And I get it. I wouldn’t expect Albini to like Waits. I wouldn’t expect Albini to like a lot of stuff I like. No skin off my back.
For all of Albini’s assholery the fact that he could recognize the assholery and do his best to atone for it later in life redeems him. None of us come out the womb fully formed, we get molded by the shit around us in ways we can’t control. If we live long enough maybe we can mend those defects.
I remember a guest article in some 80’s zine where members of Camper Van Beethoven did a fake tour diary, and they ragged on Albini using a pseudonym (I think they called his band “Big Naked”, who were “brave enough to only sing about man’s inhumanity to man.”) It was pretty funny but didn’t come off as mean-spirited.
Also reminded of a fond memory of him igniting an entire belt of firecrackers and completely clearing the room before a show @ Club Dreamerz, the scamp.
oh, I forgot; one of my local college radio stations is for GA Tech, and some of the rock-n-rollers that studied information science (i. e. librarians) have a weekly show, and one episode was talking to Steve Albini about how his archives work. probably the most interesting library talk you’ve ever heard:
That summarizes my feelings as well. His music was incredibly important to me, and I had great respect for him as a professional in the music business.
On the other hand, he had some really shitty takes on various things that soured my opinion of him as a person. (That’s a big part of why I didn’t take an opportunity to see Shellac when they were here a couple of years ago. I’m kind of regretting it now.)
He did eventually express regret for the name of his second project at least, although it shouldn’t have taken some 20+ years to do that.
Big Black played zillions of the Detroit area shows I attended in the 80s, and every time they came onstage, I got headaches. Bad ones. I’d go outside for their sets if poss, and the headaches would fade, but if I went back in before they finished, the headaches returned. Some were so bad that even being outside didn’t help, and they just wouldn’t go away until BB’d finished playing.
smashing pumpkins gave me headaches, too, just being played on a stereo/the radio. Shudder to think what they’d do to me at a show.
In addition to his other talents, he was a really fine writer. And whatever arsehole behaviour he no doubt engaged in, that essay along with the one I posted above shows a fierce core of compassion for those financially screwed over by TPTB.
All I know is that most people do things in the course of their life they’re not proud of, but a substantially smaller number of us are willing to acknowledge and address those things in a meaningful way, and a way smaller number of us produced In Utero and bangers like this:
I also want to give a shout out that he produced Flour and occasionally played. At the time it sounded just different enough to grab my ear even though I couldn’t really say why I liked it.
I mean, my post was actually the first to mention that, but hey… whatever you say bud…
I do notice you found the woman to claim to be polishing his career and his past behavior, rather than the several posts ahead of mine which were much more flattering to him, and not mentioning his problematic behavior at times. Really revealing, actually.
But I suppose when you treat the entire internet as a place to having nothing but pissing contests, that’s how you come off.
