No more magazines, no more CD-R’s and 7”’s and split singles by bands that toured together or maybe had the same booking agent, label, fanbase. There were worlds across America visited by bands in vans that would change lives. Maybe this is still happening, just as there are people still going to films, but I haven’t been paying attention for a while. Music was always an aspiration for the young, and in your teens and 20s, you notice how few bands got started in their members’ 30s. Filmmakers, actors, writers, and painters can work until they drop, but not in rock ’n’ roll, where the exceptions prove the rule. Bob Pollard and The Rolling Stones can still fill rooms because they made it in an era when people bought music and music made real money.
“That all ended in 2004,” says Mary Lou Lord. That sounds right, even if the spirit persisted through the end of that decade into something beautiful: the Baltimore music scene, too many artists to list, all undoubtedly influenced one way or another by the late Steve Albini. Forget his bands, forget the Nirvana record—it was what he stood for and actually put into practice. His work as a recording engineer—not a “producer”—was straightforward: put a band in a room, place microphones, press record. Few, if any, overdubs. And what this demanded of the artist was precision, concentration, and most important of all, discipline. When I think of Albini, I think of discipline—famous for turning down $2 million in royalties for In Utero and demanding a flat fee of $100,000—and how accessible he was. My friend Jake Lingan recorded with him in 2012. As of this year, a day of recording at Electrical Audio cost $900, a steal for world class engineering.
Don Caballero made a masterpiece with him called American Don. Listen to it.
And In Utero.
Joanna Newsom’s Ys is well-known, but it should always be reiterated that that album was engineered by Albini, mixed by Jim O’Rourke, and arranged by Van Dyke Parks. Both of them are still alive, and they too are one of a kind; because for however many people Albini inspired, there was no one like him left in independent music.
And although Roger Corman hadn’t been active in decades, his dream of low-budget filmmaking after the collapse of the studio system was only possible in his time, and he started taking hits as soon as Jaws exploded in 1975. The Corman Film School ceased apprenticeships by the end of the 1980s. People know he mentored Scorsese and Coppola, but also John Sayles, Carl Franklin, Gale Ann Hurd, and Janusz Kamiński. He was 98; a full, accomplished life celebrated around the world—not a single asterisk.
Steve Albini was 61 when he dropped dead of a heart attack.
And between them could’ve lived Rainer Werner Fassbinder, another one of a kind dead at 37. He died because “I must work.” Albini lived to work. Corman’s son initially went into film but only made a small profit, and immediately pivoted into real estate. Corman loved the work that he did.
And all of these people did what they did without thinking of what anyone else thought. They were take it or leave it—no apologies. No more excuses: the film, the album, the rhythm of creativity as a reason to live. They took enormous and made huge sacrifices to accomplish what they did. Just about everyone agrees that the world is a better place for it. And I’m looking and I’m looking and I remember another man still around, another great man: Dan Deacon, spearhead of Whartscape and a brilliant musician. His vision of Wham City and life as an independent artist were as inspiring as all of the above.
And yet we’re still losing the last of the independents, when touring bands have never had it harder: no money, zero media, no press for anyone but mega pop stars. The mirage of digital filmmaking as a no-budget solution to the enormity of celluloid production is gone, and it still costs hundreds of thousands of dollars at least to get a feature film off the ground. There are always exceptions, but they are exceptions. The culture is gone.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter and Instagram: @nickyotissmith