Steve Albini

Steve Albini is a fellow I’ve never met, but I’ve followed his work from his time in the 80s, playing in Big Black. My initial interest in Big Black came from the involvement of Steve’s band-mate, Santiago Durango, who had previously been in the Chicago punk band, Naked Raygun. This is where Steve first came on my radar. Then in the late 80s I would hear of a band out of Boston being produced by Big Black’s Steve Albini— When I first heard Surfer Rosa, I instantly became a fan of The Pixies. Steve was no longer just that other guy in Big Black. Subsequently Steve went on to record Nirvana’s In Utero, and other legendary rock albums (though his album credit is often listed as “Producer”, Albini prefers the title, “Engineer”).

In the early 90s, Steve Albini made another great contribution to the lives of musicians— in a 1993 article in The Baffler, in the plainest terms, Albini showed how musicians get screwed by major labels. He didn’t do this with the usual emotionally charged rant, but by the numbers, showing where the money goes in a standard label contract. This article was later reprinted in Maximum Rock-N-Roll, issue #133, and is now widely distributed across the internet.

Several years ago I was pleased to stumble across a lecture by Steve Albini on the website of Middle Tennessee State University. At the time, I downloaded the movie file to my computer, in the event the video was ever removed. No great surprise, it was in fact taken down. The video is an hour and a half long, and I would speculate that it may have been removed due to the bandwidth demands its popularity placed on the University’s servers. Whatever the reason, as a service to other musicians and recording engineers who may benefit from Steve’s insight, or indy music aficionados who have an interest, I have now uploaded the video to Viddler, and it can be viewed above.

Today Steve Albini is the owner of the Chicago recording studio, Electrical Audio. His services are available as a Recording Engineer at a flat day rate (he currently charges $650). He refuses to accept royalties on the albums he records. Ever opinionated, he continues to be an outspoken advocate for musicians, and continues to earn my respect.

Comments

[Michael Patterson]

I got to visit his studio the last time I was in Chicago. It was a very cool place. I usually send out the Baffler article once a year to all my music friends.

[Chris]

Hi Michael.