RIP Engineer Steve Albini*

I'm sorry I disrupted your psyche to the point that you felt compelled to respond to this.

 

There's also that important quote -- can't find it at the moment, but it was either from that twitter thread or one of the adjacent interviews -- where he says (paraphrasing) "What I DON'T want to do is say that times changed, and so the things I said then are now wrong; they were wrong then."

 

I know that, it's still very shocking though. Bear in mind I didn't know about it yesterday. His apologies seem evasive to me though. Does he ever directly refer to these particular incidents?

 

Baby Talk/Brontosaurus

 

Sotos is/was a well-known figure in the underground mainly due to his former membership in the band Whitehouse, who Albini recorded for a time.

The less said about Sotos, the better.

I'll just say that "shock" type art and literature has been around a long, long time (hundreds of years at this point) and shock is one way of attracting attention and achieving notoriety for certain people that otherwise would have none.

Often this type of stuff ends up attracting sickos that the artist/writer/whatever never intended to attract, but such people shouldn't be surprised about such things either.

 

I found this message from the Steely Dan community oddly comforting:

Expanding Dan, a Steely Dan newsletter
https://twitter.com/ExpandingDan/status/1788252726729585019

RIP, Steve Albini.

He once called Steely Dan “music made for the sole purpose of letting the wedding band stretch out.”

Now SD boosterism will flourish unchecked on this app. Which doesn’t feel quite right.

Everyone needs a quality nemesis. And today Dan fans lost theirs.​

Cheers,
Paul

 

Absolutely loved these tracks that went along with the Cheap Trick S/T 1997 album on Red Ant.

 

Never knew any of this about him and his association with George Sotos (I never heard of this creep until yesterday).

Trying to offend to get a reaction or not, that is a horrifying and disgusting read about both of them. As far as apologizing fairly recently for his behavior and comments in the past when he was young and stupid, from what I've read none of this was touched on at all. I'm usually good at separating the art from the person....but wow.

 

He was right about the Dan and I like them.

 

Steve ran his mouth which often gets one in trouble. To his credit, he matured and attempted to make ammends. I dont think anyone is losing any sleep over his past comments. His legacy is his engineering and musical releases. He also went to Northwestern which speaks for itself. Very select school.

 

Nobody could be blamed if they are. They are truly disgraceful and no context makes it OK. No explanation, which he never gave anyway, makes it forgivable. At some point in his life Steve Albini was a paedophile enabler. He produced the Buyer's Market album for his paedo mate in 1992. Hardly trying to make amends. The man was repellent and didn't truly apologise or backtrack. But hey, he's apparently cool and the drum sound on Surfer Rosa is so realistic, he really captured the room...

 

your attempt at cleverness falls short
oh hon

 

I don't know much about Steve Albini other than his ties to Nirvana's In Utero album, his work with Cheap Trick in remixing their In Color album. I've heard his Big Black cover versi0n of Cheap Trick's "He's A Whore." I also noticed he engineered the reunion album for the half of the Silver Apples duo Simeon, minis Danny Taylor for the 1998 Beacon album. He has quite a long resume to his credit but most of what he did was not on my radar but I heard his name quite a bit over the years since the 1990s and saw him on the VH1 behind the music documentaries. Steve Albini and metal music producer/engineer Bob Rock were the big thing starting in the 90s and going onward. I also remember the crank call he did to Gene Simmons. RIP Steve.

 

Much respect for his contribution a tonne of music in my collection.

 

i dont know his entire history. he mended fences with kim deal. he was a punk rock figure much like johnny rotten who spewed for attention at times. gradually grew out if it. it did seem mean spirited at times .

 

Johnny Rotten was not and never has been anything like that vile spew from Albini.

Genuinely, I'm shocked at it, not in the way he probably wanted, and didn't know anything at all about it until yesterday. I'm feeling venomous about it as it's being overlooked because he recorded some cool bands. So what anyway? He didn't write any of that music. Nowhere near as many people would be ignoring it, making excuses for him or claiming he apologised when he didn't if he'd only produced uncool mundane chart pop.

Of course I'm a fan of plenty of Steve Albini's work. Seamonsters is one of my all time favourite albums.

 

I've got good news for those who base what music they listen to on artists' moral standing (or legal status): Those of us who do not make that mistake will still listen to whatever music you make despite... you know.

 

Geeze, what a disgusting read. A truly vile person, apparently. Yuck.

 

I don't know that it's a "mistake" for an individual to use moral standing/legal status/whatever when deciding whether they want to be interested in a particular artist, a person ought to let their own conscience be their guide.

I like a lot of stuff which turned out to be made by people whose behavior could be pretty sketchy. Most of the time I tend to think "(X) is a creep, but this is a great song anyway" and let it go but that's just me- I do feel it's important to hold both thoughts in mind and try to see things as clearly as you can.

 

He worked on many WP projects. Never heard him slag off Gedge. They seemed to have a good working relationship from i gather. I bought Seamonsters the day it came out in UK. Great lp. David seems like a genuine nice chap.

 

…very similar to how/why Michael Haneke was criticized for some of his films, most notably Funny Games.

 

Add Henry Rollins to the list of folks that SA managed to piss off, somewhere along the way:

“Steve Albini is at the show tonight hanging out with the opening band I guess. I never met the guy before but once read an article he wrote that put me down. I am considering breaking his face up for him, but when I move in on him I see that he’s just a skinny punk. It wouldn’t have been a good kill, so I let it slide. He’ll never know how close he came to getting his face f-ked up in front of his friends.”

 

This is the only place on the internet I have seen a thread/post derailed about him.

God I hate this place sometimes and some people on here.

 

Henry seems cross.

 

Great tribute from John Robb and interview he did with Steve in 2019:

Steve Albini : an appreciation (louderthanwar.com)

'Godspeed you! the Big Black emperor'