People Who Died (10 Viewers)

[dudley]

"Food" Thoyd (@spaceplans.bsky.social)

My drummer is a Chicago ex-pat and Steve and Bob Weston took his old band under their wings. He recorded at Electrical a few times and got to play a bunch of shows with Shellac over the years, including a European tour. These are from a show in Amsterdam.

bsky.app

 

[nuke terrorist]

Horrible news about Albini.
I love Big Black but wasn't interested in what he was up to musically for a longtime.
But he was always one hell of an interviewee. Like MES or Zappa he was always there as a social and especially music business commentator.
And expressions of regret on some of belligerence of earlier years was a welcome move.

Albini's famous early 1994 article published in Maximum RocknRoll on the many pitfalls of signing to a major label was one of his best.
"Some of your friends are probably already this fucked"

The Problem with Music | Steve Albini

How record labels use A&R flaks and impenetrable contracts to screw artists while raking in millions

thebaffler.com

 

[sleepy]

True story. I actually thought The Model was a Big Black original for years. I was too young for the Kraftwerk original and the internet wasn’t around to correct me.

 

[ann post]

There's young ones coming into work with Nirvana/Pixies t-shirts on and they love that music. It's some legacy. Surfer Rosa 1988, young ones in the west 2024. Actualy capturing the energy of it all. If rick beato does a video about this i'm blocking him

 

[Anthony]

oh he will. Hopefully it won't be a wiki read like his Low one.

 

[therealjohnny]

My twitter feed is all Albini today

This made me laugh

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[Jim A. Morrish]

My twitter feed is all Albini today

This made me laugh

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this katie beour is clearly a monster.... A MONSTER i say!!!!

 

[Jim A. Morrish]

saw shellac in chicago in 2006, albini did this hilarious bit during 'end of radio' about how martina navratilova couldn't get sponsorship when she was a player, went on for about 2 mins.... the crowd were all like 'wtf?'

 

[ernesto]

saw shellac in chicago in 2006, albini did this hilarious bit during 'end of radio' about how martina navratilova couldn't get sponsorship when she was a player, went on for about 2 mins.... the crowd were all like 'wtf?'

Did That in Primavera Barcelona one year too. Must have been the same year

 

[sleepy]

My twitter feed is all Albini today

This made me laugh

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This tweet actually helped me explain who Steve Albini was to my wife.

Also, a good summary was telling her that he’d recorded Nirvana AND Boxes.

 

[pete]

My mother sent me a text asking if I’d heard. That was… unexpected.

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

My mother sent me a text asking if I’d heard. That was… unexpected.

Mothers surprise you.

 

[taubstumm]

I was in Chicago in 2002, visiting my then-girlfriend, who was there on a J-1. I looked up Electrical Audio in the phone book and rang them and said something like, hello, can I just... turn up and look around? And the person answering the phone said, sure, come on over tomorrow. And so, together with a friend, we got on a tram and figured out how to get there. This is all pre-iphone-universe, it took a while. We got to this nondescript industrial building and rang the bell and Steve answered the door, wearing his overalls, and said, Hi, I’m Steve, come on in. He took time out of his day to just walk around the place with us and tell stories and crack jokes. He talked about baseball and drums and how to build walls and a load of other things. He was lovely, and in particular it was notable that we were just two clowns who wanted to look around and he was an absolute gent about it.

Fast-forward twenty years. I’m doing sound-art stuff with my now-girlfriend. There is this installation-performance thing with room tones and percussion that we’ve done a couple of times and we want to do a canonical recording of it. And we think, well, the best place in the world to do this would be Electrical Audio. So we get in touch, set up a zoom call, and we have an hour or so with Steve talking this all through. He’s really into it, he loves the idea, he wants to do a session. I also say, oh, by the way, I was already there twenty years ago. And he says, well, glad to be reacquainted, hopefully we can do this session soon.

But it’s an expensive prospect — the session itself, but also the whole process of going there and back, possibly renting some gear. maybe ten grand overall. So we apply for some money from some arts funding places and cross our fingers. But... it doesn’t work out. We don’t get the funding. So we get back in touch and say, look, we’ll do it again when the next funding round comes around, or sometime next year, or some time soon. He says, ok, no rush, we’ll get around to it. We just need to line things up. It’ll happen.

I have a half-completed funding application sitting in my Dropbox right now that I will now never finish. This session will now never happen, and I’m realising that this is a very painful thing to consider. It will never happen.

But at the same time, I have to put that to one side and make peace with it. This guy’s legacy is amazing, we all know that. I’m profoundly happy that this one guy was able to bring so many people’s work into the world, including several friends of mine. I think it’s kind of amazing that he was able to do all that he did, and be down-to-earth about it all and perfectly happy to have the chats with two Irish weirdos who showed up at his front door all those years ago. RIP Steve.

 

[dudley]

I was in Chicago in 2002, visiting my then-girlfriend, who was there on a J-1. I looked up Electrical Audio in the phone book and rang them and said something like, hello, can I just... turn up and look around? And the person answering the phone said, sure, come on over tomorrow. And so, together with a friend, we got on a tram and figured out how to get there. This is all pre-iphone-universe, it took a while. We got to this nondescript industrial building and rang the bell and Steve answered the door, wearing his overalls, and said, Hi, I’m Steve, come on in. He took time out of his day to just walk around the place with us and tell stories and crack jokes. He talked about baseball and drums and how to build walls and a load of other things. He was lovely, and in particular it was notable that we were just two clowns who wanted to look around and he was an absolute gent about it.

