Steve Albini Looks Like Shit

[Kristy]

What are you on about? I don't give a shit if the dude saw himself as plumber he completely ignored his health and he looked like absolute shit in that interview. You'd think a fuckstick like Dave Grohl would say to him, "hey, you don't look so good. You need to see a doctor." I guess not. After all, he knew his drummer was a junkie and did nothing about it. Albini was a garbage producer. Vocals too low in the mix, cat run over by truck guitars, muddy drums. The dude was a joke no matter what his personal ethics were. He had money. Lotsa of money most likely from producing that Plant/Page steamy shit and he couldn't keep up with his health insurance premiums?

[Seshmeister]

Ok I'll bite is this just random troll shit or have you any justification for being a dick about this guy.

I was never really a fan of Nirvana or any of that stuff but I do remember listening to an interview with this guy a few years back and he seemed to have an incredibly sound attitude. I just googled to double check.

https://musictech.com/news/music/rea...20%24100%2C000.

Speaking on the industry-standard means of paying a producer, Albini says: “I explained this to Kurt but I thought I’d better reiterate it here. I do not and will not take a royalty on any record I record. No points. Period. I think paying a royalty to a producer or engineer is ethically indefensible. The band write the songs. The band play the music. It’s the band’s fans who buy the records. The band is responsible for whether it’s a great record or a horrible record. Royalties belong to the band.”

“I would like to be paid like a plumber,” Albini continues. “I do the job and you pay me what it’s worth. The record company will expect me to ask for a point or a point and a half. If we assume three million sales, that works out to 400,000 dollars or so. There’s no fucking way I would ever take that much money. I wouldn’t be able to sleep.” Steve Albini in his Chicago studio, 2014. Image: Getty

Albini was renowned for speaking his views on the music industry — and payment, in particular. In an article published by The Baffler in 1993, Albini wrote about why he feels the music industry is “a trench filled with decaying shit.”

“[Hypothetical band] decided to go with the producer who used to be in [David] Letterman’s band. He had these technicians come in and tune the drums for them and tweak their amps and guitars. He had a guy bring in a slew of expensive old ‘vintage’ microphones. Boy, were they ‘warm.’ He even had a guy come in and check the phase of all the equipment in the control room! Boy, was he professional. He used a bunch of equipment on them and by the end of it, they all agreed that it sounded very ‘punchy,’ yet ‘warm.’

“All that hard work paid off. With the help of a video, the album went like hotcakes! They sold a quarter million copies!

“Here is the math that will explain just how fucked they are…”

Albini breaks down how the royalties system then pays the band and concludes:

“The band is now 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the music industry more than 3 million dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 on royalties. The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they would working at a 7-Eleven, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month…

“Some of your friends are probably already this fucked.”

Albini went on to record, engineer and produce Nirvana’s In Utero. It sold over 15 million copies. He was paid a flat fee of $100,000. Still, he offered to produce it for free if Cobain, Grohl or Novoselic could beat him in a game of pool.

“Anyone who’s got the stones to gamble something that large must be amazing [at pool],” said Grohl. “So everyone said no.

“Plus he had his own stick. We didn’t want to fuck around with that.”

[Kristy]

Fuckface died last month (May 7th) and I had no idea. He really was looking like shit and well, it showed.

[twonabomber]

It's a good thing that looks are important when producing records.

Oh, wait...

[Kristy]

Right next to music's favorite asshole.

The most boring interview. EVER.