One unfortunately unique thing about this is Albini listened to people. He listened to his friends/family, like his wife. He listened to the people he was insulting. Coming to an understanding, he was able to recognize what he was doing was accomplishing nothing but dehumanizing people in out groups, and this was equally dehumanizing him.
I think most people understand this instinctively, but some are just taught to behave differently and some doubting Thomases need to see to believe. They need to see that these people in the out groups are just trying to live their lives in ways that are not meaningfully different from their own. If more people would listen, we would recognize this.
It's unfortunate that he summed up this realization by saying, "When you realise that the dumbest person in the argument is on your side, that means you’re on the wrong side." It begs the question of how you decide who the dumbest person is, and it seems like it would reinforce whatever a person's current attitudes are, rather than move them to change.
I don't have much to add to this other than to say Big Black produced some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard and that probably says something terrible about the way my mind works.
It's hard to explain Albini without the context of the 80s. You can watch Stranger Things all you want, if you weren't someone who grew up in the 80s political-cultural-social-economic environment the statements and actions of guys like Albini(and much of the punk and even thrash movements) are going to seem bewildering and/or purely offensive.
That... that noise on Kerosene. It's a guitar I think, but just, what the hell did he do to it? Not actually asking, don't actually wanna necessarily know. But just...
and then the article is wrong about the lyrics of course. The lyrics are not about the joys of arson; there is no joy in the song. The song is about being stuck in a small town life with no possibility of escape, and getting so bored that self-immolation like South Vietnamese monks starts looking like your best option.
It's the internal sounds of a mind damaged beyond recognition by the rust belt. And I agree, it's some of the most beautiful music ever made.
I was just talking about this with my other genx/millennial friend on how fucked the 80s were and how very little media nostalgia reflects this. The Reagan era was like the Trump era on steroids basically, but the colors were nice I guess.
I think the music scenes move away from punk tropes of "as long as you're loud and vulgar it doesn't matter that you can't actually play your instrument" has been an incredible positive. Not just as a music enjoyer but in terms of setting positive examples about how to lead a fulfilling life. Angst for the sake of it is now seen as lame. Albini is a very interesting persona to me because he was largely a proponent of that style but he actually is quite talented, and more importantly seems to be extremely thoughtful.
The subtext I get from this is that you saw Albini as a proponent of big dumb hardcore DIY punk, and Big Black really wasn’t that, as even Christgau acknowledged. There was a lot of artistry in they way they managed to be repellent.
Beastie Boys also did this kind of apologizing for their early career that made them famous. I kind of admire guys like John Lydon and Jello Biafra more for just sticking to attitude that got him there, even while they both have obviously matured dramatically. Edgy provocation has its place too, even if it makes you roll your eyes when done artlessly.
It's hard to think of someone less anchored in their original identity than John Lydon, unless you subscribe to the (plausible) idea that everything about the Sex Pistols was an an act and they were just a boy band. Martin Short has more credibility than Lydon; at least he was in the Queen Haters.
Albini went from being a privileged edgelord to an admirable grownup through listening to others and self-introspection and understanding. He was never afraid to voice his ignorant and tone-deaf opinions, which we all have. But he would have never changed if he had kept them to himself or if he was not capable of self-reflection.
We are all deeply flawed in our relationship with others; ultimately, the best we can hope for is some redemption of our sins towards others when we mature.
I don't think Albini would agree with the summation here, that his public articulation of edgelord opinions was all for the good. There's a temptation here to view this through the lens of the current culture war, but Albini said a lot of stuff --- ironically, to be sure (see: Rule of Goats) --- that neither side of the culture war has ever countenanced.
I think he views those mistakes as mistakes, not as valuable lessons; one of the things that makes his mea culpa authentic is that he doesn't valorize them at all; in fact, he openly mocks the idea that those mistakes could be valorized.
People are allowed to hate music styles; and IMHO his criticism of "jazz snobbery" is pretty dead-on. Frank Zappa made a similar point decades ago, although he was much nicer about it, and hell, even SpongeBob parodied this in a episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlmZ05LfAxQ
> Now whenever any public figure is made to answer for their former bad self, they go on an apology tour where they say all the right things about being a work in progress, and learning and listening, and so on. Rarely do they break down the actual specifics of what they said, why it was wrong and why they regret it.
> “The one thing I don’t want to do is say: ‘The culture shifted – excuse my behaviour.’ It provides a context for why I was wrong at the time, but I was wrong at the time.”
As a millennial, watching gen xers age has been a source of fascination to me. It was hard to imagine the cool apthetic kids could grow old but they somehow did whilst staying cool and themselves for the most part.
When boomers became reagan voting nimbys you'd think the gen x would become grubby self important dicks themselves but every gen x Ive run into in real life is ironic and self effacing as they were when I was a babe but are now 50
I find his crabiness and rants pretty funny, I have not really enjoyed his own music, but definitely enjoy his production of course Nirvana, but also Jason Molina and J. Tillman (before we was "Father John Misty").
