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andyman wrote: Fri May 10, 2024 2:18 pm I'll say this, I genuinely haven't seen such a unanimous outpouring of mourning across the board since I first came online twenty years ago.
All of my feeds are filled, with people from every walk of life.

so true. i'm sure the public and national news are doing their reports but i can't process that. sharing stories with mutual friends and talking to my family has helped.

catwoman wrote: Fri May 10, 2024 12:04 am It's pissing me off. Many reddit subreddits are full of scathing shit, over a couple 40+ year old provocateur-ish things he created/wrote. Does anyone remember the Big Black "Headache" Limited Edition "Body Bag" EP? He was all of 25 years old, and "shock value" was a thing. Back then, it was seen as subversive. Steve was all about pushing boundaries and exposing the horrors of humanity back then. So much is judged without taking historical context into consideration... He apologized for all that "edgelord" stuff, grew and regretted that stuff. Yet, without even knowing the man, and with limited context, some attempt to label him as something anyone who knew him would know is SIMPLY NOT TRUE. He did make some errors in judgment back then, but corrected and renounced those missteps.

I remember when he started Rapeman. As a woman, back then, I thought it was a terrible band name that made me very uncomfortable, even with his explanation that it was from a Japanese Comic Book with misogynist themes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeman
Band name not withstanding, they made good music. I saw them play, enjoyed the shows, and tsk-tsk'ed the bands name. But I was glad when he moved on to Shellac... I would hate to be judged for some of my worst moments, given the better entirety of my whole life.

One of the things I particularly admired about his reckoning with his own past was the admission that apologies don’t simply make the hurt go away. So I haven’t been too bothered by less gracious responses to his death, though it has irked me when I’ve come across self-righteous criticisms from people who had clearly never heard of him thirty seconds earlier. You know, “I’ve spent an entire TWO MINUTES on Google, and now I will lecture his friends, family, and fans about why THEY’RE WRONG!”

But the only reason I’ve come across those is because I’ve been reading everything, still trying to make sense of this thing. Unlike a lot of people here, I only knew him through the board and one (incredible!) dinner together. Yet the news of his death still knocked me off my axis.

Like everyone else, I’ve been listening to a lot of the music he made and recorded, and while listening to Pod, I felt a pang of joy. It’s not just that the songs are great and the recording is great, but the record captures an ineffable sense of enthusiasm, like everyone involved is having a lucky few days of making art and gets to share that experience with the world. Someone had to get that all down. What a legacy!

I feel fortunate to have been able to experience his work, his art, and really, all of you, too.

Wood Goblin wrote: Fri May 10, 2024 2:35 pmOne of the things I particularly admired about his reckoning with his own past was the admission that apologies don’t simply make the hurt go away. So I haven’t been too bothered by less gracious responses to his death, though it has irked me when I’ve come across self-righteous criticisms from people who had clearly never heard of him thirty seconds earlier. You know, “I’ve spent an entire TWO MINUTES on Google, and now I will lecture his friends, family, and fans about why THEY’RE WRONG!”

But the only reason I’ve come across those is because I’ve been reading everything, still trying to make sense of this thing. Unlike a lot of people here, I only knew him through the board and one (incredible!) dinner together. Yet the news of his death still knocked me off my axis.

This is sort of how I've been trying to handle things, as I don't think he would've wanted those who loved him (whether as a close personal friend or simply as a fan) to act as some sort of "defense squad" for his image. Steve said things akin to this quote many times throughout his life, even before his final years of self-reflection:

People that I'm never gonna meet? They can think what they like about me, and I don't care. Really, I honestly don't care. If it's not somebody that I'm ever gonna have interaction with, let them enjoy whatever fantasy they get. Whatever satisfaction they get out of thinking I'm a dickweed or that I'm some type of bronze Adonis - whatever it is, it gives them some pleasure to have that opinion and I don't want to squelch that. Whatever. Think what you like. I'm sure there are people that I've never met that I have opinions about that aren't very valid, but I like indulging them.

That being said, it's been hard to fight my impulses and avoid engaging with people trying to desecrate his memory using writings from the 80s that I'm sure everyone on these boards has seen a million times by now.

