Chicago city life being stupid but perhaps precocious enough to be that stupid. I 100% positively know Nate feels shame about it.

Steve's dad was apparently an aerospace engineer.

Oddly, Wikipedia says his father was a wildlife researcher but, I distinctly remember Steve referring to his father Frank as being a rocket scientist which in lay terms means aerospace engineer. I clearly remember Steve saying this at a 4th of July party at Cory Rusk's house (Touch & Go Records) in the early '90s. (Yes, Albini literally made a Pig Pile of fireworks on a cardboard box and detonated in on a park baseball diamond down the street) His parents were in town visiting and they were at that party for a while, I remember seeing them. Steve introduced them to everyone. I also suspect Frank might have worked at JPL because Steve was born in Pasadena. I now live very close to Pasadena and JPL. JPL is adjacent to Pasadena, a couple of miles north of the Rose Bowl.