WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 650 - Steve Albini

Episode Date: October 28, 2015

Steve Albini had his hands and fingers on the mixing board for some of the greatest albums ever, like Nirvana’s In Utero and the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa. But don’t call Steve a producer. He hates that. As Steve tells Marc, he sees himself as an audio engineer and a musician with his own bands, not as someone who should take credit for other people’s albums. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. the fuck buddies what the fucksters what the fucking ears uh what's happening it's mark

maron this is wtf my podcast thank you for listening welcome welcome to the newcomers who are here for the steve albini episode interesting thing happened with the last episode aaron james draplin from draplin design company it seems like there was a tremendous amount of uh momentum and feedback about that episode. There's something almost exciting to me about the idea that people may actually be getting sick of show business. Culturally, perhaps we're starting to get sick of the exhausting desperation of show business. Look, there's a lot of different versions of show business. I believe I'm operating in somewhat of a show biz adjacent situation of my own making.

And I'm happy with that. But after a certain point, there's an intensity to it all, to all the options, all the channels, all the streaming content, all of it coming at you all the time when you turn it on, moving billboards that actually seem to be large televisions in and of themselves. Just the constant sort of visual and mental crackling noise of, hey, over here. Yeah, that's sort of like the underlying pitch of all content now. Yo, hey, hey, hey, over here yeah that that's sort of like the the underlying pitch of all content now yo hey hey hey over here oh look over here that that's really the undercurrent of all content

just about and and what goes into getting people to watch it hey buddy buddy yo yo over here over here just watch this watch this just watch this just watch this for a minute just watch it for a minute come on just stay here for a minute people liked hearing about a different medium a different zone a different mode design it was interesting to me it was exciting to me to talk to a guy that pulled it together like that and creates things and and maybe that's a direction i got to go into a little more. I've always wanted to. But then I got to go out of the box. I got to go out of my box. Come on.

Look at this thing I made. I made a thing. It's so fucking. Come on. Just fucking look at it. Tonight on NBC. Come on, you fuck. Come on. Look it.

We did a thing. Come on. Look, look, look. Tonight on ABC. Come on, you fuck. Come on. Look it. We did a thing. Come on. Look, look, look. Tonight on ABC. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Amazon. Hey, look. Look at this thing I got.

I made a. CBS. Please look at this thing. Hulu. Come on. Come on. Look it. Look, look, look, look, look. Hulu. Come on. Come on. Look, look, look, look, look, look. IFC.

All of them. I don't think I'm being negative. I just think it's very difficult to hold people's attention. But I don't think you should necessarily play to that. Oh, hey. In the James Taylor episode, there was a gunshot at the end. And a lot of you seemed concerned, as you should be when you hear a gunshot, either recorded or not, and you wanted some closure on that. There's been many people asking, did you ever find out what the gunshot was?

Short answer, no, I did not. Did I investigate what it might be? I did not. Am I freaked what it might be? I did not. Am I freaked out about it? Not really. You know, gunshots happen around here occasionally. And you just hope they're celebratory and not pointed at anybody. So I have no idea.

It definitely sounded like a gunshot, but you never, maybe it was someone's birthday. So, no, I don't know, but everything's been cool since, okay? I hope that sates your concerns. All right. What else? Pow! I just shit my pants. Just coffee.co up. Just threw that in in i don't do them as much as i used

to look it's coming it's happening it's happening we're moving towards it today's lauren clip is actually a pretty fascinating clip because it uh it it it helped me out. It got me some closure through some honesty from Jim Brewer. This was episode 435 of this show of WTF. And he definitely seemed to have some info about my meeting with Lorne Michaels. He gave me just a little bit of clarity around that meeting with Lorne and why things might have turned out the way they did. Now, I assume a lot of you are up on the narrative. We're moving towards a Lorne Michaels episode that many of you who have listened to me for years know is a pretty important thing to me. Those of you who are just tuning in for the Albini, Steve steve albini talk i imagine you've fast forwarded already so this is me uh talking to jim brewer on episode 435

of this show you were up for snl as yeah as the news guy right and lauren sat me down and lauren sat me down and i i swear to God, here's how it went. He goes, Jim, we're thinking about using Mark Maron as the update guy. Do you have thoughts on him? That's exactly what I said I went. Okay. I think he'll be the best news guy you've ever had in your life. I really said that.

Yeah. I said, but you need to know a lot of people have problems with him. I go, he pisses people off, but that has nothing to do with me. And I say, if he's for the news guy, think you got a home run yeah i go am i best friends with him no uh do i do i love the guy no however the guy would be a monster news anchor oh my god i really feel that way lauren and he's like no that's pretty much the feedback i get from everyone i said did you did you meet with him already? Now, I don't know if he said this or you said this.

Something about monkeys. I feel like he said it. I feel like he told me this. He said to me, he said he met with you. And I said, well, how'd it go? And he said, well, he said everyone enjoys a monkey or something until they throw the feces at you, or he said that. No, I said that to him.

He said, comedians are like monkeys. Yes. The monkeys make people laugh, and I said, unless they're throwing their shit at you. Which, when he said- That stuck with him? Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Come on, you fucking with me now? No, I swear to God I'm not. I swear to God. That made me really like you. Come on. I swear to God. And then... I'm obsessed with that meeting, you know.

I mean, I talk about it all the fucking time. I'm obsessed with that meeting with Lauren. He sat me down. And he asked me about you. And he asked me about you. And he asked me about Tracy Morgan. Yeah, because we were there the same day. And I said, Tracy is the most raw, funniest human beings I've ever met in my life offstage, Lauren. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard.

Offstage. I said, I just listened to him rant. And I just find myself, I feel like I'm looking at a richard pryor but it's it's raw yeah it's on stage is a different beast right off stage i've never seen any more fascinating in my life and he goes no mark what about mark maron for the update and i really got so he was really thinking about it because i oh yeah because i thought like you know in retrospect that he might have been you know trying to muscle norm into something or whatever but because i didn't get it obviously they're done with norm yeah they were done they were done yeah see now look i can deal with that explanation at least there was a reason

i never would have thought jim brewer would be the key to unlocking the mystery but there you go the number of horn michaels conversations I've had on this show is astounding. Dig it. All right, Steve Albini, coming up. How do I preface Albini? You know, Albini, Steve Albini is one of these guys. He's a legend. He's a living myth in the rock and roll arena.

He's a producer that is wary of calling himself a producer. He's a guitar player. He's a fixture in you who are deep music nerds have very specific expectations around what you want to hear from Albini. I had a good conversation with him. And obviously some of the records that he made were profoundly important in my life. You know, Pixies, Nirvana, The Breeders. There's hundreds of records. Hell of a resume, this guy.

But one of the most important things to me, when I was in college, I can't even put a date on this, but it's got to be the mid-80s, and I'm thinking he's probably in Big Black. Maybe, I don't know. But I know that I went to see Steve Albini at the Ratskeller in Boston, Massachusetts in Kenmore Square. I was going to BU. I'm thinking it's got to be 84 maybe, 83, 84. I don't remember being

with anybody. I remember going down there drinking. I was probably with somebody. I remember Steve Albini standing in the middle of that little stage. He'd go down in the basement. You walk past Mitch at the door with his weird gray toupee and his voice box. He had a voice box. He's a large man. You just read a story into that guy. He always had a suit on, looked like he might've been a little connected, but he had the voice box. How you doing? Check your ID. And then down in the basement was where the rat was the real rock and roll club low ceilings fucking dirty the rat skeller gone gone so i go to see albini and i remember him just playing that fucking massive you know guitar sound but the most important thing about that night in my mind, and I believe it was that

night, things get a little blurry. As you get older, you realize you're just a curator of misperceptions and altered memories. But I went to that Steve Albini show. And then in the crowd, moving through the crowd was this woman. But I didn't see her at first. All I crowd was this woman but i didn't see her at first all i saw was this fantastic black mohawk and then just just i as i followed the black mohawk down the shaved sides i saw this intense round angry face and this stout kind of little tank you know down to the docks to the doc martins and the black jeans and i was like holy fuck who is that and it's not you know i don't you know i don't know that i had any game then or certainly i had any real sort of couth i i always you know moved through the world with the the same type of intensity i have now only younger which was probably even more disconcerting.

And I just went up to her and I'm like, who are you? What is what? What? And her name was Lauren. And I fell in love with her almost like immediately at that Steve Albini show. I'm going to put it I'm going to put it into I'm going to put it on that show. Steve Albini show I'm gonna put it I'm gonna put it into I'm gonna put it on that show and I just remember we walk home and she's kicking cans and you know just meh just like this angry little art woman girl at the time she was going to mass art she was telling me stories about her

like maybe her ex or current boyfriend I don't know who worked in you know sort of large soft sculptures and they'd you know maybe she had some story about living out in the country in a trailer devious and weird she was from new jersey and just full of this angry intensity but uh she was a welder and i've told the story about you know going to her house that first time just completely enamored with her. And she had a sculpture that she had done in metal. Just emaciated metal female figure. And the vagina was just full of nails.

And I was like, yeah. All right. I can handle this. Loved her. Still love her. See her sometimes. Still doing the art but you know has a life with a man we all get old and hopefully level off but man that night that steve albini concert just seeing that black mohawk kind of cut through the crowd like a like the fin of a shark. Like, what? Who's connected to that?

She changed my life. So now, let's go and talk to Steve Al... You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea and ice cream? Yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats.

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Cans. I love those studio terms. Cans. Do you call them cans? No, no one calls them cans. No one does? No, of course not. Come on.