Albini wrote one of the most biting indictments of the music industry I've ever read: "The Problem with Music" aka "Some of Your Friends are Already This F*ked." https://archive.org/stream/TheProblemWithMusic/TheProblemWit... (The formatting is kind of messed up, especially in the breakdown of a band's first album and all the revenue and expenses, since this copy is all plain text.)
I spent a lot of time on the electrical audio forums, maybe 2005-2008. I loved it. Steve was there, so was Bob, so was all sorts of other audio engineers, punks, hackers, the guy from Groupon, all sorts of people.
Steve was highly opinionated, quirky, even then, but rarely a dick (to anyone who didn't deserve it). I think he was just Steve Albini. Understandably, I think - the forums weren't moderated in the way hacker news is, it was a bit more like a wild west subreddit.
> Not everyone is a fan of Albini’s work: “For me, the record sounds like shit,” said Elvis Costello in 2020 of PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me. “That guy doesn’t know anything about production.
Everybody admits that he downproduced her to shit. Still, he has some golden moments, like a water painter over an oil painter. It's a hit or a miss.
Big Albini fan. Maybe the most principled person in the industry.
I'm not so sure about the article though. There is a simpler explanation: Albini will act in the way that pisses off religious right wingers the most. When that meant being rude and vulgar, he did so in the most over the top ways. When it means self flagellation for being a white male and "making space" for others, he will do that. You can be sure that however culture evolves in the next 20 years, he'll be doing whatever enrages Fox News the most.
Well, he alludes to simply not wanting to be a "cunt who wants to indulge bigots". In my experience, passively espousing this attitude tends to be enough to enrage the Fox News crowd without even actively trying.
Accurate, Steve doesn't actually have any more complicated principles than hatred and resentment against the small-town community that his family settled him in as a child. He's 60 and still hating.
Some albini records made me feel weird - uncomfortable - ill. I always wondered if it was deliberate. I saw pj Harvey a lot, but couldn’t listen to the record
You mean Rid Of Me, right? The 4-Track Demos is a version of many of those songs without the Albini treatment, and, of course, Dry (before that album) and To Bring Me Your Love are both as far as you can get from Albinism.
Albini was, is, and always will be the same asshole he's always been. If you want to elevate a resentful, antisocial, mean, jerk, he's the poster boy. This essay is gross. That this writer thinks Missoula, Montana was a "cultural vacuum" because it didn't have a CBGB speaks to his cultural narrowness. Even aside from his lickspittle praise for Steve, it discredits him. Long and short, Steve is townie royalty. He and his ilk are as status-conscious as the people they despise. People like Steve are, in the end, parasitic on society as a whole. There is a role for them but it's very small and can't and shouldn't scale. Just imagine a world full of Steve Albinis! "Reject Authority" says the micro-controlling authoritarian. Very persuasive. "Be Authentic" but don't like music or bands I don't approve of. Inspiring! "Think for Yourself!" but we only want "people that politically basically think like we do" at our concerts.
Steve is a guy who actually hates music and artists. He's mostly about his politics, but his politics are simplistic to the point of stupidity. His "punk" principles have become mainstream and now he openly serves power. He is still the same guy who's never wrong even when he's saying "I was wrong" because now he's on the right side of history (which is just the right side of power). The idea that he has the "knowledge of self that billionaires pay to discover on ayahuasca retreats" is hilarious. The funny thing about this redemption-of-Steve piece is it focuses on all the wrong reasons for what makes him off-putting. His abrasiveness was his vulgar affect, fine. But the problem with Albini is that he was always a tedious, scold who never said a thing that wasn't entirely predictable, who happened to be a capable verbal bully with ice in his veins. Nothing essential has changed about him.
Steve's a talented audio engineer who's helped make some great albums and that's pretty much the only good thing about him.
I think the type of person who thinks there's no culture in small towns just never goes to places like that. Montana is great and has its own culture. When I travel I try to hit up small towns and out of the way places. Some of the best times of my life were spent traveling around rural New South Wales, specifically the Bega Valley. If there's people, there's culture.
He's moved from lecturing and hectoring people with some authority, because of how good an engineer and guitarist he is, and how successful he's been in the industry, to being a guy who lectures and hectors people about morality with absolutely no authority.
He's basically the 9001 white guy to announce that the real rebels are the ones who conform. A born-again. The average Guardian reader.
He produces and makes some great music. I'm not sure why people care about any of his opinions beyond that. He's clearly an effective troll. If you want punk rock thinkers who aren't just in it for the shock value try Henry Rollins or Ian MacKaye.
[+] [-] dfxm12|2 years ago|reply
I think most people understand this instinctively, but some are just taught to behave differently and some doubting Thomases need to see to believe. They need to see that these people in the out groups are just trying to live their lives in ways that are not meaningfully different from their own. If more people would listen, we would recognize this.
[+] [-] dkarl|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daydream|2 years ago|reply
35 years!
In the meantime we were treated to a huge pile of pseudo intellectual babble he used to defend his position.
[+] [-] 01100011|2 years ago|reply
It's hard to explain Albini without the context of the 80s. You can watch Stranger Things all you want, if you weren't someone who grew up in the 80s political-cultural-social-economic environment the statements and actions of guys like Albini(and much of the punk and even thrash movements) are going to seem bewildering and/or purely offensive.