I've said things akin to this many times in the past before FM Steve died, hell I probably said something like this on the old EA boards - I think it takes a very sick mindset to attack people mourning the death of someone they care about on the basis of some sort of sanctimonious "moral grounds". The deceased isn't there to atone or be held accountable for their transgressions, and publicly declaring that others grieving someone "problematic" are committing a moral failure just... I don't have the words for it, but it's ALWAYS rubbed me the wrong way, even when it was about the deaths of people I very much wasn't fond of.

To move this away from the current moment, I had very similar thoughts when people were attacking others for mourning the deaths of XXXTentacion and Kobe Bryant (two figures who were ABSOLUTELY guilty of the worst things they were accused of, neither of which I am or was ever a fan of) - and half the damn time you could find old posts from those who were spouting off their moral superiority grieving other people accused of similar shit.

Perhaps I'm digressing too much, though. Regardless of how others feel or say about Steve, it's not gonna change how much this has been affecting me. I genuinely don't think I've ever been this despondent over the death of someone that wasn't a family member or close personal friend.

I echo everyone’s frustrations, but I think it was a mistake to link to the Deeply Unwell 9 follower Medium account in the first place. I looked at their other posts on that site and they are probably best left alone.

andyman wrote: Fri May 10, 2024 2:18 pm I'll say this, I genuinely haven't seen such a unanimous outpouring of mourning across the board since I first came online twenty years ago.
All of my feeds are filled, with people from every walk of life.

I don't have much for social media, just a reddit account. Albini's death has been surfacing across different subreddits. I went directly to /r/noiserock and it was the top story that day, of course, but it was on several music and chicago based subreddits to say the least.

Figured some of you would like to relive this

Charlie D wrote: Fri May 10, 2024 2:23 pm

Charlie D wrote: Wed May 08, 2024 12:08 pm FM El Protoolio texted it to the group chat not five minutes ago.

Fuck.

I feel compelled to say something more than this but I'm not comfortable saying anything about someone I don't know.
However, I can comfortably say this much: I am one of a club of people who agree that they wouldn't have the friends they have now if it weren't through Steve's influence. I wouldn't be in the band I'm in now or some of the bands I've been in / jams I've had if it weren't for Steve. I wouldn't have met Graham or Hastie or Brandon or Eliya or Tommy - Like who would have pointed out Battersea Power Station to me if I hadn't met Tommy because we followed each other on Twitter because we both posted here because Steve had this site built for his studio? Even though I never met Steve, beyond "influencing how I play guitar" or "influencing how I record", he had a butterfly effect on my life and I see, from reading this thread, I'm not alone.
Even though I never met him, he had an actual real impact on my life. For that I think I should thank him but I gather that would have made him uncomfortable.
I'll stop before I'll start rambling.
I believe he was fond of farewells this way:

I've definitely had this conversation with several group texts about how none of us would know each other without Steve. His effect on our lives is showing to be greater than we even considered. I have best friends who I will love until the day I pass into the next world exactly because of Steve and more importantly, this forum.

I don't want to dwell on any of the negative stuff but, as a friend of mine said the other day "when you say some things that need to be said you will inevitably say a few things that do not," and I think that's an important takeaway. Maybe it's not about never saying dumb shit so much as just trying to mostly say the right shit.

I had to leave the Pedalboards of Doom FB group because of neckbeard knuckleheads posting that particular Big Black liner and screaming about C-P and that everyone was a disgrace for being upset at the news. Same kind of Qanon losers you get on Bowie threads etc.

It’s deliberately in bad faith and at the moment I have zero fucking patience for that shit.

It's just abject fucking cowardice, as far as I'm concerned.

Now that Steve Albini is dead...

In other words, "Now that he's not around to speak for himself, I feel able to sling some mud without having to worry about the consequences!"

If that [name redacted] dipshit wanted to play at investigative journalism, and takes such immense pride in speaking out on such matters, why not bring it up with Steve while he was still alive? For all his status as a demigod of the underground rock world, Steve wasn't some unapproachable A-list celebrity - just pick up the phone and call Electrical, or drop him a line via email.

Clout-chasing and engagement-farming, that's all it is. Boils my piss.