No one says take five either. Nobody says that. Come on, radio guys say cans. Well, okay. Music guys don't. All right. Well, not. Come on. No, no one says take five either. Nobody says that. Come on, radio guys say cans. Well, okay. Music guys don't. All right. Well, okay. All right.

I learned something. What do they call them? Headphones? Exactly. Yeah. All right. In many, I've learned how to, just by being a recording engineer, I've learned a few useful studio expressions in many languages. Yeah.

Like what? In Dutch, for example. Yeah. Zet je kopte expressions in many languages. Yeah. Like what? In Dutch, for example. Yeah. Zet je koptelefoon op. Yeah. Which means put your headphones on. Koptelefoon. Okay.

Kop is head and these are koptelefoon. And you learned that from recording Dutch guys. Yeah, exactly. Do you remember what Dutch guys? I think it was the Dutch heavy metal band Gore. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Is there a possibility?

I got to ask you a a couple questions right up front. Would you have been touring? I met a girl in college who was very important to me, and I met her at The Rat in Boston. Played there many times. As yourself, though, would you have been touring as Steve Albini in, say, 84, 85? No, no, no.

Big Black? In 85, I would have been in Big Black. So was you? Because I remember I was at a Steve Albini in say 84, 85? No, no, no. Big Black? In 85, I would have been in Big Black. So was you? Because I remember I was like, I was at a Steve Albini show and I met this chick with a black mohawk and the rest is history. Sounds about right.

Yeah. Yeah. So you remember that, huh? I don't know. I don't remember the chick with a black mohawk. Come on, you got it. We were both standing there. No?

The rat was a shithole. I don't know. I mean, it kind of typified the era of like punk venues where there were there were sort of two kinds of punk venues yeah there were places that were sort of of the community where you had guys that were in punk bands yeah that um like coerced a bar owner into letting them have a night and then they sort of developed into a thing a thing yeah and it and it gathered momentum and you had you had so you had clubs where the the punk bands

were welcome right because the people that were running the scene were sorry and then the other thing was that you had the shittiest bar in town where you could get away with stuff yeah so the shittiest bar in town yeah ended up being a punk club like the basement yeah like the rat like the rat for example i mean pretty good example the the the dude that ran it had one mitch had one of those yeah and the big hair the toupee i think his name was mitch yeah and uh would routinely just decide not to pay the band is that true yeah and he'd go into his office and he'd click the little buzzer on his throat and he'd be there's no way you're getting the money and they have they had the like the bouncers there was a weight room upstairs where the bouncers would all be like working out so

you'd have these like you know these like yard wide meat heads you know standing on either side of him while he's like sitting at this you know the sort of melted elephant of a dude sitting behind his desk and he's like the show didn't do well there's no way you're getting the money that is and then you just have to walk well yeah i mean what else are you gonna do with that guy like you'd say you know you you would offer you some pittance like you know like i'm losing money but i'll give you gas money you know that sort of thing it's like it was it was a you know it was like kind of a routine scenario that never happened to us because you guys were popular not so much that i think we it was kind of the luck of the draw like we we um even even in the 80s it was you could figure out how to schedule

a tour so that you would hit a town on a night when people would be willing to go out. And so we structured our tours in a way where you would play the bigger towns on the better nights and then the crappier towns you'd play midweek. And because a punk audience in a crappy town is going to go out any night of the week that a band comes through because they're ecstatic that someone's bothered. Right. They're here. They're in our town. So, like, you could play, you know, a fat spot in the road in, you know, Kansas or Indiana on a Tuesday or Wednesday, and you could expect a sort of normal crowd.

Whereas if you're playing in Chicago, you know, people have a lot of other options for their entertainment dollar. It's kind of wild, though, man. That whole, even all the cities that were music cities, all that scene is just sort of gone, isn't it? Not at all. No? I mean, it's... But like you go to Boston, the entire Kenmore Square is leveled.

Okay. Well, Boston is a special case. There was a monopolistic control of live music venues. What was the name of the company? Don Law? Was that the name of the company? Don Law, yeah. Yeah, the monopolistic control of music venues.

Even the small ones? Basically every suitable room. I mean, it's the same sort of thing that happened on a national scale with Clear Channel, Live Nation, like sort of taking over venues and just exerting the airwaves or it can just be like a closed society of club owners and music people that won't allow anybody else any you know independent people to operate you hear a noise i do what is it is it in the world or in your mic? Leaf blower.

You've got leaf blower noise. Yeah, yeah. They have a filter for that. Hey, Dennis! It just happened spontaneously. Oh, now he's blowing out his fountain. Oh, shit. Hey, Dennis! Dennis! oh shit hey dennis dennis he's the guy that suggested i put an on the air light on the side of my garage this will be my favorite part of the broadcast for sure

hey dennis dennis can can i interview for like an hour no i'm sorry dude i did i'm just doing another one i'll be done like an hour now come do it if you want so is this punk rock enough sure fuck so did you come from around here well in a circuitous way my folks uh came from california my dad went to caltech and when he finished his graduate work at caltech we he started having kids we lived in pasadena uh it's like down the street and but i i was the last kid and almost and very shortly after i was born, I think I was less than a year old.

We moved to Washington DC. So I, I remember nothing. Right. How many kids are there? I have a brother, Marty, who's two years older. Yeah. A sister, Mona, who's one year older and that's it. Oh, three.

And then we moved to Washington DC and then in the mid 1960s,s we moved back to santa barbara and i remember some about santa barbara i was there for i was maybe six seven eight years old something like that and then we were five six four five and six something like that i remember some of that right and then we moved back to washington dc area and my dad worked as an engineer in aeronautics and um doing some defense department contracting so the secret work did you get that like i can't talk about well he didn't bring his work home right but some of it was literal secrets like he worked on the titan 3c missile and he worked on no shit yeah he worked on a bunch of stuff for the star wars really did he talk did he talk to you about that

later he can't really he couldn't really well he's he's dead now but he couldn't really talk about it like specifically yeah but um it the thing that was odd about my father was that he was an engineer he's a brilliant brilliant engineer and his the thing that gave him the most satisfaction in life was solving the hardest problem so he wanted the hardest problem and he was eager to have the hardest right so and the thing about the whole star wars technology was that it was is essentially impossible like to do what was being postulated as easy and as like the saving that was the shield in space with exactly it was shooting a bullet with a bullet like that that whole concept. Shooting down the missile.

Yeah. Right. That whole concept. Yeah. Was essentially impossible. Right. But, and as a result, it was like the hardest problem. Right.

So my dad was like super eager to work on it. Right. So he was spending all of his energy in this, like this ultimately, like completely futile effort. But it was very satisfying for him to be like well that's going to be really difficult right uh i that's probably going to time me up for weeks and then be in bliss you know yeah um but in it toward the end of his life he he worked for the department of the interior working on the science of forest fires, which is impossibly complex, but in a very practical way, you can make pretty significant improvements in the way we treat the forest and the way we treat fire. But not specifically about fighting them necessarily? No, managing the resource of the forest so that people can use it and then it also doesn't become a threat to itself.

Right. I mean, there was a long history of preventing forest fires at all costs. That was like a sort of policy. And that was- Smokey the bear. Absolutely disastrous because fires are part of the life cycle of a forest. Right. cycle of a forest right and uh then you know mitigating the the the damage done by these catastrophic fires that were started because we had allowed so much fuel to build up by putting

out all the fires all the time yeah like that became a part of the problem and then just understanding the behavior of fire itself is where my father concentrated his efforts and he was a he was a renowned scientist in that regard. Very young science. There's still so much. We know way less about fire than we thought we did. Really? From the efforts of the people at the Northern Forest Fire Research Laboratory. Yeah.

Well, I know that once it starts, you just got to wait it out sometimes. Yeah. I mean, it's the thing that I like about my father's work in forest fire is that he took this incredibly complex problem and created practical tools that people in the field could like. They could enter a few variables into a portable calculator, for example. And using a program that would, that was a reduction of all of this complex theory. Yeah. And then they could figure out how far ahead they had to go before they dug the fire line.

Like that sort of like very practical. Yeah. Very, very, you know, like, Oh, well that house is doomed.

Let's move on. You know, things like that. Yeah. Yeah. Make those big decisions. That one's, we're going to lose that one.

What is your training? Exactly. I left. So the working in the forest fire brought our family working with forest fires brought our our family to montana and i did my principal growing up in missoula montana i have no idea what that even looks like it's beautiful it's like if you is it if you if you picture like dodd's plan for the earth right oh really mountains and trees and yeah like rolling grass and rivers and massive lakes and beautiful snow caps.

Montana has all of that. It's beautiful. There's high desert. There's lush coniferous forest. You love Montana. I mean, when I was there, I was into punk rock, and it seemed extraordinarily frustrating to be in a place that really its only characteristic is the people and the natural beauty.

And what I wanted was, I wanted like dope fiends and hustlers and, you know. Where's the good stuff? Where are the freaks at? So I left to come to Chicago to go to school in 1980. So you left Missoula. I've been in Chicago ever since. You went to high school in Missoula. I went, you went to high school in Missoula. I you went to high school in missoula i went to college in chicago at northwestern university

and studied what journalism so okay so you're in missoula and what was the moment where you knew there was something bigger and more exciting out there um i it's weird because i've had to recall this moment for interviews oh yeah you know so it's now become crystalline in my memory. Well, then let's go to a week or so before it. Well, like my circle of friends and I in high school, we were all like, you know, dorks into like horror movies and, you know. So you were with the nerd crew. Yeah. Anti-jock.