Fast-forward twenty years. I’m doing sound-art stuff with my now-girlfriend. There is this installation-performance thing with room tones and percussion that we’ve done a couple of times and we want to do a canonical recording of it. And we think, well, the best place in the world to do this would be Electrical Audio. So we get in touch, set up a zoom call, and we have an hour or so with Steve talking this all through. He’s really into it, he loves the idea, he wants to do a session. I also say, oh, by the way, I was already there twenty years ago. And he says, well, glad to be reacquainted, hopefully we can do this session soon.

But it’s an expensive prospect — the session itself, but also the whole process of going there and back, possibly renting some gear. maybe ten grand overall. So we apply for some money from some arts funding places and cross our fingers. But... it doesn’t work out. We don’t get the funding. So we get back in touch and say, look, we’ll do it again when the next funding round comes around, or sometime next year, or some time soon. He says, ok, no rush, we’ll get around to it. We just need to line things up. It’ll happen.

I have a half-completed funding application sitting in my Dropbox right now that I will now never finish. This session will now never happen, and I’m realising that this is a very painful thing to consider. It will never happen.

But at the same time, I have to put that to one side and make peace with it. This guy’s legacy is amazing, we all know that. I’m profoundly happy that this one guy was able to bring so many people’s work into the world, including several friends of mine. I think it’s kind of amazing that he was able to do all that he did, and be down-to-earth about it all and perfectly happy to have the chats with two Irish weirdos who showed up at his front door all those years ago. RIP Steve.

Wonderful tale. Electrical will keep operating, you should still do it

 

[GARYXKNIFEDX]

Wonderful tale. Electrical will keep operating, you should still do it

Absolutely

 

[ann post]

I have a half-completed funding application sitting in my Dropbox right now that I will now never finish. This session will now never happen, and I’m realising that this is a very painful thing to consider. It will never happen.

do it.
It'll mean even more now

 

[taubstumm]

yep, the recording will happen eventually. sorry — I don’t mean to give the impression that I don’t now ever want to to a good recording of this thing! just that it won’t happen how I might have imagined that it would

 

[taubstumm]

was also just reading yesterday that “farewell transmission” was recorded at electrical in a single take, in a *first* take, by a roomful of musicians who had *never played the song before* and *never played with each other as a group before* — it seems miraculous

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[dudley]

There are a plethora of lovely stories emerging. I never met him myself, but have friends who were lucky enough to be in his orbit. Two cool stories.

For his wife's birthday, they threw a party in a roller rink. She was great pals with Kim Deal who was on tour at the time. Albini flew her in, the crowd parted, and Kim Deal came in on roller skates holding a birthday cake.

My pal Rob, who played in the Corpo for a tour, was OG Electrical staff, and had helped build the place. He posted last night a pic of a note that Albini had written him, to accompany a gift of one of the mics he'd used to record Jimmy Page's guitar. "You'll remember Jimmy Page, he's the guy you had to re-teach the Wanton song too"

 

[Reets]

I was in Chicago in 2002, visiting my then-girlfriend, who was there on a J-1. I looked up Electrical Audio in the phone book and rang them and said something like, hello, can I just... turn up and look around? And the person answering the phone said, sure, come on over tomorrow. And so, together with a friend, we got on a tram and figured out how to get there. This is all pre-iphone-universe, it took a while. We got to this nondescript industrial building and rang the bell and Steve answered the door, wearing his overalls, and said, Hi, I’m Steve, come on in. He took time out of his day to just walk around the place with us and tell stories and crack jokes. He talked about baseball and drums and how to build walls and a load of other things. He was lovely, and in particular it was notable that we were just two clowns who wanted to look around and he was an absolute gent about it.

Fast-forward twenty years. I’m doing sound-art stuff with my now-girlfriend. There is this installation-performance thing with room tones and percussion that we’ve done a couple of times and we want to do a canonical recording of it. And we think, well, the best place in the world to do this would be Electrical Audio. So we get in touch, set up a zoom call, and we have an hour or so with Steve talking this all through. He’s really into it, he loves the idea, he wants to do a session. I also say, oh, by the way, I was already there twenty years ago. And he says, well, glad to be reacquainted, hopefully we can do this session soon.

But it’s an expensive prospect — the session itself, but also the whole process of going there and back, possibly renting some gear. maybe ten grand overall. So we apply for some money from some arts funding places and cross our fingers. But... it doesn’t work out. We don’t get the funding. So we get back in touch and say, look, we’ll do it again when the next funding round comes around, or sometime next year, or some time soon. He says, ok, no rush, we’ll get around to it. We just need to line things up. It’ll happen.

I have a half-completed funding application sitting in my Dropbox right now that I will now never finish. This session will now never happen, and I’m realising that this is a very painful thing to consider. It will never happen.

But at the same time, I have to put that to one side and make peace with it. This guy’s legacy is amazing, we all know that. I’m profoundly happy that this one guy was able to bring so many people’s work into the world, including several friends of mine. I think it’s kind of amazing that he was able to do all that he did, and be down-to-earth about it all and perfectly happy to have the chats with two Irish weirdos who showed up at his front door all those years ago. RIP Steve.

I though that post was genuinely touching and kinda beautiful.