He Cursed Like A Billiard Player
Yet Another Tribute To Steve Albini
On Saturday night I found myself retelling the story of the time I almost soiled myself in public. It was when I got caught in traffic behind an overturned 18-wheeler between Chicago and Louisville. The first exit I could take after an excruciating standstill was for Brownstown, Indiana. The date was April 27th, 2006. The time was 6:30pm. I raced through the Shell station to the first urinal I could find. I started — painfully — to relieve myself, and noticed this in front of me:
If that traffic jam had delayed me just 90 more minutes, who knows how my life might have changed.
I sat for a second and thought about that road trip to Chicago.
Both of the guys I went to interview that week are dead now.
Jason Molina passed in March of 2013.
Steve Albini passed just last week.
Shit.
It’s impossible to recall the first time I heard the name Steve Albini. It most likely involved In Utero. I wore that cassette out when I was gifted it. Later, in high school, his name would have been connected to bands like The Pixies, PJ Harvey, or Low.
In high school one of my older friends (probably Ian) showed me a copy of At Action Park on vinyl. After marveling at the hand-pressed cover and Joanne Dale-illustrated insert, the needle dropped on “My Black Ass.” I was enthralled. Soon after I started buying everything I could find on vinyl by Shellac, Big Black, and Rapeman. My first year in college, access to high speed Internet and lots of spare time to absorb music allowed me to branch and out and really investigate all of the songwriters and bands with whom Steve worked. The web of artists seemed to be without end. And then there were his bylines in ‘zines like Matter and Forced Exposure. The combination of brains and vitriol gave me the courage to start writing about my own perceived problems with music for my college newspapers.
It is not hyperbole to say, had I not heard At Action Park, a gargantuan amount of music would have evaded me for quite some time. Maybe forever. Slint (the above Melody Maker review is what got me to go out and buy it), The Jesus Lizard, Will Oldham, Labradford, Nina Nastasia, Bedhead/The New Year…the list is a mile long. The Danielson Famile. Killdozer. Oxbow. Songs:Ohia… My life without the world of music Steve stood at (near?) the center of would be substantially less enjoyable were it not for my taking an interest in his life’s work.
And, who knows, if I hadn’t enjoyed his writing so much I may never have gotten up the courage to publish my own thoughts on music. I can very easily draw a direct line from my earliest exploration of Steve’s music and engineering credits to Swan Fungus itself. Not to mention the book I wrote following my college graduations. And the lifelong friends I made as a result.
In 2002 I saw Shellac live for the first time, at the Knitting Factory in NYC. I was such a fanboy. I wore one of my sister’s Northwestern hoodies because I knew Steve went there. Nina Nastasia opened the first night, which was my introduction to her music. The next night I heard Consonant (Matt Kadane, Clint Conley, Chris Brokaw, Winston Braman) for the first time. Apparently someone taped the first show, which you can hear here. I never missed another Shellac show in New York when I lived on the East Coast, and attended most non-festival Los Angeles shows until the pandemic. To say a Shellac show was a singular concert-going experience would be an understatement. When supporting bands for a Shellac tour were announced I knew they were going to be good, and I should start familiarizing myself with their discographies now because I was probably already late to the party.
In the summer of 2003 I learned about a forum hosted on the website for Steve’s recording studio Electrical Audio. Steve reportedly dropped into random conversations all the time. The idea of having an opportunity to interact with someone who was such a huge influence on me was too enticing to ignore. I joined on the morning August 7th, 2003. I was the 281st member of the Premier Rock Forum (which boasts 40,000+ members today). I don’t remember my first actual interaction with Steve, but it was probably on the topic of baseball. I rarely dipped my toes in the technical forum, even during the summer I worked at Water Music Recording Studios in Hoboken. I spent most of my time posting about music, baseball, and general bullshit. It was unfathomable to me that if you wanted to say something to Steve you could just…reply to a post. Or if you really wanted to get a point across, send him a direct message. And he would take the time to offer a thoughtful answer to any stupid argument you wanted to make. Even if you were simply belaboring a point about, like, why a particular food was “crap” or “not crap.”
