I'm overdue for a discussion about my role in inspiring 'edgelord' shit.

November 9, 2021 8:36 AM

In a recent Twitter thread, famed musician, producer, audio engineer, and infamous crank Steve Albini owned the ugly parts of his past — years of offensive music, statements and posts — and said his generation needs to talk about how culture has changed. Zaron Burnett III of Mel Magazine reached out to Albini to have that conversation.
posted by DirtyOldTown (45 comments total)

For those who are about to dip into the Twitter thread - brace yourself for the responses being filled with dipshittery.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:39 AM on November 9, 2021 [5 favorites]

well I'll allow "Pathetic. Also you mix drums too loud"
posted by thelonius at 8:45 AM on November 9, 2021 [17 favorites]

Haven't heard Albini's name in a long time. Glad he made that thread, and I hope its message gets through to those who could stand to hear it.
posted by May Kasahara at 8:48 AM on November 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

"I've been a privileged asshole and I would like to do better moving forward" is an okay place to start, emphasis on "start."
posted by jscalzi at 8:59 AM on November 9, 2021 [36 favorites]

I found this really useful in articulating, "what was I thinking?" and "what can I do now?" though of course the first one is a revelation to nobody but other privileged white males. Don't think it's news to anyone who was on the receiving end.

There are still blind spots, like when he described the music scene at the tine as being accepting of, and equitable to, women and minorities. He should ask some of them whether they thought so too.

I wish Louis fucking CK had said this two years ago.
posted by panglos at 9:23 AM on November 9, 2021 [9 favorites]

To hear Albini -- well-known for being blunt and abrasive, to use two euphemisms -- talk about taking account of his effect on the world around him is important. Music (like many fields, I suppose) is full of privileged people who bristle at the idea of taking responsibility, who think that admitting they were wrong is an unforgiveable sin. To hear a guy who has made a career of being outrageous say that he cares what he thinks of himself, and that he wants to be better, is important.

I won't navel-gaze much, here, but I've spent the last 15 years or so very slowly going through this process. I carry a lot of guilt about the awful stuff I've said and done and thought. Nobody cares who I am and I don't need to talk about it. But Albini has a platform and an opportunity and he seems to at least be aimed in the right direction to do some good.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:32 AM on November 9, 2021 [50 favorites]

This bit, in particular, feels like the journey a lot of us Gen X white males had to go through a while back, condensed neatly into a single paragraph:

In our circles, nothing was off limits. So, it took a while for me to appreciate that using abusive language in a joking fashion was still using abusive language. And it was genuinely shocking when I realized that there were people in the music underground who weren’t playing when they were using language like that and who weren’t kindred spirits. They were, in fact, awful, and only masquerading as intellectuals. That was one of many wake-up moments.

posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:41 AM on November 9, 2021 [96 favorites]

I tend to think that saying "looking back I was wrong and I caused bad things to happen" is a pretty important thing for famous, "cool" culture makers, especially the kind famous for being edgy. The whole thing of cool masculinity is that you're never wrong, you never walk it back, you don't flinch - flinching is for weak, boring conformists who care what others think. Your story about yourself is always, "I was cool and special and I only got cooler and specialer over time, except when the haters and normies tried to get in the way, which they couldn't, because haters and normies can't hold you down if you're really cool".

When you back down, you're showing other men that it's okay to back down. You're suggesting to them that they may have been or may even be right now wrong, and that they might look back and feel that they fucked up. This is particularly true for the type of white guy music scene where people were (are, I assume) super impressed by Albini.

On the whole, I think this is good and do not feel disposed to cavil.

~~
A side note: Steve Albini is ~14 years older than me. When I first heard of him, this seemed like a lot, and now I realize that it just meant that he was 32.
posted by Frowner at 9:45 AM on November 9, 2021 [25 favorites]

Gen X's time in the barrel of re-evaluation is nigh. Many are currently castigated as "boomers" in truth are 'Xers.
posted by bonehead at 9:45 AM on November 9, 2021 [16 favorites]

There are still blind spots, like when he described the music scene at the tine as being accepting of, and equitable to, women and minorities. He should ask some of them whether they thought so too.

