The Cost of Doing Business
I know I’m a little late to the game here, but RIP Steve Albini. I’m guessing at least a few readers here hadn’t heard of him until he passed away last month at the age of 61 (a full 4 years longer than the average lifespan of a touring musician). Maybe you’ve not heard of him til now. Probably just about everyone over the age of, oh I dunno, 30 years old who’s not been under a rock or living in a cave, is familiar with his work- producing albums for The Pixies, The Jesus Lizard, Fugazi, PJ Harvey, Mogwai, and of course Nirvana. He also toured and made several records with his bands Big Black and Shellac, which were (and still are) highly regarded punk and noise rock bands, respectively.
When I lived in NYC back in the mid-aughts I fell in with a crew of dudes that were really into going to super loud punk/noise/metal shows. They were the ones that took me to my first Mogwai concert. The Melvins, and Boris too. They also introduced me to the music of Steve Albini and Shellac when we went to an All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in upstate New York at an abandoned mid-century resort in the Catskills. The festival that year was curated by the Flaming Lips. It was an amazing weekend of music and in hindsight it was one of the coolest weekends of music in my life. It was one of those memorable times in life that is generally front end loaded in the years before you hit your mid- to late twenties, at which point the frequency and intensity of said moments tend to wane. We saw Shellac and I recall being mesmerized by Albini in particular. As a frontman, he wasn’t trying to look or act like anything other than I perceived he was- a t-shirt and jeans guy wearing very plain wire rimmed glasses. He was so intense and didn’t have to dress or act like anything in order to get the attention. Not that there’s anything wrong with the theatrics of a Flaming Lips show or the dark, purposeful intensity of Boris. Albini just appeared to me like a guy who probably felt more comfortable in the control room of a studio or flipping through records or discussing philosophy than shredding guitar and screaming through a mic at a bunch of disoriented 20-somethings totally zonked on the plethora of booze and drugs those ATP festivals were known for. Man that was a good weekend.
When I got back to the city and got my head on straight I remember my co-worker and music-loving buddy Jason, whom I’d just spent that magical weekend with, sent me an email with a title “The Problem with Music”. It was an already well-circulated article Baffler had published, penned by Steve Albini, some years before. I devoured and absorbed it deeply. The music business has changed a lot since Albini’s famous treatise first appeared. That essay was already over 10 years old by the time Jason forwarded it to me. As dated as that piece is, there’s a lot that fundamentally hasn’t changed in the recording/touring business. Right up until his death, Albini, being the musician’s musician that he was, doggedly pointed out within this business the inevitable pitfalls and saprophytic leeches (of whom we now have plenty of our own personal experience, owing that pleasure to our myriad dealings as a full time touring band). In a way, Steve literally died trying to change this industry. He ranted and raged against phonies in the industry, the usury of labels, and the unapologetic greed of streaming platforms in a digital age. He died of a heart attack a day before his final album would be released, and in an ironic twist, just days before his catalog was to be reinstated on Spotify. I’m glad I can stream Shellac while we’re pounding out highway miles on tour, but I guess I’m torn and have as much confusion and guilt about it as a catholic schoolboy with a porn collection. Me and that kid are both grappling with the fact that we’re probably going to hell for our choices, just debating if it’s totally worth the monthly subscription. Albini, in an interview titled “Why I Removed My Music from Spotify”:
“Given the paltry payments credited to the bands and the profitable years posted by the labels, it stands to reason that this arrangement is fundamentally unfair to the bands, but proving that in the intentional absence of any information would be a difficult forensic task…As it is now, all the money flows from Spotify to the labels with a comically tiny amount credited to the bands whose music is the entire basis for the business”.
In the end, he capitulated and allowed his music to become available on streaming platforms- his bands’ catalogs reappeared just days after he passed. He’d obviously set the wheels in motion before he suddenly passed. Maybe it was out of deference to his bandmates and a consideration for their well being (assuming they, or someone out there makes real money from streams). Or maybe he just realized in the end there was no escaping the trap. I had a similar feeling in Costco yesterday. No escape. Albini was a quotable dude because he spoke from the heart. Punks have big hearts, I know a few of them. He’s probably the closest thing we’ve had to Zappa since Zappa. He cared about bands and music and tone and quality and had a lot to say about it. He was funny as hell and smart as all-get-out. I’ve read and re-read his letter to Nirvana on the planned production of In Utero several times now (well worth the read in its entirety):
“I would like to be paid like a plumber: I do the job and you pay me what it's worth. The record company will expect me to ask for a point or a point and a half. If we assume three million sales, that works out to 400,000 dollars or so. There's no fucking way I would ever take that much money. I wouldn't be able to sleep”.
And in his Postscript to the band:
“If a record takes more than a week to make, somebody's fucking up”.
He definitely was not interested in mincing any words or licking any boots. As we in NCD progress down the road in this industry, I notice more and more how bands like ourselves are sort of rewarded or expected to follow a prescribed path, or urged not to make waves, argue certain points, or question the assumed arrangement and decorum around a lot of the deals being made. The band assumes all the risk and all costs and should be thankful for the myriad opportunities doled out by those that see fit, when they see fit. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it that way. Albini knew, and said at least once, in so many words, that without the bands there’s no “industry”, period. When a major event for a modern band, like getting signed to a label, or a song of theirs winding up on a high profile Spotify playlist or TV commercial, or when suddenly gaining some grand number of streams, it’s apparently a major cause for celebration. So, off to social media they must go to repost and thank the tastemakers. That’s the formula. It just doesn’t feel authentic to me. It feels like pandering. Tastes like boot. Staring an audience in the face, seeing a room full of humans feeling real life human feelings, appreciating art made my humans, now that’s something. I don’t think any artist worth their salt would argue that, but the rest is such time consuming, soul sucking distraction and it takes up the bulk of many a band’s time.
I’m speaking for myself here as I know not all my views reflect those of my band…but on a near-daily basis we must begrudgingly utilize digital streaming platforms, social media platforms, AirBnB for lodging on the rare and unfortunate occasion that suitable lodging is otherwise impossible to secure (that one might sicken me the most), the fossil fuel industry, and every so often the near-monopolistic airline company or two to get from A to B. We’re digging our own graves with a Kirkland Signature brand shovel and paying some CEO somewhere for the wonderful opportunity. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about LiveNation and Ticketmaster in the coming weeks and months too. I’m personally excited to see how large that dumpster fire will grow, how large a rats nest will be unearthed. I’d have loved to hear what Steve would have said about all that.
Although the body of work Steve Albini left behind is astounding, what I find truly inspiring was his integrity. He could have made himself a millionaire dozens of times over and screwed over as many eager young musicians as would line up around the block for him to take tens of thousands of their dollars just to put his name on their album for producer credits. But he was a punk rock champion of music and musicians and human beings standing up for themselves and each other. A small asterisk here in that he was widely known as a “difficult” human at times and certainly had to walk back from or apologize for things he said on more than one occasion. But again, his integrity was such that he’d own his mistakes and he sought to evolve. He thrived on creativity, not publicity and from what I can tell, championed the small, manageable life. That most enviable of all goals: the small, manageable life. He was an original. A guy who saw right through mundanity and insincerity and I’m sure would have always called bullshit when he saw it. In a world that only increasingly rewards homogeneity- in the way we behave, dress, consume music, art, culture, food, you name it- Albini was one of a kind. May we all strive to be more like that- adopting a keen sense of discernment and heartfelt resistance to a formulaic existence. Amen.
Cheers and thanks for reading,
B