Super dorks, you know, in the school newspaper sarcastic bullied uh i mean i was hated i wasn't physically attacked very often hated for what reason uh i was kind of a loud mouth yeah which is i mean that's you know so you were you were an aggressive nerd yeah oh good i mean that i i've recognized that as a character flaw and i've i've done what i can to sort of ameliorate it really the anger no no no the being an asshole like just feeling like it was really important that everybody in the room knew what i was thinking all the time right like i got i got that out of my system when i was in high school did you have to get beat up for it no although when i was in college um i i was still drinking when i was in college and uh i got into this thing where i i really enjoyed

taunting the fraternity people and the like the fraternity system i mean i sure i drew cartoons for the school newspaper you know oh really ridiculing and insulting it and what but uh they threw fantastic parties where bands would play and the booze was free and women would appear yeah so everyone exploited the fraternities as a kind of a social resource right right you would go to the party like we'll go to the frat house but if we just the five of us go where you're insulatedaded in your crew of friends. Amongst the idiots, yeah. I would go typically with a friend of mine named John Bonin, and I would go to these parties. And it would be like the two weirdos in the funny clothing.

And I can't remember what the precipitating incident was. I published some cartoon mocking the fraternity system or something. But my friend John and I were at one of these frat parties and we were taking advantage of all the free beer and music and women and that sort of thing and that kind of a ripple went through the all the greek douchebags you know like like oh that albini guy is here you know right the dude and then the thing they sort of started to congregate around the two of us and i don't know how i did it. And it's like probably the only moment of judo in my entire life. But I managed to extricate myself from this closing

circle of Greeks. And then all of us threw my friend John out of the party as me. And I stood with the mob on the balcony shaking my fist at that Albini guy that we had just thrown out of the party. So that's like the only clever thing I've ever done in my life. Was everybody okay? Did John make it all right? It was fine. It was an interesting, almost, not cowardly, but, you know. Absolutely cowardly.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean. Let John take the hit. And, you know, he forgave me. He understood the situation perfectly. But they were too fucking stupid to know the difference. Exactly. I mean, they didn't, they just wanted, you know, it's typical like right wing mob mentality.

They just want someone to take the blame instantly. Yeah. And then they can forget about the, you know, whatever the underlying issue is. They can just move on. Isn't it interesting how you see that stuff? Like, you know, in retrospect, now that we're older, you see that it's all set up at such a young age that, you know, the fraternity system is designed to create a brotherhood of douchebags that will take care of each other throughout life. And, you know, whether it's those specific douchebags, it's that whole, it doesn't matter that we're wrong. We're together.

You know, that mentality. And we can win. doesn't matter that we're wrong we're together you know yeah sure that mentality that and we can win and incorporate you know like you hear you know that you hear that in sort of corporate motivational speech and all that sort of stuff you hear that same sort of like group identity nonsense and it's all typically being fostered by an authority figure like from above like all of you people who work for me right need to see yourselves as a team. Exactly. So, all right.

So, you're there. You're in Missoula. You're just like, what kind of music are you listening to before the Enlightenment? I didn't. I wasn't really. Not at all? I wasn't significantly interested in music until I discovered the Ramones. Yeah.

The Ramones were a touchstone for me. Right. My brother had left for college, and he left behind his collection of records, which were typical hard rock records of the era. You know, Alice Cooper, The Who. You like that, though, right? Yeah. I mean, that was formative for me. Sure. Listening to that stuff was formative to me.

Yeah. I mean, my sister had, like, schlock records. I mean, not a patch on my sister. I think she's a wonderful woman and she's very intelligent. My boy Elton John. Yeah, good example. Like Gordon Lightfoot.

Oh, sure, sure, sure. The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald or previous. Now, and all of that stuff has its charm. Sure. But, you know,

when you compare Gordon Lightfoot to Alice Cooper, you know, Gordo gets a bloody nose. That's right. It's a hell of a chasm there. Yeah.

How old are you i'm 52 i'll be 53 in a couple of days so we're the same fucking age i'm 51 so we grew up and even when we were growing up with that stuff it was already kind of old when we were in high school yeah most of it that's the weird thing i can't i can't i think when we were in high school so you're a year ahead of me we we saw the death of disco happen we saw it and then we saw new wave happen and then punk just sort of got left out for where i was the thing the thing that seems strange to me is like if you look at the there's a if you just look at a timeline yeah like from woodstock to the cbgb era yeah was only like six or seven years holy shit like it's kind of incredible that's true you know

never really thought about that and then if you think about like from you know from bill haley to woodstock is only like 10 11 years yeah yeah and i've been flogging the same bullshit for 30 years now and i feel like i and i still feel contemporary you know which is absurd and you know it should be it should be impossible no it's not no not. No, I'm not going to. It's not flogging the same bullshit at some point, but it is always peculiar to me to realize that rock and roll, in earnest, it's like 57, 1957 or so, right? Rock Around the Clock or Rocket 88,

whichever one you attribute the beginning to, and it's still so fucking young. I never really put it together like that, how much it just sort of blew up over time the the like the aggressiveness of evolution in the early stages of rock you know from you know late 50s you've got skiffle in the uk and like rock and roll and you know yeah rockabilly stuff in america then mid-60s you have the british explosion then immediately followed by like the pop music side of that like sort of melded in or dissolved into the psychedelic period where you had like radical stuff happening yeah going into the 70s where you had like the prague stuff which

is also radical a lot of it you know preposterous but a lot of it's still very adventurous are you are you into it no not specifically but I can recognize. There are fringe elements of prog rock that I find fascinating. Like who? Like the kraut rock stuff. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like can and tangerine and craft work and all that stuff. All of that stuff is, you know, organic. Crimson, no crimson?

Yeah, it has its moments. And just the other day we were listening to, I don't know how it happened, but Bob's iPod was on shuffle in the van and we played Roundabout by Yes. Made it around. Right. I wait for that part. That song by itself is essentially the entire career of the band Rush condensed, you know, and executed to perfection. Like it made Rush unnecessary. Well yeah well yeah they were kind of

unnecessary so um you know i mean that's the that's a van conversation but that's a very small number in physical time but were you excited when you guys came up with that in the van when you oh yeah yeah that's like we have we have a couple of van rules, van music rules. One of them is that if a song starts with cowbell, you turn it up. Yeah. Because the number of great songs that start with a cowbell is extraordinary. Like the batting average for starting with a cowbell. It's like a very good signifier. We're an American band.

Right. Honky Tonk women. Right. Mississippi Queen. Like basically, it's really, really hard to miss if the song starts with a cowbell. And we got fooled once. By? We were in Europe.

I don't know if you've ever listened to European popular radio. No, I haven't. But, like, they play music, a very weird pastiche of music. Yeah. So, this is in the, you know, in the 2000-something. Yeah. We hear cowbell. Right. The song starts with cowbell. Yeah it up right yeah so and and it ended up being lover boy everybody's working for the

weekend oh it's such a downer to like you're so excited and then we realized that the paradigm had not actually been broken yeah because it wasn't a real cowbell it was the metronome uh-huh the metronome they were using a metronome cowbell drum machine okay and they just left it in so we're still safe so you just how how much research did you have to figure to figure that out uh it it became apparent over the course of the song like oh that song is so bad it must have been done to a metronome i that cowbell isn't really a cowbell we're're off the hook. Well, when you, okay, so you get your mind blown coming back around. So we actually did it. Coming back around to the moment where you got the Ramones record.

Right. Well, you had an older brother, which thank God, right? Yeah. I mean. The records are important. Yeah. Where did the Ramones album come from? A friend of mine or an acquaintance of mine on the school bus had a cassette tape in one of those little

portable accordion button cassette player panasonic i don't know you know with the buttons at the end exactly yeah little sure accordion buttons yeah yeah and he had a ramones tape in it and we were listening to it on the bus and and we were laughing our asses off it was like the most hilarious thing we'd ever heard this inept bubblegum music just played right super ferociously you know what a you know what a perfect comedy that was for us we were mocking everything and this was a thing that mocked everything and itself you know right so it really resonated with me and i ordered my own copy of the record from the record store and then when it came i played it obsessively and at first it was it was

comic right you know at first i was was laughing at the ineptitude. And then somewhere around the 10th or 12th iteration of playing that record obsessively, I realized that it was actually perfect and the greatest record ever made. The first Ramones record. And from that point on, I saw the world differently. Well, what changed? Perfect in what way way in your mind um it sounds kind of high-minded to attach all of this stuff to a band or a record why not but

yeah what we do here the it's our job the ramones the the the subject matter of the ramones music was all the same sort of childish shit that my friends and I were talking about you know like you know outsider culture um trials trash popular culture you know horror movies yeah comics like stupid childish shit that we had clung to and that we were still that we had kind of imbued with this significance in our in our peer group right and the ramones were taking that stuff seriously so then suddenly i thought well maybe i can take these perverse notions that roll through my mind seriously like they're singing songs about you know a chainsaw massacre or about you know sucking dick for drug money or whatever like whatever they're singing about like i mean that that's legit then like i can entertain those thoughts yeah in my own head i don't have

to suppress them i don't have to like not consider those part of my useful vocabulary right so it it made me take my own musings and ramblings seriously and then by extension i had to take seriously other people's insane obsessions and musings and ramblings i it it made me take other people different from myself people who didn't fit the paradigm of like sort of mainstream mainstream serious people yeah i need and in all all aspects of my life i'm not joking when i say that it made me that it changed the way i thought about the entire world. Right. It gave you almost an aesthetic, in a sense, or an understanding.

And a social awareness. Like, you know, it had never occurred to me that somebody would have to suck dick for drug money. Like, it never occurred to me until, and then I realized, oh, yeah, I guess under a certain set of circumstances, that becomes a viable option. And also, maybe a career, you know? Okay. Fair enough. How old were option and also maybe a career you know okay how old were you like 14 you know this is important shit yeah like i think i got this it's weird because i'm thinking about something in my own life it would have been like national lampoon or something yeah and that was also like that was also part of my peer group like we were all really into national lampoon right you know, it served the same sort of cultural purpose that Mad Magazine did in the late 50s or early 60s.