I think that the full quote is him talking about the blind spots - like, I think the sentence that starts "of course women had an equal place" was delivered in scare quotes to describe his attitude at the time, not his current attitude.

I admit that I was deaf to a lot of women’s issues at the time, and that’s on me. Within our circles, within the music scene, within the musical underground, a lot of cultural problems were deemed already solved — meaning, you didn’t care if your friends were queer. Of course women had an equal place, an equal role to play in our circles. The music scene was broadly inclusive. So for us, we felt like those problems had been solved. And that was an ignorant perception.

posted by entropone at 9:45 AM on November 9, 2021 [35 favorites]

Also, I remember when Rapeman was a thing and I did not like it at all. It was not neutral, I did not experience that band name and associated cultural baggage as coolly transgressive, etc. I was going to cutting edge punk shows at trendy underground locations around then and it was a really sexist, bro-y time whenever there were groups of guys or any question of status involved. I will say that as individuals the straight guys I knew from that general milieu were better about being emotionally present and just...better in general, I guess, than many of the other guys I had known elsewhere.

I mean, I can definitely see why, if you were a reasonably intelligent young guy who was able to maintain friendships with women, you would view yourself as pretty different from the football hero types I grew up with and went to school with.

I enjoyed quite a lot about the nineties, but the premium on asshole-ism for the sake of it - it was like live action twitter.
posted by Frowner at 9:56 AM on November 9, 2021 [22 favorites]

Many are currently castigated as "boomers" in truth are 'Xers.

For sure. The lefty-Boomer ethos of "freedom to" took hold in a lot of Gen Xers who never realized that "freedom from" is just as important (or more important). It's a frame of mind that feels more and more stale every day.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:57 AM on November 9, 2021 [9 favorites]

"I've been a privileged asshole and I would like to do better moving forward" is an okay place to start, emphasis on "start."

He's been making these kinds of moves for years. This is a longer interview about it but these aren't his first statements regretting his past behavior.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:04 AM on November 9, 2021 [6 favorites]

Many...currently castigated as "boomers" in truth are 'Xers.

Millenials and zoomers realize this (most of them). It's part of the joke, because it's understood that the Reality Bites set really does not enjoy being lumped in with Boomers and don't want to address what's happening as they finally move into the managerial and governing strata and get to run shit after building their identity around disenfranchisement.

It's not an accident that such is unfolding during economic conditions not unlike those of the Greed is Good '80s.
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:07 AM on November 9, 2021 [14 favorites]

I think the sentence that starts "of course women had an equal place" was delivered in scare quotes...

Yeah, I see it now. Probably if I'd heard him speaking, it would've been more obvious.
posted by panglos at 10:13 AM on November 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

Gen X's time in the barrel of re-evaluation is nigh.

we all get our turn
posted by elkevelvet at 10:50 AM on November 9, 2021 [11 favorites]

“What’s really impressive is that some of these guys last so long. You’d think more of them would get killed, since all they do is burn their bridges.”
posted by box at 11:07 AM on November 9, 2021

Many...currently castigated as "boomers" in truth are 'Xers.

And members of Generation OG X, as well.
posted by Rash at 11:21 AM on November 9, 2021

we all get our turn

Everybody's guilty, but punishment is rationed.
posted by acb at 11:36 AM on November 9, 2021 [4 favorites]

Millenials and zoomers realize this (most of them). It's part of the joke, because it's understood that the Reality Bites set really does not enjoy being lumped in with Boomers and don't want to address what's happening as they finally move into the managerial and governing strata and get to run shit after building their identity around disenfranchisement.