The EA forums introduced me to hundreds (and eventually thousands) of likeminded people (mostly dudes) with similar interests. The amount of music I discovered there (remember the old EA Sendspace thread?!) is incalculable. Unknown-to-me bands like STNNNG and Pinebender and volcano! were regulars, just like me. I made friends, honest-to-goodness friends through the PRF. Like Connor, who went to a few Shellac shows with me when I was living back east. And Jodie, I still chat with every year at the WFMU Record Fair. And of course Jet, who was one of my closest friends in the world for a very long time. She helped edit my book. She put me up whenever I was passing through Chicago. She would send me the most elaborate handwritten letters ever with random photos and trinkets. She took me to Electrical Audio for the first time. She forced a young Andrew Mason to give us a tour and brew us a pot of tea. She was someone whose friendship I have always cherished, and I would have never crossed paths with were it not for Steve’s studio’s website. Weird, right?
The forum also helped when I decided to take that cross-country road trip in the summer of 2005 to write a book about indie musicians in cities outside of New York and LA. I was able to link up with several of the bands/musicians I interviewed through the forum because they were also members. Tim Midyett, Bubba and Matt Kadane, and Rich Fessler all posted there.
After the road trip I wasn’t happy with how the Chicago chapter was developing. Jeff Mueller and Tim and Rich were fantastic interviews, but everyone I spoke with referenced Steve in some capacity. His absence hurt the finished product. Steve was Chicago. His name was synonymous with the city’s music scene since his arrival from Montana in the early ‘80s. So I reached out through the forum and set up an interview at the studio in late April of 2006. I scheduled Jason Molina’s interview one day earlier.
Steve’s travel plans changed at the last minute and we wound up not being able to meet during my week in Chicago. I remember the night his flight was due back, staying up nervously with Jet in her apartment until 4am waiting for a call that never came. She could sense my unease, and to calm my nerves she offered to pick up her cello and play along as I showed her some songs I was working on. Then we improvised a bunch of silly songs with titles like, “The Desert Dust Is Havoc On My Allergies,” “Questions + Answers = UTI,” “Type 2 Diabetes,” and “Bastard Sons (Go To Hell!)”
“Bastard Sons (Go To Hell!)”
Steve called the next day to apologize and reschedule the interview for a later date. When we finally spoke he provided some great color that I thought fit in nicely with the meatier interviews I’d conducted with Tim, Jeff, Rich, and Jason.
On Government:
On Diversity:
On Steak:
At the time I was too far in the forest to see it, but the interview with Steve was a culmination of my years-long fascination with the man and his work. What started as intense fandom and hunger for as much knowledge as I could acquire had matured into a more generalized respect that didn’t demand so much effort. My last post to the EA forums came in 2009, and from then on I followed Steve’s life more peripherally. One night in 2018 I showed up late to meet friends at a bar because I was in my car, glued to my phone streaming Steve’s first WSOP final table appearance on the PokerGo app. His witticisms and sharp tongue made him an ideal Twitter follow. Like many others have shared this past week, his personal growth/enlightenment that came with age was — for lack of a better word — inspiring. His re-evaluation of his own past, his owning up to the “edgelord shit,” his public expressions of contrition, all of it. It’s tragic his voice and his presence are no longer with us.
There are many, many people who had way more interaction with Steve than I ever had. And all of them are writing wonderful tributes to the man right now, filled with insight and anecdotes far more interesting than anything scribbled here. More come pouring out of still-raw hearts each day, because the sheer number of lives he was able to touch in his 61 years is immeasurable.
There is no grand closing statement referencing legacies or cultural relevance needed here. I have made the through line of this post painfully obvious: I am gutted by this loss. His worldview helped shape my own. He and his peers molded my taste in music. His writing made me want to write. I know Steve considered having goals “counterproductive,” but I do aspire to live with as much integrity as he did, to be a force for good, and maintain a wicked sense of humor til the very end.
And when I die, I swear to God, I’m going to find him and make him buy me the steak he owes me that I’ve been bragging about for the past twenty years.