Right. And, you know, by taking all of these offshoots of lefty or free thinking culture seriously, like it genuinely forced me to reassess my interactions with every other person like i didn't i was i tried not to be as as instantly judgmental in some instances but in some instances i was much more judgmental like immediately dismissive of people who seemed square and hidebound and douchebags yeah and or you know just frozen into a pre-existing paradigm right like those people seemed like suckers to me right yeah yeah and and frightened suckers in a way like just uh yeah that's the that's the weird thing about because i imagine you know having been in music and and recorded as much as you've had and and experienced

people that either some of those meatheads get their minds blown yeah it might happen later right but they're not all hopeless no you know and know? And, you know, and I think, and I, you know, I shudder to think what my life trajectory would have been had that moment on that school bus not transpired. Like what, what, what would have happened to give me that kind of a, you know, while I was in malleable state and, you know, when you're a young teenager and you're forming your own personality, like what other thing might I have latched on to that could have you know what seemed like a different trajectory well you might have it might have been chess like it didn't sound like you were gonna be uh like a football player but you know for example

like my my politics could have gotten radicalized like i you know i could have ended up a libertarian douchebag i could have i mean there are a lot of things. There's still time, man. Yeah. For that one. A lot of things could have happened. Right. To give me an angle, a prism through which I would see the rest of my life. And it happened to be the Ramones. I'm incredibly lucky that it was the Ramones.

Right. And underground culture. Yeah. Rather than, you know, the young Republicans or something. Right. But it sounds to me like you were already a disruptive force and that you already had an innate suspicion of the hierarchy of power and that kind of stuff.

Right, but I think all of that energy and all of that intellect, like any of that could have been directed in a different way. Right, because all it would have taken was one strong-minded douchebag guy that you looked up to and then you're off. was one strong-minded douchebag guy that you looked up to, and then you're off. It's like Bill Hicks said, you know, the wrong friends and the wrong bar,

and anybody can be a bum, you know? Yeah, that's true. Yeah, and the right timing. So, all right, so you have this moment, but you're not a musician at that time. No, and then in my little peer group, we decided to start a band, and we started a band. And no one knew how to play anything? Not really.

I mean, we had a- What did you play? I played bass at that point, and because I had fewer strings than guitar, it seemed like it would be easier. Yeah. And it was. I mean, legitimately, that's a- And you just taught yourself bass?

I had two lessons from an instructor that was recommended by the guitar store where I bought the bass. Right. And he was also the cheapest instructor in town. Uh-huh. And the first lesson, he taught me how to tune the bass. He showed me physically how to tune the bass and what tuning it involved. And then the second lesson, he started to teach me the difference between a minor scale and a major scale.

And at that point i realized that i had learned enough yeah sure so that what was that band that was a band called just ducky and i coincidentally i ran into um a woman who was the singer for that band or a singer for that band on this tour she lives in portland her name is heather goncher she's a um she's a structural engineer oh really she builds bridges and stuff wow so she got out yeah yeah she got out unscathed everybody that was the thing that's cool uh uh that i've that has transpired again and again in my life is i'll run into people that i thought were like smart and on the ball when they were like 15 years old or whatever or 18 years old or 20 years old yeah i'll run into them 20 or 30 years later and they're still smart and on the

ball. And I still admire them and I still think they're cool. Yeah. And maybe you haven't talked to them in 20 years. Yeah. And it's amazing how, I mean, I think it's true more for dudes than for women,

but like a friendship that is, that a, that a guy has with another guy, that friends, friendship just reinflates and becomes whole after a span of like 20 or 30 years. No problem. Like you're just, you're right back where you were.

I think that's true. Like there are guys that I know in my life that, I'm not gender specific, but I mean, they're mostly dudes I know in my life where you just know it's not shakable. Like, you know, and there's no, you know, a couple of people that you know a couple people that get lost sure religion or something but a lot of times they come out the other side even they're

like you know under the veneer of what they've applied sure it's the same dude yeah holding on trying to get through so so at what point do you just you know break it open once you got the ramones records you start just amassing records? Yeah. I mean, I was lucky in that Missoula is a college town. Yeah. So in college towns, people bring stuff with them from wherever they came. And then when they leave or when they need weed money or whatever, they shed that stuff to the secondhand market.

Right. There were very good secondhand record stores in Missoula. There's one of the great record stores in the world. It's a place called Rockin' record stores in Missoula. There's one of the great record stores in the world, this place called Rockin' Rudy's in Missoula. And that place came into full flower after I left, but it is one of the great record stores. It's an emporium. But while I was there, there were still a bunch of secondhand record shops.

There was sort of hybrids. Missoula had a lot of weird hybrid culture. There was one shop that had secondhand records, secondhand motorcycles, guitars, and home wine and beer making equipment. Like that was this one shop. Creative off the grid stuff that you need. to other cats who who were in the original kind of american punk movement that that it was really driven by a network of fans and people that that needed literally to mail each other sometimes oh absolutely yeah and and the whole zine culture and and like to get actual punk records was sort of a chore yeah and it was and there was a uh you know if you ran into somebody else who had cool music tastes like the first topic would be what are the cool records

and then they would start to you know there was kind of like this underground education that you would pick up like oh yeah this record blah blah blah yeah yeah yeah like you'd go into a record store and the guy at the behind the counter would recognize you from and it was you know from where you were looking and what you looked like right he would say have you heard this right like pull out a record you always get in your mind blown like once a week it was terrific and that you said earlier that that sort of network it doesn't exist anymore that the live music scene and the and the fan network doesn't really exist anymore i disagree wholeheartedly it's just lighthearted i'm not gonna argue with it's just moved venues yeah to the internet yeah and now there are these very robust online communities and and

exchange you know available which has made for the exact same kind of interaction just in a in a non-physical environment you know and so you still like you find a website that's about a band that you never heard about before and in that website there are links to a bunch of other sort of progenitor bands that are all interesting. I guess what I should have said is I'm old. You can't play that shit with me. I guess I can. Yeah.

Well, I know that's true, but is there something that's lost in it not being physical like it used to? Like I, the culture, the personal culture of the record store, I still value pretty highly. I don't go into record stores nearly as much as I used to. And that's on me.

So when you started playing, your drive was just to be a punk rock guy, to be a musician. Yeah. I just wanted to, I wanted to participate in this mania that was evident from the records that I was buying and from the, you know wanted to participate in it but you didn't find it in missoula you had to wait till you went to college i mean we enjoyed ourselves right in the band that we had in missoula but it i mean it couldn't be described in any way other than failure so i think we played two gigs that was it yeah and one of them the short life we played at school. Yeah. A high school booked us for a school, for like a dance or something. Yeah. Someone at the high school booked us.

Right. And midway through our show, like maybe 30 minutes into the show, the chaperone from the, for the day, like the, you know, assistant principal or whatever, marched onto stage, onto the stage. Yeah. marched onto stage onto the stage yeah and presented our singer with the check for our fee and said you guys can stop and leave and so we were actually cut off mid-set at one of our only gigs that sounds like a successful punk performance it sounds like it did exactly what it was supposed to do and even then it shook them up do you remember what song might have been the one that pushed them over the edge i know that we did a cover of the cramp song human fly uh-huh and

i think it was during the human fly that was interrupted but we were even then we were thinking two steps ahead yeah we cashed the check at a safeway on the way out of town so that they wouldn't have time to stop payment on it. Oh, you think they would have? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Why else would they do it? Right. Just get them out. Get them out. Get them out the door. So when you got to college, you were playing music and you were just going to school? Yeah. I was going to school. I was playing music. Why journalism exactly? Yeah, I was going to school.

I was playing music. Why journalism, exactly? I had a kind of a romantic notion of journalism from being, you know, in the high school newspaper. Right. Sort of idolizing. And it was a time when, like, Woodward and Bernstein had sort of made an enormous political contribution. That's right. So you were, like, 14 in 76 or 75. Yeah.

So, like, it seemed as though journalism could be, you know, a tool of change. And it seemed as though journalism could be important. And it seemed, just on a fundamental level, I thought writing down what happens now is important for the future. Right. You know? Yeah. And that just seemed like a noble thing. noble thing and my heroes at the time were you know journalists muckrakers and you know people who had had an effect on the culture on the greater culture and the remands yeah and the

remands right so uh i and i'm you know i did in fact pick a school that was in a big city where i assumed that there would be a vibrant punk rock scene you know because i could have gone to columbia and missouri yeah which is another good journalism school right uh but i didn't think there would be as much punk rock there so i chose northwestern which is right next to chicago because i was certain there would be a lot of punk rock and was there yeah that was very uh very interesting small but extraordinarily energetic punk scene so you were just a kid hanging around yeah i was just going to shows i mean i tried to put together bands on my own and i you know they were i was kind of not doing well at that and i was in i joined another band and i got kicked out of that band and then i started recording on my own kicked

out um i kept making fun of brian ferry i think that was the the last straw there was a couple that was at the core of the band and they were really a couple they were rocks and music really into like you know that kind of british like sort of romantic high forehead kind of music sports jackets and you were just relentless yeah fuck brian ferry basically uh-huh yeah i mean again i as i've as i've matured i now see the charms in some of that stuff but at the time it just seemed really phony and pretentious. I didn't want to have anything to do with it. Anyway, I got kicked out of that band.