I am an X-er. I am also a person that was influenced by Steve Albini at an impressionable age (his essay about Selling Out--remember that?-- for MRR came out when I was a senior in high school and I am embarrassed to tell you how much of the next decade I thought of it like a kind of fundamental philosophical text). I cribbed a lot of my politics off of the music I listened to and the reading material favored by the musicians I listened to. And recently I've been thinking about a lot of us who came out of our various "scenes" believing we were some kind of progressive political vanguard because we knew who Chomsky was and could quote Fugazi lyrics (or vice versa) and I think the joke at the end of the day is how all of that, for me, whenever people talk about GenX and what happened and who we are sometimes (oftentimes) and best case alI I just see Beto O'Rourke's face. Best case. And that is , honestly, some weak sauce.

And speaking for myself here, it's not just GenX men:

The world is on fire and I'm like, "On the bonus, I got tickets for the Pavement reunion tour next year. Holy shit!"
posted by thivaia at 11:38 AM on November 9, 2021 [20 favorites]

Generation Z are studying Lenin and Mao. There'll be a place in the reeducation gulag for us Xers after the revolution.
posted by acb at 11:54 AM on November 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

believing we were some kind of progressive political vanguard because we knew who Chomsky was and could quote Fugazi lyrics (or vice versa)

This is a magnificent turn of phrase, and spot-on characterization. *applause*
posted by LooseFilter at 11:58 AM on November 9, 2021 [4 favorites]

Many...currently castigated as "boomers" in truth are 'Xers.

Millenials and zoomers realize this (most of them). It's part of the joke, because it's understood that the Reality Bites set really does not enjoy being lumped in with Boomers...

Two women, yelling: We're not Baby Boomers! We're Gen X!
Cat: OK Boomer.
posted by indexy at 12:06 PM on November 9, 2021 [6 favorites]

> And members of Generation OG X, as well.

The book Generation X was about people born on the cusp between Silent Generation and Baby Boom, and the other book Generation X was about people born late in the Baby Boom.
posted by ardgedee at 12:13 PM on November 9, 2021

Ted Cruz is a Gen-Xer.
posted by bonehead at 12:49 PM on November 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

Okay, look, the people I knew in punk and punk-adjacent scenes were not, in fact, irony guys who thought that merely knowing who Chomsky was achieved something. People I knew in punk and adjacent scenes included: a whole bunch of pretty hardcore anti-war activists who had started a radical local anti-war org in high school; queer activists who were in ACT-UP and who have mostly stayed in queer health non-profit work; a bunch of people who became movement/movement-adjacent lawyers; one feminist environmentalist who is actually a fairly significant figure now, and not the shitty sell-out kind, either...and then a lot of people who have stayed fairly true to their school and still do activist, volunteer and fund-raising work, plus a number of local artists doing good, radical art with a mutual aid angle. In general, our social world in the nineties was a sexist, racist and deeply flawed one - but we lived in a larger world that was in fact quite a lot worse.

Like, there's a big difference between "I was not the feminist man that my scene really needed me to be" and "I was a risible hypocrite who knows nothing about politics and has achieved nothing except buying Chomsky books".

Also, the times make the people, at least in part - the people who are reading Lenin now are reading Lenin now because the world is a lot worse and there are a lot more openings for radical action. I knew a whole fucking bunch of people reading Lenin in the 1990s and they were authoritarian platformists who had zero ability to talk to anyone who wasn't already sold on, like, the Socialist Workers Party.

On the long list of Gen X traits, I would add "we're incredibly ready, eager even, to say that we suck and our scenes sucked and our music sucked and we were pointless and meant nothing, unlike Zoomers". I'd argue that this is bad, dumb history that helps no one.
posted by Frowner at 12:50 PM on November 9, 2021 [23 favorites]

I doubt he ever read "The Problem with Music" though.
posted by bonehead at 12:50 PM on November 9, 2021 [4 favorites]

