Dropping Like Flies

Steve Albini, 61, heart attack

Julian, wrote:
Steve Albini, 61, heart attack

Wow, just as Shellac gets the cover of The Wire.

Well that's the worst

That sucks

There’s a great chapter in the book about Fugazi’s In On the Killtaker about Fugazi trekking to Chicago to cut the album and Albini botching it!!

The Breeders album the Pod is a great Albini recording.

Stooges The Weirdness was a complete failure and Albini must bear some responsibility.

Really he had great recordings and not so great.

Not sure what I think of his work on In Utero

Obviously Surfer Rosa is his definitive recording.

As far as his own music with Big Black and Shellac: not really my cup of tea.

Always thought it was awesome that if you could scrounge up just a little scratch he would record you.

my favorite thing from Albini was this article on how signing to a major label is the probably worst decision most bands make
http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp/albini.html

He also did PJ harvey's break out album too

One of the better stories regarding Albini I saw today

https://x.com/mm6169/status/1788305947070214153?s=46&t=81bsTFbar0Jl_mHBl9WnuA

Apparently he had a heart attack when he was 25….

I'm sure many or most of you know this, but Steve was my neighbor when I was a geeky preteen and teen living in Chicago. Every week, bands would show up in nondescript vans (though the Breeders had a Budget rental van with Ohio plates), unload equipment at odd hours, and for the most part we wouldn't see or hear much of anything happening at the house. But on occasion, me or my folks would cross paths with the likes of the Jesus Lizard, Bailter Space, the Breeders, Jawbreaker, Urge Overkill, Shellac, etc. Everyone was always extremely nice to me, and hence I'd buy their records when they came out, completely stunned at the genius coming out of the house across the street from me. And everyone was weirdly different, vibrating through the universe on a different set of waves than most other folks we knew. It became very easy for me to understand that it was OK to not be like everyone else, and that you could find a sense of community through music. Steve's loss is extremely personal for me, not because I knew him well (though he was incredibly nice to me when I asked if I could see his studio one day, and then another time he let me buy a ton of Shellac merch). All of this is to say that I can say how much of a loss this is not just to musicians, fans, or anyone who bought a Big Black or Shellac LP, or a PJ Harvey or Nirvana LP he engineered. Steve was a necessary and ethical voice who wanted people to think for themselves. He wasn't afraid to be controversial or direct, but I can attest he was patient, kind, and wickedly funny too. Every now and then, someone leaves the party early that leaves such a vacancy, and you know that nobody will ever fill it quite the way they could. Steve is one of those people. A true original, and someone the world needed at the time he was there. 61 seems young, but he used those years well and wisely.

Wow. I’m sorry

Hutch wrote:
Stooges The Weirdness was a complete failure and Albini must bear some responsibility.


As far as his own music with Big Black and Shellac: not really my cup of tea.

The thing about Albini is he'd never intervene in the material or creative process. He was not a Gil Norton telling the band what note they should be playing or which guitar to use. So other than how the LP sounds (and I haven't listened to it lately), that's really a quality control decision on the band. Albini's techniques could famously expose flaws in the band's material or performance too. You had to have your shit together.

As for Big Black and Shellac, I never saw BB, but Shellac could destroy a room. Love the LPs too…"Atomizer" is pretty much one of the most violent LPs ever recorded, behind "Raw Power" by the Stooges.

Hutch wrote:
Wow. I’m sorry

Thanks. It sucks. A lot of us were really upset yesterday…a lot of exchanging of texts and sharing of stories. I've got some fun ones.

^^great story bearman, thanks for sharing^^

bearman🐻 wrote:

Hutch wrote:
Stooges The Weirdness was a complete failure and Albini must bear some responsibility.


As far as his own music with Big Black and Shellac: not really my cup of tea.

The thing about Albini is he'd never intervene in the material or creative process. He was not a Gil Norton telling the band what note they should be playing or which guitar to use. So other than how the LP sounds (and I haven't listened to it lately), that's really a quality control decision on the band. Albini's techniques could famously expose flaws in the band's material or performance too. You had to have your shit together.

As for Big Black and Shellac, I never saw BB, but Shellac could destroy a room. Love the LPs too…"Atomizer" is pretty much one of the most violent LPs ever recorded, behind "Raw Power" by the Stooges.

The LP sounds good and the CD sounds awful.

I hear ya though….

I do love this letter, especially that it was sent as a fax.

https://x.com/Nirvana/status/1788363101068509223

Dennis Thompson, drummer for the MC5

And then there were none and so quickly after Wayne

https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/music/brian-mccollum/2024/05/09/dennis-thompson-mc5-drummer-obituary/73629138007/

Lifted from bluesky

just remembered when jerry garcia died, some djs at whpk made a bunch of flyers and posted them around chicago saying "if you miss jerry call this number and leave a message about what he meant to you" but put steve albini's phone number on it. one of the all time great pranks.

Further details

So I went to school at the University of Chicago, starting in 1990. At the time, Chicago had a pretty standard (but great) radio station, WHPK 88.5 fm Pride of the South Side 50 booming watts and I eventually got a show there. Albini was a legendary figure in Chicago, 1/

and somehow a previous station manager had written his phone number on a poster or something, and it quickly became a kind of samizadat, because you could prank call and absolutely 100% get a callback reaction from an incandescently angry Albini. Look, we were assholes. 2/

Eventually we sort of stopped, but one day, August 9th, 1995, as it happens, I got a call from a friend who said, and this is clear as day to me, "hey, I need Albini's number and I can't tell you why, yet". So I gave him the number and forgot about it, more or less. 3/

You may remember that date as the day that Jerry Garcia died. The Dead were going to be in Chicago shortly afterwards for a run of shows, and there were thousands of Deadheads milling aimlessly around Grant Park. Garcia's death hit them hard, 4/

and someone came up with an idea to set up a phone line for them to call and leave their condolences for Jerry's family, and favourite memories of him, and the Dead. They then printed up a bunch of fliers and went down to Grant Park and handed them out. 5/

I think you can put the pieces together, here.

Supposedly, Albini had to call the phone company to get his line diverted or something, because the volume of incoming calls immediately made his phone unusable. 6/


Albini telling his version, at 15:20 in the 1997 documentary Out of the Loop:  He calls it "the best prank that I've ever encountered" and offers "hat's off" to the prankster.

https://youtu.be/l9CWxt_dxA4?feature=shared

Were Steve Albini and Jerry Garcia enemies?

Maybe they could pull the same stunt on a Steve Albini enemy.