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.
> When you realise that the dumbest person in the argument is on your side, that means you’re on the wrong side
I don't think this is necessarily a good rule of thumb in general. Lots of topics have 3 levels of understanding, where the dumbest level and the smartest level have the same answer but for different reasons, and there is an incorrect middle level that is tempting if you know just enough to be dangerous.
Take flat earth for example. It's not the very dumbest people who think the earth is flat. The dumbest people just repeat what they learnt at school! The dumbest people are not remotely open to adopting new and strange ideas. The people who fall for flat earth are those who are smart enough to entertain an unusual perspective, but not smart enough to refute it.
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.
It was the start of the decline. America caught a real wave for about a hundred years, and that's when the wave started to recede, the shoreline not so lush, getting dryer by the year...
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.
> There was a lot of artistry in they way they managed to be repellent.
There was a lot of artistry in early Lou Reed too. I still think it's lame that the velvet underground not only were bad musicians but that they took pride in sounding unpracticed. That whole ethos pervaded the punk scene from the very beginning and I think a lot of Albini's choices about his vulgarity and whatnot have a lot to do with wanting to be like those dudes even though he did practice.
I'm not sure I accept your premise here. I've spent years of my life listening to the Velvets and I'm also fond of many traditionally "virtuosic" artists.
And I don't really make a huge distinction between them. The first Velvets album doesn't feel like anything about it was diminished by the musicianship. (I wish I could play that badly!)
Also let's not forget John Cale was classical trained, and was probably the biggest proponent of "noise" in the band.
I don't think noise and bad musicianship are so tightly linked like your comment seems to say. Big Black made that very clear, and we've only seen more well played noise since then. I think the first velvet record was an incredible visionary piece of art, I also think it would be better if the entire underground was as talented as Cale clearly is on the record. Nico especially is incredibly off putting.
I don't think it's the case that Albini took pride in sounding unpracticed! Big Black, at least in recordings, is actually somewhat meticulous. Judge them the way you'd judge, like, early Einsturzende, not the way you'd judge Yngwie Malmsteen.
Their way being "badly". In fact I think this is the problem. The scene effectively made "non-corporate" and "untalented" synonyms for the people in it. I think that's a huge mistake. The new era of DIY music largely eschews that idea which has been a major win for the scene. Doing things your own way shouldn't mean that you're just doing it worse.
> Their way being "badly". In fact I think this is the problem
Not always. Many punk bands are extremely accomplished.
> The scene effectively made "non-corporate" and "untalented" synonyms
Nonsense! "Corporate" and "bad", are synonyms. Talent has little to do with it.
Nobody gets to hear the enthusiastic, but bad, opera singers. Too much capital involved in putting on an opera. Every body in earshot hears the enthusiastic, but bad, punk rockers because DIY.
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.
Yeah, Albini's "sorry, I'm not quite as much of an arsehole as I used to act" reinvention is way more 'authentic' than Lydon's "I'm still the edgy antiestablishment punk your great grandma told you not to listen to, I just think people misunderstood God Save the Queen as an attack on the Royal Family. P.S. I love that respect Britain attitude Jacob Rees Mogg has"
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.
> I don't think Albini would agree with the summation here, that his public articulation of edgelord opinions was all for the good.
I agree; a lot of that was puerile garbage. What I recognize from those outbursts is the almost-manic raw juvenile need to be a contrarian and stir shit up. I empathize because I felt it when I was young.
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
Yep, combination of Steve and Roland totally defined what the "heavy" sound is for me, and mostly nothing since Big Black has come close.
One of my favourite bands (The Crooked Fiddle Band - check them out) have a very dense acoustic heavy sound in that they're a traditionally instrumented folk band with other instruments. When I learned Albini was engineering one of their albums (he did two), I couldn't think of a better match.
That was for their Master-Dik EP. Big Black made the same apology for their Headache EP. Both records had the same sticker: "Not as good as Atomizer, so don't get your hopes up, cheese!".
True in both cases, I haven't listened to either of those in decades, while Atomizer remains essential listening.
Albini doesn't agree with you, or didn't at the time they were making the records anybody cares about. They were tight in the '80s.
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(But, from your other comment on this thread, that might not make a difference to you! I'll note that this an artistic judgement though, not a moral one, and you seem to value his artistic output.)
> 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.
Right? He's totally upfront about being x-phobic doesn't need a cultural context to hide behind because he was still being x-phobic. While the targets of the phobia are making a collective "no duh!", it is great to hear someone just honestly admit they did something shitty and try to do better rather than digging in their heels and denying or hiding or dodging (see also: every "cancelled" dude who is still famous)
> 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.
