Steve Albini 1962 - 2024

What do you expect from your heroes? Are they some kind of unimpeachable paragons of judgment, 50-foot beacons for whom the tough calls are easy, for you? Do you walk around wondering what [fill in your hero's name right here] would do?

Because God, that'd be fucking stupid of you.

You could probably make the case that having heroes is stupid in and of itself; hell, I wouldn't argue. Yet I do have a few.

But the thing I've noticed, especially today, I've noticed, is that these heroes, their mistakes, their miscalculations, their errors, are as glaring, and are as unmistakably apparent as any I might notice from the ones whom I call the villain.

The thing about Steve Albini, I think, was his twin directives. When he landed in Evanston, the burgeoning Chicago scene around him drove him to become a guitarist and a musician, but the nationally-recognized journalism school he was enrolled in pushed him towards becoming a critic. And obviously, because he was hard-wired the way he was, he took both potential undertakings seriously. You^* might say too seriously.

The problem in treating with art, the problem with even considering to do so, is that as soon as you start, there are necessarily people engaged in making it, who treat it less seriously than you have already decided to.

And just what the fuck should you do about these people?

Should you perhaps treat them with contempt? I mean, it's one thing not to care about art, and then you let the people who do care prattle on to one another about it. But to merely *pretend* to care? To produce therefore only a semblance of it? Those are serious crimes, or so at least the young Steve Albini thought.^**

We live in an era of increasing empathy, and that's not a bad thing. But the thing is, that it's quite possible that those who should be doing better should be spoken to or spoken of in harsh terms.

Albini ended up contrite over those awful things he said, about the Pixies or The Smashing Pumpkins, or about EDM, or sometimes he was only contrite about the way he said them, but either way seems to me from over here that either you soften up, or you die friendless. And that dying friendless, now that I mention it, is something critics often do.

Although I love music very much in the way that Albini did, I don't think I can be said to hate it in the way he did. If I hear a genre that doesn't click, I'll just push myself non-confrontationally away from the table, and say 'this one's not for me.' Which is the right reaction for these times, arguably any other, but doesn't necessarily push myself much, or anyone else.

So Albini's opinions didn't rankle or offend me; they just kinda left me amused, if not always dazzled by the courage it took. But I was also never the target.

The important thing, though, is that almost everything he said, like almost everything he did in a professional capacity, whether it were as a musician or an engineer, and no matter how foul, came from a place that sought integrity in himself and in others.

This world is so, so lackng in people of the same character, that to focus on anything except that character at this lousy, benighted, hero-poor moment in time is doing us all a grave disservice.

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^*(though not I)
^** and the old me, too.