I started recording stuff on my own as Big Black. And that's when I actually started to get involved on a more significant level in the music scene. In terms of recording and playing. And also playing out. We formed a live band. Jeff Pizzotti, the singer from Naked Raygun, who at the time was one of my absolute heroes. That band was an earth-shaking band to me. Seeing Naked Ray Gun perform in the early 80s was just, every show was completely radically different.

They did one show where they were all tripping balls and the music was just like a sheet of noise. And they would do another show where it was kind of like this weird space rockabilly yeah yeah and then they didn't they did one show where the four members of the band set up on little platforms in different corners of the room yeah so they were like they were sort of playing like there's this confused crowd of like maybe 40 or 50 people in the middle of the room like nobody knew where to look you know that was exciting because you know experimental music at that time like because i remember in albuquerque where i grew up i you know i talked about it before i knew this guy who had this band that played twice a year called jungle red and was just two of them and there were you know doll parts and yeah noise and

and it was something they were both wearing jumpsuits it seemed like such an open field right it seemed like limitless yeah you know and and that to me was stimulating and exciting and that like sort of embodied this mentality that i had like what i imagined the ramones meant by all of their stuff right seemed to be physically embodied by the bands and the culture that i saw in the punk scene in chicago and it and it it validated my thinking it validated all these leaps of logic that I had made about how I should live and how I should think about people. Like when you're in the company of people, like I came from Missoula, Montana and I, and I was not particularly like socially aware. Right. And suddenly I was in the company of immigrants and

queers and dope fiends and people that literally lived on the street and like that i'd never been around those people before and it and it completely opened my perceptions of what was possible like what kind of person mattered what what people could create from nothing you know i it it was a life-changing experience getting involved in the punk scene so so the the ramones opened your mind to all these possibilities and made you feel less alone in your own uh what you would have judged wrong-minded thinking perhaps exactly and then so you you go to chicago and then you see i see it in practice any like things that you could never conceive of exactly and just sort of, of course there's room for this.

Yeah, exactly. Like you see a dude wearing a trench coat completely covered in mousetraps. Yeah. And you think, well, that actually looks really cool, you know? As opposed to, what the fuck's wrong with that guy? Yeah. Or, you know, you go to a show and the singer from the band has a rat. Yeah. That is literally running around on his body while he's performing.

Who is that guy? I think the band was called CHA, Chicago Housing Authority. And who would do that, number one? And then when you see it in action, you think, well, why not? Actually, that's kind of, you know, it's kind of a gross version of Alice Cooper and his, and his Python, you know? Sure. Well, that's interesting that like when you see that kind of stuff happening and you realize there are precedents for it in a way. Right.

Or, but, but significantly you just, it's like in the, at the time there was, there were these paradigms. There was disco music and rock music. And the rock stars were these exalted sort of statuesque dudes. And everything about them was mythical and phony. And everything about it was giant and overblown. And then the disco scene, just all of it seemed manufactured and phony. It seemed like it was a perversion of a genuine culture. The soul music and the gay culture seemed genuine to me. And disco was just like fucking guidos, you know.

Yeah, yeah. It was just like, you know, douchebags. Yeah. And it was, when you'd see like this, the sort of mustache schmucks with their silk shirts, like it's easy to be offended by that culturally sure right without without being offended by its by the the gay and soul music roots right disco right disco was an aberration and and and was abhorrent now is this something that you've been able to uh uh forgive as you get older? Or does that remain? I have friends who identified with the social underclasses that were the antecedents of disco.

And some of those people have sort of embraced the more flamboyant diva aspects of disco. And I find their embrace of it charming. So that music is still repellent to me. Sort of making it campy. I don't think it's camp. I think it's genuine. Like it's sort of like the house music scene in Chicago.

Yeah. Like the house music scene in Chicago was a genuine expression of underclass and um sort of not just minority but like you know people of different sexual identities that was a genuine expression of joy for them right and then it was stylized and co-opted and turned into a formula and it's easy to hate that formula right and it's easy to hate that formula. Right. And it's easy to hate that exploitation. But its initial expression in the clubs

and in the garages in Chicago, I mean, that's legit. It's beautiful. You know, it has its own soul. So when you're doing, when you put Big Black together, so Naked Raygun was still playing you were playing alongside of these bands that you

hooked up to. Yeah. And you became sort of a force in yourself and where were you recording the original Big Black records when you started recording music? I started recording on borrowed or rented equipment in my apartment and then it wasn't until the second Big Black

record that I actually recorded my band in a studio. I had been in the studio with other bands, sort of helping them record stuff. But how did you get the knack for that? I mean, when you say helping, what were your original tasks? Well, when you're in a band, eventually your band wants to make a demo or some sort of recording of yourself, right? Right. And so it falls on somebody in the band to learn how to do that. Yeah.

And I just learned, I volunteered. So I rented equipment. When I'm back in Montana, I would go to the guitar shop and rent a tape recorder and rent some microphones. Like an eight track? A four track. Four track, yeah. And, you know, figure out how to set it up

and then do some recordings. And at the end of it, you end up with a recording of some kind, you know? So, um, did that a few times and then did the same thing when I moved to Chicago, like I would do demo recordings for my friend's bands or my band or, and then once you develop those skills, you become an asset to your peer group and like, Oh, he's that, that guy,

he's done demo tapes for bands you can get him to do your demo tape yeah so then when you're in a band all your friends are in band and bands and you end up doing this for everybody that you know until over time it just evolves and eventually it becomes a profession uh-huh like i i i occasionally speak at recording schools and the audio departments of universities and stuff. And people talk about their sort of like their career path. Yeah. And if you, if I chart like from when I first started doing these experimental recordings with my own band as the beginning of my experience in recording in the studio and stuff in like 1978 or something.

Yeah. Or so. experience in recording in the studio and stuff in like 1978 or something or so um then i carried on doing that informally certainly never getting paid you know for quite a long time and then i eventually developed um a relationship with some recording studios that let me bring bands in to record them on a semi-professional basis and And then eventually I had enough work where I could actually quit my job. Right. And that didn't happen for almost 10 years. From 78 till 88, late 80s. 87, I think, is when I quit my job for the last time.

What was your job? I was a photograph retouch artist at a place that did advertising imagery. Where'd you pick up that skill? I had been into photography when I was in high school. And then when I graduated at Northwestern, I needed a job and that I just bullshitted my way into it and then learned it on the fly. So you were, you were a darkroom guy? Yeah. In high school? Yeah. Yeah, me too. I was into black and white photography. Mostly. Yeah. And then, so then I was working for this company that did images for the advertising And so then I was working for this company that did images for the advertising industry. Sure.

And so a lot of my time was spent, you know, working on like the Marlboro Man or the Merit cigarette campaign or, you know, Salem. Just getting the car right or. Stuff like the, there'd be a dude they'd photograph in the studio and then him leaning against a motorcycle. Right. And then they'd have this like epic mountain Vista. Right. Like, all right, take the motorcycle dude, put him there.

Yeah. And then, so at the end of this little wooden cigarette that he's holding as a prop, you have to put the fire on the cigarette. Right. You know, that kind of stuff. Like really, really mundane. Yeah. Really.

But somebody has to do it, you know? And it was good money? Yeah. Terrific money. Yeah. And so when I quit, I actually, it was actually i i had tried to get my ducks in a row before i quit like i bought a house i qualified for my mortgage and then i you know and then i quit so like it wasn't a matter of me trying to buy a house as a self-employed you still live in

that house uh no i had to sell that house when i built the studio that i work in now but yeah um i went from being a college student to being a professional in that business to being self-employed as a recording engineer. And I was doing recordings the whole time. But I think the expectation now is that at the end of a university program, you're qualified to work in an industry and then you can just get a job in that industry. in an industry and then you can just get a job in that industry and that in specifically in recording there's just so much stuff that you pick up in the saddle that i just don't i don't think that's realistic i don't and and besides there's just no jobs like no one is hiring recording engineers so you basically give lectures to tell the the class that it's like look it's really a long shot and what you're doing here is probably bullshit well the main thing is that if you're

interested in it you will pursue it anyway right and anything yeah and then you will find a way to make it part of your life but it's interesting to me that your your primary momentum was to be a musician yeah i mean the job was definitely a a means to an end of me playing music and being involved that was your first passion. Yeah. Yeah. The way I describe it is that there are some people who want a career in music. That is, they want to be able to play music and have music pay their rent for them.

Right. And then there are people, and I would consider myself one of these people, who I'm willing to work a 40 hour a week job in order to support my interest in music the way some people would support a family i support my interest in music and that's playing recording whatever it may be yeah whatever it is and as a fan especially in the punk rock scene where every there weren't that many people and everybody had to do a lot of things if you're one thing you're also another like if you're in a band you're also a guy that a contact for out-of-town bands booking gigs right if you're and if you're a contact for that well then you also have to handle printing up

posters or flyers for the gig right and then once you're doing that well that's a small step from there to making record jackets and pressing up records and being a record label yeah and once you're doing that then it's a small step you know from there to distributing your friends records as well and so everybody basically everybody involved in music like evolved in the original punk rock in the in the punk scene yeah had fingers in all of those areas like everybody that you run into that was in a band they would also like you know the guys in naked ray gun owned a pa that was in a band, they would also like, you know, the guys in Naked Raygun owned a PA that they used, a public address system they used for their practice room. Yeah.

They would also rent it out for gigs and go do gigs as a sound company. Right. You know, and then a bunch of the bands got together and they're like, we're all pressing up our records and we're trying to sell them. Let's call ourselves a label, put all of our records under the same label, and then maybe we'll have more clout. And so we formed a collective record label that was a record label really only in that they all had used the same P.O. box. Every band was operating independently.