[+] [-] jtode|2 years ago|reply
and then the article is wrong about the lyrics of course. The lyrics are not about the joys of arson; there is no joy in the song. The song is about being stuck in a small town life with no possibility of escape, and getting so bored that self-immolation like South Vietnamese monks starts looking like your best option.
It's the internal sounds of a mind damaged beyond recognition by the rust belt. And I agree, it's some of the most beautiful music ever made.
[+] [-] Solvency|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darkwraithcov|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HDThoreaun|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackandthink|2 years ago|reply
There is a certain irony.
Many punk bands played quite well despite this attitude.
I can't think of a really bad band either.
[+] [-] fullshark|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zimpenfish|2 years ago|reply
John Lydon was recently advertising butter on UK TV. I'm not sure you can call that "sticking to [the punk] attitude".
[+] [-] copperx|2 years ago|reply
Albini went from being a privileged edgelord to an admirable grownup through listening to others and self-introspection and understanding. He was never afraid to voice his ignorant and tone-deaf opinions, which we all have. But he would have never changed if he had kept them to himself or if he was not capable of self-reflection.
We are all deeply flawed in our relationship with others; ultimately, the best we can hope for is some redemption of our sins towards others when we mature.
He's one of my profoundly flawed role models.
[+] [-] tptacek|2 years ago|reply
I think he views those mistakes as mistakes, not as valuable lessons; one of the things that makes his mea culpa authentic is that he doesn't valorize them at all; in fact, he openly mocks the idea that those mistakes could be valorized.
[+] [-] vr46|2 years ago|reply
Complicated guy. I was hoping he'd also renounced his hatred of jazz when I opened the article, but no such luck it seems.
[+] [-] arp242|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itqwertz|2 years ago|reply
There’s enough melody amongst the noise to keep it interesting, and the youthful finger-pointing aggression and characterization makes it unique.
[+] [-] flobosg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tinyspacewizard|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackermatic|2 years ago|reply
> Now whenever any public figure is made to answer for their former bad self, they go on an apology tour where they say all the right things about being a work in progress, and learning and listening, and so on. Rarely do they break down the actual specifics of what they said, why it was wrong and why they regret it.
> “The one thing I don’t want to do is say: ‘The culture shifted – excuse my behaviour.’ It provides a context for why I was wrong at the time, but I was wrong at the time.”
[+] [-] noobermin|2 years ago|reply
When boomers became reagan voting nimbys you'd think the gen x would become grubby self important dicks themselves but every gen x Ive run into in real life is ironic and self effacing as they were when I was a babe but are now 50
[+] [-] rufus_foreman|2 years ago|reply
Also, a higher percentage of Gen X voted for Reagan than did the boomers in 1984 (Gen X wasn't old enough to vote in 1980).
[+] [-] flobosg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] locusofself|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amysox|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prpl|2 years ago|reply
Steve was highly opinionated, quirky, even then, but rarely a dick (to anyone who didn't deserve it). I think he was just Steve Albini. Understandably, I think - the forums weren't moderated in the way hacker news is, it was a bit more like a wild west subreddit.
[+] [-] dayofthedaleks|2 years ago|reply
I don't think we'll be seeing this sort of turnaround from Jim Goad.
[+] [-] rurban|2 years ago|reply
Everybody admits that he downproduced her to shit. Still, he has some golden moments, like a water painter over an oil painter. It's a hit or a miss.
[+] [-] karaokeyoga|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spinnaker_|2 years ago|reply
I'm not so sure about the article though. There is a simpler explanation: Albini will act in the way that pisses off religious right wingers the most. When that meant being rude and vulgar, he did so in the most over the top ways. When it means self flagellation for being a white male and "making space" for others, he will do that. You can be sure that however culture evolves in the next 20 years, he'll be doing whatever enrages Fox News the most.
[+] [-] dfxm12|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctrlp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andybak|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jibbit|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pinewurst|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctrlp|2 years ago|reply
Steve is a guy who actually hates music and artists. He's mostly about his politics, but his politics are simplistic to the point of stupidity. His "punk" principles have become mainstream and now he openly serves power. He is still the same guy who's never wrong even when he's saying "I was wrong" because now he's on the right side of history (which is just the right side of power). The idea that he has the "knowledge of self that billionaires pay to discover on ayahuasca retreats" is hilarious. The funny thing about this redemption-of-Steve piece is it focuses on all the wrong reasons for what makes him off-putting. His abrasiveness was his vulgar affect, fine. But the problem with Albini is that he was always a tedious, scold who never said a thing that wasn't entirely predictable, who happened to be a capable verbal bully with ice in his veins. Nothing essential has changed about him.
Steve's a talented audio engineer who's helped make some great albums and that's pretty much the only good thing about him.
[+] [-] drcode|2 years ago|reply
Also, his band Shellac is brilliant
[+] [-] zoklet-enjoyer|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daydream|2 years ago|reply
The comment about him being on the right side of history is incisive.
[+] [-] pessimizer|2 years ago|reply
He's basically the 9001 white guy to announce that the real rebels are the ones who conform. A born-again. The average Guardian reader.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] vlunkr|2 years ago|reply