Back in the nineties and early 2000s, I remember thinking about how little sense the young left had of the activism of the eighties - Central America solidarity work, anti-nuclear activism, anti-war activism, ACT-UP, all gone where the woodbine twineth as far as we were concerned. And yet there were all kinds of financial, social and spacial throughlines; we wouldn't have been who we were without those people. But movement history gets lost and we're always doing "firsts" and reinventing the wheel and believing that the people a half-generation before us were idiots and hypocrites. I put this down to the general right-wingism of the US; our generalized hatred of the old, especially older women; the AIDS crisis and the lingering effects of the Red and Lavender scares.
posted by Frowner at 12:56 PM on November 9, 2021 [17 favorites]

He's been making these kinds of moves for years. This is a longer interview about it but these aren't his first statements regretting his past behavior.

True. I remember him giving this interview back in 2016 in which he in part is taken to task over the Shellac song "You Came In Me" and discusses his evolution on feminism, etc. He seems to have grown since then, which is good to see.
posted by Maaik at 1:08 PM on November 9, 2021 [5 favorites]

here's hoping the phrase "time / turn in the barrel" goes away as well
posted by lazaruslong at 1:14 PM on November 9, 2021 [8 favorites]

I played in bands in the early-mid 90s and dismissed Steve Albini all along. One, I wanted to be able to have music as a day job someday, so the “selling out” thing didn’t resonate. Let’s write some hits and quit delivering pizza - I don’t have a trust fund! Two, I worked with a big time engineer who told some first hand stories about SA being terrible to young bands he worked with. For example, a band member asked between takes to try some creative thing (I forget what it was) next take. SA was in the booth and over the headsets said “yeah …. That’s a GREAT idea, we should DEFINITELY do that right now” while pointedly putting this thumb out in front of the booth window and slowly turning it thumbs down, Roman emperor style. Was he ever cool? Doubt it.
posted by freecellwizard at 3:20 PM on November 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

OK, so this guy is where Bill Murray's "Jerry Aldini of Polysutra Records" character comes from (as seen in this acid trip cleverly disguised as a 1979 SNL sketch. Yep, that's Paul Schaffer as Don Kirshner and Gilda as Patti Smith, errm Candy Slice.

Elvii.
posted by zaixfeep at 3:52 PM on November 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

I’m glad he’s owning up like this. I’d still love him to take back what he said about Exile in Guyville.

But re: Gen Xer’s in the penalty box… I feel like our cultural footprint is pretty tiny compared to the ubiquitous Boomers. I mean, I know our turn will come, but are we even visible enough to be resented in quite the same way? (Foolish question, I’m sure).
posted by ducky l'orange at 4:15 PM on November 9, 2021 [4 favorites]

Gen X's time in the barrel of re-evaluation is nigh.

There's not as many of us, so it shouldn't take long.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:56 PM on November 9, 2021 [8 favorites]

For what it's worth—about the 'legacy of a generation' that Albini & others are grappling with—the existence of 'generational' markers such as we're discussing really came into being only with and because of the baby boom of the Western post-war, and the creation of a consumerist adolescence, with cultural markers of things to do that set the young aside as people with cultural status and value; there really hadn't been such a thing as a pre-adulthood before that wasn't 'infancy'. The notion that young people as young people have anything to say, or that their legacy in culture is what they did as young people, is a specifically twentieth-century affectation. Pay attention to the way pre-WWII writers talk about generations: when they refer to the heritage of the past, what they usually mean is the things people did over the course of their whole lives, and especially when they were old.

There's deep levels of irony here. Every other cohort defining itself in opposition to other birth-year cohorts is trying to find an identity based on some specific economic and cultural changes that happened in the West between 1945 and 1965, but those changes have happened, and aren't un-happening—in a real way everyone born after that period in the west is a Boomer, labelling themselves with increasingly incoherent post-Boomer labels for the same 20thC youth culture. It's a perpetual 1955, of rebels finding causes to rebel against, but as Mark Fisher realised, also just a specific set of cultural-economic conditions reproducing itself and putting off the future.