What label was that? It's called Ruthless Records. Oh, yeah. And that record label, you know, we put records out by basically all of our peers in Chicago. If they wanted to put a record out under the name Ruthless Records, they were welcome to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And as long as they did all the work, no problem.

But what it allowed you to do is you could call a distributor and say, Hey, I've got these new, there's a new Naked Raygun record coming out next week. But you still owe us for these big black records or these effigies records that you bought, and you haven't paid that invoice, and we're not going to ship you any of the Naked Reagan records unless you pay those invoices. Now, the guy on the other end of the phone

didn't know that Naked Reagan would send him the records regardless, right? But I could still say that, and I could still get paid. You were the guy that did that. Sure, sure. You were the heavy. Well, you know, I was and I could still get paid. You were the guy that did that. Sure, sure. You were the heavy. Well, you know, I was the least likely to get paid. Right, right. So you're telling me that like when you, by the time you recorded Surfer Rosa, the Pixies record, you hadn't quite quit your day job yet.

No, I was still working for a photo lab in Chicago. Yeah. day job yet no i was still working for a photo lab in chicago yeah and at that point you know you were getting a reputation i don't think it it it may look that way if you if you're looking you know in reverse chronologically yeah but at the time i was i was essentially unknown outside of the very small circle of people who were into making records. But the Pixies were out of Boston, right? Yeah. So how did they find you?

Their record label was in England. There was another Boston band called the Throwing Muses. I remember them. They got signed to an English record label called 4AD. Right. And the Throwing Muses people were friends with the Pixies people. And they said to their record label, here, here's this cassette from this other boston band you might be interested in they got signed on the basis of that cassette before they'd really established themselves as a performing band

i don't know how many shows they'd done at that point but they weren't a weren't a known quantity right and then their first record came out was an ep that was called from that cassette and did some business and established them somewhat and when they were fixing to do an album their english record label uh sort of essentially sent my name down from above and said you should talk to steve albini about doing your record i don't think they had ever heard of me i don't think they knew right you know sure which i i wouldn't have taken that as an insult at the time i would have been completely normal from yeah right so then i contacted them i heard their cassette i thought they were an interesting band i thought

i could probably work on the record and do okay they were one of the first bands that i worked on where they weren't part of my immediate peer group uh-huh you know and were you impressed with the music yeah to an extent i thought i think that guy charles i think is a distinctive songwriter i thought he he had some odd ideas that i thought were underrepresented and i i to this day i have a very close relationship with kim deal i think she's got an absolutely magical voice i i think she she is a genius and she thinks about music in a unique way uh-huh um i consider myself very close to her in terms of her uh her musical existence like i really admire her uh and i'm you know i'm proud of that association the the pixies as a band you know they were fine

whatever they were fine i'm not you know i thought a band, their music was kind of unremarkable. Like, especially considering what we were talking about, like the extraordinary range of experiences that you could have in the punk scene at the time. I felt like their music was like fairly conservative. Well, but that record turns out to be a great record. So what did you find in starting out that dealing with maybe something you couldn't say directly to their face which is like you guys are okay that well that that made you sort of compensate well i should point out that i was still pretty green no i know but i'm just saying like but is there a part of you that said i'm gonna i'm gonna pop this shit no no no no not at all like i even then i didn't think that i had uh uh i didn't think i was able to to you know

make something into you can't turn a sausage into a trout you know i didn't i didn't have that that kind of a delusion i think i did insert myself insinuate myself into the personality of the record a little much in my to my way of thinking. Into that record. Yeah. Like the little bits of recorded conversation that ended up on that record and like certain sonic aspects of it, I think were driven more by my ambition than the band's organic. And that actually left a bad taste in my mouth. Huh. Thinking that, you know, for the rest of their career, this band has to answer for this,

all these little gags that are on their record that weren't their idea. But now they have to go to their grave with that as hung on them as part of their legacy. Well, I'm sure that somebody made it their idea. Do they always say, like, no, that was Albini? Well, regardless, I would know that I did that to them rather than them coming up with it. And so that helped to shape my current philosophy which has been sort of since then i tend not to insinuate myself too much into the personality of the record i tend not to try to exert very much control over music in the music i'm recording and i would go as far as to say that i i try to avoid forming

opinions about the music that i work on as an engineer because I think it's inappropriate. I think one of the experiences that I had with my friend's bands going into the studio during the punk era was my friend's band would come into the studio and he would set up his amplifier and he would be playing and it would sound awesome. It would sound like that's what my friend sounds like when he plays his guitar, right? And then you'd see the engineer through the glass in the control room and he would be sort of crinkling his nose a little. And it would come out and you would see this sort of pantomime of a conversation between the guitar player and the engineer. And it would conclude with the engineer reaching over and turning the amplifier down to satisfy himself.

Like, you know, you shouldn't play so loud yeah and then you would hear this guy that you were familiar with and his music he would play his guitar and it wouldn't sound like him anymore it would sound feeble but the engineer would not have a smile on his face like ah i fixed it yeah right so i've seen that mentality of the engineer trying to like use his tastes and his perception of the music. I've seen that be detrimental. If the band is really into something and they're doing something, they have a method that they've used to form the personality of the band. Right. I don't want to interfere with that. Right.

And it's also, I mean, on one hand, it's none of my business because that's all internal stuff that goes on within the band, like what their aesthetic is, how they want to present their music. And on the other hand, like my tastes are pretty fucked up. Like the music that I like, that I listen to is kind of absurd. Like I like a lot of stuff that sounds like kind of a disaster. Like what? Well, we'd mentioned this band, End Result. They were a band from Chicago. They were an aggressively experimental, noisy, outsider band.

Very much outside, not just the mainstream music scene, but outside even the punk scene and the hardcore scene that was developing at the time. Truly odd, genuinely weird, beautiful music. truly odd, genuinely weird, beautiful music. Yeah. If you, but most people listening to it would just assess it as like noise and screaming. Uh-huh. But for me, I have an emotional resonance with it and I think it's beautiful, right? Yeah. So if I tried to make other bands that are trying to make a conventionally pretty record,

if I tried to make them sound more like end result, it would be a failure on both counts. Sure. It's like if you see a beautiful woman and she's wearing a pink frock and has lipstick on and then you see a grizzly bear. And you think, well, I wonder, maybe I should put lipstick and a dress on that bear. All you're going to do is piss off the bear.

And in the end, it's not going to be any more beautiful. Yeah, I get it. You a dress on that bear. Right. All you're going to do is piss off the bear. Right. And in the end, it's not going to be any more beautiful. Yeah. I get it. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So, that's like I'm.

That's how you gauge not interfering. Yeah. I try to let each band have their own, have the experience of making the record that they want. And also, I try not to. I've seen engineers like, I've seen it happen where someone is trying to improve things and they diminish them. And I don't want to do that.

I would rather have them be, I'd rather have them be erratic and unpredictable and, or like not classically perfect in order for them to be more genuine. So do you think though, as time went on, I mean, you did several bands, several records, you know, Boss Hog, The Breeders, Jesus Wizard, you know, you did a lot of people come back to you. Sure. Do you think your reputation in the music community was that let's go to Albini

because he's going to honor our exact sound or Albini's going to Albini it? Well, I think I flatter myself in thinking that I do a good job. Yeah. Right. And I think that that's a baseline. Right. A lot of people have been frustrated by it.

Like a lot of bands just felt like they were treated ineptly. Right. In the studio. Sure. So just if you listen to a record from a band that you're familiar with and you think, wow, that sounds convincingly like that band. Mm-hmm. And then you look in the credits and

it's me that did the recording that's very gratifying for me sure and also that might entice you to bring your band to me right so uh so i i like to think that that's a part of it like on a basic level i i do a good job secondary to that i'm also a bargain like for the for people in my position who do what i do I charge significantly less than most of the people who have that kind of CV and have that kind of tenure. And people have been doing it for as long and have the kind of facility available. Right. So it's a bargain. Right.

So that's another selling point. But do you like John Spencer? Did a few records with you? Yeah. And they've got a pretty. We're good friends. Yeah. I love those guys. Did you do their last album no i've worked on bits and pieces over the years i've i've rarely worked on an entire record start to finish with

john because he's a he's a pretty creative guy and he has a lot of like he has he has a lot of procedural ideas about how he wants to do things and a lot of it is stuff that he just wants to pursue on his own and i have a lot i have a lot of respect but there And a lot of it is stuff that he just wants to pursue on his own. And I have a lot of respect for that. But there's a lot of punch to it. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. I mean, and you can tell when you're listening to music

from somebody who's really single-minded, somebody who's like kind of gripped by a mania of something, right? Yeah, yeah. And to me, that trumps anything else. Like you can listen to a recording that from a classical standpoint is a bad recording.

You know, it's distorted. It's not full frequency response response it's not an accurate reflection of what was going on blah blah blah but you can feel the mania coming through it right and that to me trumps everything else right you need to feel that yeah well i because like you know in my limited under you know sort of understanding of of what in my mind, you represented production-wise was that there was, whether it was with Nevermind or maybe what, you did a Wedding Present record, didn't you? Yeah, I did a couple of records for them.

That there was this sort of wall of sort of the guitars were up front, but that's me just reading into you. Well, what you're picking up on is the aesthetic of the guitars were, you know, up front, but that's me just reading into you. Well, what you're picking up on is the aesthetic of the band. Like a lot of those bands had that as an aesthetic. Like they wanted to have a very sort of overwhelming presentation. But is that what you do? I mean, isn't like Big Black sort of like that as well? Yeah, I mean, our aesthetic was pretty raging,

but then I've also worked on a lot of very modest music. Like, there's a band called Low. I like that. I like them. Very beautiful. Yeah. Very, you know, you could say modest, but I think it's also quite intense. Yeah.