When people say small towns have no culture, what they mean is "small towns have (mostly) a monoculture which is (usually) a slight variation of the regional culture." These towns might be chain store wastelands, or they might have some unique local character (e.g. Fredericksburg, Tx) but either way if you want to watch a Balinese shadow puppet show, eat Sudanese cuisine, catch a concert that isn't the local popular style, dance at a club playing German minimal techno or just interact with ethnicities that aren't european/hispanic you're probably out of luck.
Small towns make it very difficult to be an upper-middle class xenophile. Instead of constructing a personality through your consumption of exotic things, you're left to your own devices.
I'd prefer to phrase it as "constructing a personality by sampling from a wide variety of things so you can see what you enjoy and be less ignorant" but if you need to take jabs at a caricature of a lib to feel good about preferring small towns, go for it I guess.
Another way to think about it is as having a personality constructed for you by logging miles on the hedonic treadmill. It's possible to be ignorant by knowing too much of the wrong thing. In this case, people are trading actual integrated culture for a kind of consumer product. Hence Epcot Center. It's not about the cleanliness (who could object to things not being filthy?) It's about an ersatz existence pursuing the next thing to enjoy.
Missoula in the 70s/80s was still a traditional Western American small town. What you're referring to is the opposite of culture. The importation of cultural representations from "afar" is a sort of Disneyfication and dilution of local culture. What you're talking about could more accurately be described as cosmopolitanism, basically Epcot Center for the plebes.
Not at all. Jews in NYC have a distinct culture, as do Ethiopians in DC, as do Vietnamese in Houston, as do Chinese in San Francisco. It's not "Epcot for plebes" as you so pejoratively state, it's diaspora adapting to local conditions and selectively integrating to create something actually new, unique and interesting.
You can drive across whole swathes of country where small towns are hard to tell apart both visually and culturally. I can say with zero irony that the most interesting distinction between a lot of small towns in Texas, Missouri and Oklahoma is which style of barbecue they feature, and if you're not into cowboy shit or outdoor activities your options are limited (if there are any at all).
The comment was about small town culture. Your examples of big city cosmopolitanism don't contradict my argument. But to answer your points on your own terms, the survival of some subculture in NYC is dependent on separation. What Jewish culture are you referring to if not the intentionally separate Orthodox? Or what Ethiopian DC subculture if not the first generation whose children and grandchildren will abandon those interesting restaurants as they integrate into the cosmopolitan diaspora and melt into a global sameness. The sameness that every big city is trending towards.
Isn't this a little like saying "what is Irish culture without the potato farming and horse thievery"? Is the assertion here really that there is not genuine Jewish culture outside of orthodox Judaism? Because that's obviously not true, right?
It's only "Epcot Center for the plebes" if it's sanitized the way Epcot Center is, if it's actually for the plebes.
As a specific (ironic) example: the Chinese restaurants in your average Western American small town are the "Epcot Center for the plebes" version of Chinese culture; (some) Chinese restaurants in New York City aren't.
It's nonsense to say that an agglomeration of cultures somehow produces "the opposite of culture". At worst you could end up with lots of culture, but no particular unique culture. But that never happens: culture begets culture, it turns out. New York and LA are both the most cosmopolitan cities in the US, and the most culturally significant ones.
Having spent years in both NYC and LA I wonder what you're talking about. These places have character, sure, but culture requires memory. These cities have too much turnover to acquire memories.
I don't see how you can in good faith argue that NYC and LA don't have their own distinct culture. That culture might be superficial in some ways (more true for LA than NY), but it's reinforced by selective migration of people who resonate with the cultural identities of those cities.
Because the aspects of NYC and LA that are being promoted on this thread as evidence of culture are the aspects I would define a their non-culture. As you say, there is a selective reinforcement of the character of the place via affinity in-migration (mostly just youth-culture btw), but to have a culture proper there must be an ethic or morality specific to that place. If you can't say "we don't do that sort of thing around here" and mean it only for that place, then there really is no culture there, imho. Growing up in NYC, my experience of neighborhoods were that they indeed had their unique cultures and it was largely a function of their unique demographics. But that sort of thing isn't what's being argued for on this thread. The happy presence of an Ethiopian restaurant here or an "authentic" Chinese restaurant there represents the values of an entirely different ethic -- one that is interchangeable whether you are in NYC or LA (or any other 1st world megalopolis). The ethic or morality of that definition of culture is entirely unspecific to place. It _is_ specific to a rootless urban managerial class (which is why that class is entirely supplantable across any of these supercities). The kind of insular cultural ethic that actually defines a "place" is anathema to these values and would be stamped out in "ethnic neighborhoods" if not for a kind of benign and patient condescension. (With the caveat that we still like to have a bit of "flavor" in the form of token representations of "other cultures".)
Missoula isn't really a small town. It's a university town with a med center. It's pretty urban for a sparsely-populated western state! That said, it's in the west, so one of the biggest attractions to living there is getting out of town and into some nature.
In Australian terms, maybe it's a little like Adelaide.
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.
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.