He recently put his thoughts into a Twitter thread, ruminating on how much men of his generation misunderstood the world they were creating

Those clauses—implying the present world was created by one's own generation—has a wonderfully heroic, twentieth-century, and baby-boom self-assumption to it.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:09 PM on November 9, 2021 [19 favorites]

There's a lot to be said for people reflecting on their past behaviours in light of social shifts that afford new perspectives. But I don't agree that this is a cyclic, inevitability in the "kids today know nothing!" vein. The world has changed. Gen z reading Lenin and Mao will be left wanting- they need new models if there is no longer a functioning proletariat to take on the work of revolution.

The actual brave new world will move on wheels that have yet to be codified, driven by post-capitalist, post-growth, anti-industrial thinking. We gen xers should be lending muscle to support notions of change and fostering new ways of thinking. We have that ability because disenfranchisement means not having to cleave to an ideology. We can flex. Isn't that our role now? We're not the vanguard but we are in positions to support those on the charge. Discourse of the kind Albini is engaged in is part of that work.
posted by freya_lamb at 6:09 PM on November 9, 2021 [8 favorites]

the existence of 'generational' markers such as we're discussing really came into being only with and because of the baby boom of the Western post-war, and the creation of a consumerist adolescence

Generational markers, consumerism, and prolonged adolescence are very clear in the US in the earlier (WW1) postwar and the first two are prefigured in the Civil War postwar*, so we've got something of long enough standing to be pretty solidly USian by now.

Which makes me think the ways it fails are probably solidly USian too.

* And the Office of Education is Reconstruction-era!
posted by clew at 6:37 PM on November 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

Not reading the article but I'm glad I found Big Black before I found feminism so I could enjoy them for a little while. ("I'm just a bad penny...")
posted by bendy at 7:10 PM on November 9, 2021

I did RTFA and am reminded that Ad-Rock did this as well.
posted by bendy at 7:16 PM on November 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

And also learned that Steve Albini is thinking.
posted by bendy at 7:22 PM on November 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

Speaking only for myself, I kind of knew this guy was an asshole in the '90s. Things have changed, but they haven't changed that much, and 1993 wasn't exactly Deadwood.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:03 PM on November 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

Gen z reading Lenin and Mao will be left wanting- they need new models if there is no longer a functioning proletariat to take on the work of revolution.

Although Mao also wasted a lot of time (like, decades) trying and failing to mobilise the urban proletariat like an orthodox communist - before realising that the peasants of the countryside, who Marx was openly contemptuous of, had the potential to drive a revolution.

One of the things the younger generation could learn from reading Lenin and then Mao is the importance of taking your revolutionaries where you find them. Gig workers? They’re now 25% of the work force in China, for example.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 4:31 AM on November 10, 2021 [6 favorites]

but are we even visible enough to be resented in quite the same way? (Foolish question, I’m sure).

Most of the VCs swimming in money from previous waves of tech-boom and promoting the disruption of 'business models' (read: employment law and labor protection) that is at least experienced as a major factor in immiserating Zoomers, are X'ers.

Reality bit back.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:11 AM on November 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

I mean, I know our turn will come, but are we even visible enough to be resented in quite the same way? (Foolish question, I’m sure).

I think a major failing of my|our generation is not enough action on climate change. Trudeau, in Canada, is Gen-X as are many of our current crop of party leadership. I think it's going to be a big driver in the future.

See also Musk and Bezos (who is on the edge of Boomer-hood, but will probably be counted as an -Xer).
posted by bonehead at 9:17 AM on November 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

I wish Louis fucking CK had said this two years ago.

I'm not sure I follow you there. CK seemed to think if he tried to say the right things publicly and in his art, it would cover for him doing reprehensible shit in his personal interactions. Albini seems to be someone who was basically okay in his personal interactions, and because of that felt entitled to create offensive music and say offensive things, because "they're just words," and "he isn't like that." Those are fairly opposite forms of being problematic.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:36 AM on November 10, 2021 [7 favorites]