And I think that, you know, that presentation is as difficult and as much of a challenge or as much of an interest of mine as an engineer as doing, like, a ripping rock record is, you know. I've done a bunch of records with a singer-songwriter as doing like a ripping rock record is, you know. I've done a bunch of records with a singer-songwriter from New York named Nina Nastasia. And she's done some records where it's just her singing and playing a guitar and some records where it's her and as many as nine or 12 people playing in a very large ensemble. And there's a thread of continuity.

Right. Her aesthetic survives through all those different changes and each of those settings requires different things from an engineer but i find that very gratifying to work on as well like i i don't i don't i don't think that i have a single aesthetic right now that i want to apply to other bands what i like to think is that i'm sensitive to what they're trying to do and i have enough of a of a technical experience that i can pull off what they're trying to get and also an appreciation of music yeah i think that's less important though uh-huh i mean what we were

talking about before i i'm trying not to form an opinion no i get that i get that but but in talking about you as a person and i'm not arguing with you that the same spirit that brought you to chicago to appreciate all these different elements you know it's within you i mean there's there's part of you if it's not gordon lightfoot, you know, it's within you. I mean, there's, there's part of you, if it's not Gordon Lightfoot, which you can even contextualize, you can say like, I see this. Right.

And, and like I said, I mean, as I've matured, I've even, I mean, if, if Gordo called me,

I would probably say yes, but like the, the point being that I feel like, uh, I, I wouldn't have stuck with music if music wasn't important to me. I probably would have done something else that had a technical capacity. Like I could conceivably have satisfied myself as a photograph retouch artist

for the rest of an extended career. Do you still take pictures or did you take pictures? It's been a long time. But like I guess sort of maybe it's just my personal, what I'm bringing to it because I look at the number of albums you've produced, which is hundreds, right? Thousands,

thousands. Yeah. Yeah. Of all different levels. Yeah. Um, like there are ones that I know and I know where the artist was before they recorded with you and where they were after like someone like Nirvana or like

PJ Harvey or, and now like in looking at the John Spencer stuff and the breeder stuff, like, and like for me, like, you know, if I listened to the difference between, you didn't do Dry, did you? The PJ Harvey one? Yeah.

You did that one. No, no, no. I didn't do Dry. I did Ritmy. Right. Like, the difference between Dry and Ritmy is profound. So, in my mind, I'm like, well, Steve must have done that. Well, but then if you listen to the other records, other PJ Harvey. Harvey records, there's a pretty dramatic personality shift between every record.

Yeah, no, I see that now. At the point that I did the P.J. Harvey record, P.J. Harvey was a band, a functioning three-piece band. Right. The name of the band was P.J. Harvey. Right. Shortly thereafter, P.J. Harvey became a solo performer, Polly Harvey. Right. And the band identity didn't exist anymore. So she made radical changes between each of her records as an individual.

I worked on the last record that she did where it was the original incarnation of a band. And then she broke away from that and became a solo performer after that. Right. So her solo records were all constructed sort of individually. Right. I think I am sensitive about getting credit for aesthetic decisions that the bands and the musicians make. Well, I think that's... Because I am aggressive about not participating in those decisions.

Right. So if you listen to a record and you think, wow, that was really brilliant the way they did that with the music there, that's not me. Yeah. That's them. Right. Well, I think that takes some humility, huh? Well, I mean, part of it is there's a careerist aspect

to being an engineer or a producer where in the mainstream paradigm of record labels and the music business, people use their professional capital in different ways. But first you have to accrue that capital. You have to become responsible for a hit or a success or something, right? So you have to claim authorship of it somehow. And then you have some professional capital, which you can then use to extend your career,

right? I've never been interested in a career in that sense. I just, I like my job. I want to keep doing it, you know? And this is why you notoriously don't sign on for the royalties. Yeah. I don't take royalties on records that I work on, partly because I think it's part of a system that exploits the musicians and artists in a way that I'm just not comfortable with.

Right. But also, I just don't feel like my job warrants it. There's a fundamental thing that I've noticed about the music scene, which is that whenever anyone wants to be paid a percentage for whatever it is, it doesn't matter whether it's a management, booking agent, promoter, whatever. matter whether it's a you know management booking agent you know promoter or whatever whenever somebody wants to be paid a percentage of what would otherwise be your income that person is being overpaid yeah right no i understand that and i feel like not participating in that system makes it easier for me to get to sleep and also means that the differential, like the money that would otherwise have gone to me, that's going to the band. And I feel good about that. I feel good about knowing that the members of Nirvana, for example, are a couple million dollars richer as individuals.

It's their music. It's their record. They deserve that money. They made those records and they lived that experience, right? Right. So they deserve that couple extra million dollars that i didn't get right right and uh and it's not like i'm hurting you know it's like i can still make rent you know i just keep doing my job and i keep getting paid you know yeah yeah well i think that's the strength of character that you've decided for

yourself and it's commendable in a way i mean i appreciate that and that's a very nice thing to say to me and about me but i can also i also feel like it's just an observation like other people have not maybe haven't realized that they're exploiting other people right other people or and it's very easy to to we chose not to play along with the paradigm that was feeding yeah but it's easy to either feign ignorance or prefer ignorance in a situation like that where you, you know. But another producer might just as easily as you say that it's the band's record would say like, well, I produced that record. I'm part of it. Okay.

You know. Yeah. Right. I mean, okay. I mean, if the producer, if he was that important or if he was that big of a factor. What do you think George Martin would say? Like, you know, I don't deserve any of that Beatles money. Now, bear in mind, George Martin came from a completely different political organization of the music scene.

In the early, late 50s, early 60s, there was a hierarchy within the corporate structure of a record label where a producer was a staff person who was responsible for making records and he picked the artists, picked the songs, picked the studios, made the arrangements, blah, blah, blah. So completely different paradigm. And in that paradigm, that compensation scheme probably made sense

because he was much more of an authority on the record. And he's in the system. I'm not part of that. But if you talk about contemporary probably made sense because he was much more of an authority. And he's in the system. And he's in the system. Yeah. I get it. I'm not part of that. Right. But if you talk about contemporary producers, like people who make music now, there are a couple of different kinds. The term has evolved in meaning.

Like there are people who make completely finished backing tracks and then they can apply a vocalist over any portion of that track to finish it, to complete it. And in that sense, those people are authors of that music. Right. But when a band comes in with a song that they wrote four years ago that they've been playing on the road and that is like an embodiment of their aesthetic and they knock that song out in two takes and I just sit in the chair and hit record, there's no way that I deserve more than just an hourly wage, basically, for what I've done. And that's the situation that I'm in most commonly. I'm recording what a band is doing organically.

And you're making it sound the best you can. Yeah. And that just boils down to competence. Right. You call yourself a recording engineer. Sure. Over a producer. Yeah. You call yourself a recording engineer. Sure. Yeah. Over a producer.

Yeah. I mean, I've seen producers in action, and they're, like, bossing people around and telling people to, you know, keep the hi-hat a little more peppery off the top. You know, shit like that. It's not something you say? No, of course not. So, like, that sort of stuff're if you're doing that then i'm proud not to be associated with that now and like uh i mean the the what are the the biggest records that you were involved in in your mind like i know that in utero that was the one that you got

that was the last one and they came to you yeah when you When you say biggest records, I presume that you're talking about like their financial turnaround. No, not necessarily. This is what you think. Well, that example's big. But that was a big change for them. And it's a significant record for them. Okay. I'll give you two records that are really big for me.

I did a record, oh, God, it's a couple of years ago now, for a guy named John Grabsky. He had been given a terminal cancer diagnosis. After having beaten cancer previously, the cancer reasserted itself and he had a terminal diagnosis. Right. He had two options in his treatment. He could maintain a sort of normal quality of life for a relatively short period, or he could maybe extend his life by being very aggressive with the treatment the cancer take its course but he was going to try to be productive in the months that he had left or months or weeks whatever it ended up being and he contacted me and said he wanted to make an album documenting his relationship with the

disease and that's how he wanted to spend his last months on earth was making this record that was going to be a statement about his relationship to the disease. So he and his brother came to the studio and we recorded an album and we finished it and it got mixed and it got released. And the album is under the name of the band is Teeth. And the album is called The Strain. And it's an incredible record. It's a great record. The Strain. And it's an incredible record. It's a great record. It's a brutal record and it's a really eyes open assessment of his, you know, they call it a struggle. It's not a struggle.

It's a relationship. It's his relationship with the disease from the inside, right? And it's kind of like a war correspondent giving the rest of the world a synopsis of the action, along with him just expressing himself about his emotional state and his feelings and his fear and everything tied into it. It's a really remarkable album so that record's really big for me the fact that i was able to do that record with that guy in the last months of his life and his his approach to life and his his commitment to staying on it rather than being passive or rather than making a comment making accommodations to the disease that was inspirational to me again it was one of those things like listening to that ramones record it changed the way i saw the whole world and the range of possibilities that i could have so that's a big record for me. A few years earlier, Kim Deal had been contacting me about making a Breeders record, or a record under the name of the Breeders.

She had gone through a bunch of personal stuff. She had her band, her actual band, the Breeders, had kind of dissolved under her. She tried to mount another version of that band, and that was was a failure she had burned through a whole bunch of money yeah it was kind of at the end of a rope with respect to that yeah relationship and um we got started making this record and she was suspicious of me as she had grown to become suspicious of other recording engineers who had been trying to like sort of hoodwink her into doing things in ways that she didn't want to. And that reopened our relationship. We hadn't really interacted much since the first Breeders record that I worked on.

Which one? It was called Pod. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, that's a good record. That's the one with the cover of Anon. Happiness is a Warm Time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. uh, uh, uh,

no, happiness is warm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and in the intervening years,

she had seen, oh, you know, her, her, a lot of changes in her personal life. She, you know,

battling this and that. Yeah. Yeah. Gone through a bunch of shit. Yeah. Right. If that session had gone poorly, like if,

if she hadn't been able to reanimate the breeders at that point, I shudder to think what other things might have gone wrong for her. But we had a very successful session. We carried on with more. She formed a new version of the band around the success of those initial sessions. We recorded some with that band. She carried on. formed a new version of the band around the success of those initial sessions we recorded some with that band she carried on and since then she's made several breeders albums some of which i haven't worked on which record was that this was a record called title tk and that record

uh reinvigorated my relation or re-established my relationship with kim she's become a dear friend i have an enormous amount of respect for her and her aesthetic and her perseverance through all the bullshit that she's been saddled with. And so that record stands out to me

as an important record. And then, so those are two specific records, but they kind of hint at a thing where I've worked with some people over a very long period of time and many, many sessions with these people. And they've become kind of woven into the fabric.

We've each sort of gotten woven into the fabric of our lives. And those relationships to me mean more than the records, which is little artifacts along the way of a relationship. Right. which is little artifacts along the way of a relationship. So what I'm most proud of are those relationships, those longstanding relationships where it's not just that I'm working with somebody again and again. It's that the whole range of experiences that was hinted at to me by the idea of punk rock as expressed by the Ramones, whatever.

All of that is all true. Like I, I get to experience all of these life experiences. I get to have these long, you know, meaningful friendships and professional relationships that transcend any, you know, any artifact that you make along the way. Those are the things that matter to me. That's beautiful. Oh. Yeah.

But I mean, it wasn't always like that, was it? I mean, that's something that sort of evolved as you evolved as a person. Yeah. I mean, it probably took me 20 years to be ready to realize that the actual records aren't that important, you know? And I genuinely feel like the actual records are not that important like it's nice when there's a good record and i'm proud of doing a good job and all that sort of stuff but the the records are sign posts along um you know your life and the life of others and and i'm i'm pleased that i have

gotten to experience all the things that i've gotten to experience along the way. And like, you know, we talked about, you know, early on, like, because it struck me that in looking back at who I thought you were, that there was, you know, an intensity and an anger. And it's sort of like a person that was sort of, you know, just ready to explode. Well, I mean, I should point out that I've managed to steer clear of all of the things that I might otherwise have been frustrated by and angered at. You know, like the conventions of the mainstream music business. I just don't operate that way. So I'm never frustrated by that. And booze and drugs was never your thing? No. I mean, I stopped drinking in operate that way. So I'm never frustrated by that. Yeah. Like. And booze and drugs was never your thing?

No. I mean, I stopped drinking in my 20s. I just realized that I didn't like being drunk. I didn't like. Yeah. And I was a dick to other people when I would drink. And it just, it wasn't, it wasn't like I gave anything up. Right.

Right. A lot of people that I know have, like, I'm very lucky that I never developed a taste for alcohol. Right. Because I was a real prick, you know. And you saw, I mean, I have to assume that over the arc of this career and talking about some of your close friends, this was not, you saw it. You saw the ravages. You saw it in every manifestation, I've seen people who have lost things more important to them for the sake of indulging, you know.

The addiction. A chemical. Yeah. Which is tragic. Yeah. But I also have seen people who, for whom an identity as an addict or an identity as a drunk or whatever, that is a part of their personality that they cherish. Like they feel like, you know, being in that spectrum a part of their personality that they cherish like they feel like you know being in that spectrum is part of what defines them and they feel like if they lose that

then they're losing something important about the way they see the world or the way they interact with it and i'm i'm not going to judge that is wrong sure right well you seem like reasonably happy. Yeah. I think, like I said, I've tended to avoid those things that could frustrate me. You have kids? I have no kids. None that I know of, anyway. And I know that you play professional poker a bit. Yeah, I would consider myself semi-professional. If I tried to make a living as a poker player, it would probably be a pretty meager living. But it was just something you were interested in and you enjoyed

doing? I've played cards my whole life. I just, I, it's a tremendously stimulating game. I, I, I enjoy the, I, I'm not a competitive person by nature. Like, you know, I, I don't necessarily want to beat anybody else. I just want, I want to do things well. I want to, I want to do something well myself. Right. So I'm, I'm not as concerned about beating somebody else as I am about, you know, doing things correctly or doing things well myself. And poker is a place where you have, you know, there's very pretty obvious scoreboard. It's like if you, if you leave with more money than you came with, well then you're, you with, well, then you're doing something right. I know you sort of have a kind of proletariat sort of view of your job, but are there people that you want to work with that you haven't? Oh, sure.

I mean. Like, is there someone out there you're like, I love to record that. I get asked this question a lot, and I've had the same laundry list. Well, my point being, if any of this was ever going to happen, it would have by now, probably. I couldn't count the number of times that I've said, you know, Neil Young, give me a call. Right, right. But Willie Nelson, you know, hit Google, I'm very easy to find. And affordable.

Yeah. But Willie Nelson, you know. Sure. Hit Google. I'm very easy to find. And affordable. Yeah. But, you know, I did get the experience of recording the Stooges who were, you know. Oh, you did The Weirdness, right? Yeah. I did an album with them and that was an experience that I wouldn't trade for the world. Like, just hanging out with the Stooges for a month was maybe the coolest thing I've ever done. I can't claim to being that cool of a person. Right.

But hanging out with the Stooges every day, like just when, just hearing Iggy's voice over the intercom, you know, when you ring the doorbell, yeah, it's Iggy. It's like fucking, it's the best, you know? You just, like if I could time travel back to 15 year old me and say, don't worry about all this bullshit. One of these days you're going to get to record the Stooges album. It's going to be great. And it was exactly the experience you would want you know like he was like huge personality he had his shirt off the whole time he had his shirt off in here yeah you know he's like he's he's wrought iron that guy that's exactly

what he is what you think iggy pop is what you think the kind of a dude you would like to like if i ran into iggy Pop, what would it be like? That's what it's like. It's better than you think. Like, I was surprised at how articulate and how good his memory is and how intelligent he is and how he's framed his life. It's amazing. And, you know, and the other guys, and

seeing, particularly for Ron and Scott, like, they're both gone now, but they had always been kind of shortchanged. Like, it was their band, you know? And they never really achieved any kind of, like, significant success during the initial iteration of that band. Like, they were known by other musicians. Right.

But, like, they weren't celebrated, right? And to see them see their band, like, reanimated like that in its original incarnation,, like this is the band that we always wanted and we've got it back and we're playing to sellouts every night and people love us. That was very satisfying for them to see their ambition for themselves, see it realized like that in a very tangible way. After so many years. Yeah, after so long, just to get another bite at was just, I thought that was really, really great. You brought up Bill Hicks. Did you know Bill? I didn't know him.

My wife knew him quite well. Oh, really? Yeah, my wife has worked in the comedy world for quite a long time. Do I know her? Heather Winna, she managed, I want to say the funny firm in chicago and the laugh factory in chicago for the last uh 15 years 12 15 years she's been a manager at the second city uh-huh and uh so she she knows all the comics that used to come through and all those places where she worked yeah and so i i've i've interacted with a lot of those people um but i i

didn't know bill but he had he had an influence he seems like in terms of your spirit that there's definitely a similarity and yeah i mean every all the stories that i am and um there's a guy that used to work at our studio is a guy named john nevotny he was a stand-up in chicago and he um he and bill were friends and yeah like the stories that I've heard from Heather and from John about Bill mean, you know, I appreciate how genuine he was. Like, he's another one of those guys, like, you know, you see his comedy and you get a sense of his perspective and you wonder what he would be like as a person. And then it's nice to hear from people that knew him directly that he was basically the same dude. Same dude, a little sweeter yeah like you know in one-on-one so what's your relationship with comedy did was that part of it

like i know that you thought the ramones were funny but when you were a kid was comedy sort of a thing i can't really say that i was that embedded in the comedy culture right like it like i know there was a period where comedy was like sort of in its heyday in the late 80s, early 90s, where there was like the stand-up thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The boom. A route to some sort of stardom. I didn't really participate in it or I didn't know anybody that did. But in the ensuing years, through Heather and her friends, I've come to meet a lot of people who ended up being kind of significant comics.

There's a guy who used to work in the, he was in a band and he used to work in the clubs in Chicago named Fred Armisen, who's- I know Fred, yeah. Yeah, terrific, terrific dude. And he honed his comic skills by like mocking and playing with all the people in the,

he used to work at a club called Lounge Axe, which was a club where all the bands would tour through. Yeah. And he would play pranks on the bands and he would, you know, that's where a lot of his comic sensibility came from. Right. And he's a musician himself. Yeah.

He was a drummer in a band called Trenchmouth. So seeing him go from being just like Fred from Lounge Acts to being this like international star, television star. That's one of the most amazing things that I've ever witnessed up close. You know, it's like he's the first person that I've ever known that wanted to become famous. And then like through strength of will and being funny, made himself famous. It's pretty astounding, isn't it? So you're in town playing? We played a couple of nights.

We played at the echo and we played at the regent theater last night and now my wife and i're just taking a day off to goof off well it's a real honor talking to you buddy oh thank you thanks for coming no problem there you go the man the force of nature that is steve Albini. I hope that satisfied most of your needs. Out of a conversation with Mr. Albini, go to WTFpod for all your WTFpod needs. Not touring much because I'm working on a thing that I can't talk about yet. What's that noise?

You want guitar? I made up a riff that I like, and I think I will play it for you now. Boomer lives! Boomer lives! Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode

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