*An Interview To Steve Albini*
by Kimberly Chun, SF Gate

* This article taken by San Francisco Gate, visit their site here : www.sfgate.com *

Who's afraid of Steve Albini? So the Chicago punk/indie rock guitarist, vocalist, engineer and producer led the pivotal post-punk band Big Black, which spat out the influential album, Songs About Fucking, in 1987. So he once started a project called Rapeman (named after a Japanese comic book) and continues to write lyrics like "This is a sad, fucking song / We'll be lucky if I don't bust out crying" as the leader of the trio Shellac. So he engineered and produced, to much controversy and press, the second Nirvana album, In Utero -- one among the innumerable recordings he's produced or engineered by artists such as the Pixies, PJ Harvey, the Breeders, Bush and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. So he threw such an intimidating shadow across the '80s and '90s musical underground as an uncompromisingly acerbic opinionmaker that he once inspired the 40-plus-point zine coverline: "Is This Guy the Biggest Asshole in Rock?"

You wouldn't know it after talking to the Montana native on the phone earlier this week. Albini answered his own phone at his Chicago studio, Electrical Audio, where he had an afternoon free and planned to go to the batting cages with his six-person staff. The "Neurot Sound Series: Beyond the Pale" music festival -- which Shellac is scheduled to headline for two sold-out shows at Great American Music Hall tonight and tomorrow, August 17 and 18 -- seemed far away. And Albini, 39, sounded like the very model of a plainspoken, hard-eyed Midwesterner -- talking in a deadpan tone as flat as a plain, choosing his words with the analytical mind of an engineer and the verbal precision of a reporter. (Albini has a bachelor's in journalism from Northwestern University).

In spite of his reputation for tough talk -- a rep that's continued thanks to the Web distribution of writings such as "The Problem With Music" -- it's clear Albini is simply speaking his mind and living his life honestly, rather than aiming to shock. That explains why he prefers to be called a recording engineer rather than a producer, and he can let four years elapse between albums, as he did with the first 1994 Shellac album, At Action Park, and the second, Terraform. The band's third, 1000 Hurts, came out last year on venerable punk label Touch and Go, but there are no immediate plans for the next, Albini said -- he's too busy making a living and supporting his employees.

Kimberly Chun: So do you go to the batting cages often? You've said that the first Shellac album was all about baseball and Canada. Are you a huge Cubs fan?

Steve Albini: No! As a matter of fact, I don't consider the Cubs a baseball team. Of all the Chicago teams, I have some fondness for the White Sox but not a great deal. The two teams I'm most inspired by this year are the Seattle Mariners who are really a history-making team. There's so many things they're doing right that nobody has done right in a long time. And then the other team that I'm really inspired by are the Minnesota Twins although they've taken a nosedive in the second half of the year. I really respect the way that they've conducted themselves. It's old-school baseball, and I like the way they play. I like their work ethic. I like the way that the mentality behind the team seems to be supported by the team itself. And there's not a lot of grandstanding.

This year was the first year that I allowed myself to get excited about a specific team. I've always sort of liked the idea of baseball and I enjoy watching it and I like its history and everything, but ... this year was the first year I allowed myself to get excited about a team, and that was the Minnesota Twins. And I feared it because I feared becoming a baseball fan -- or a sports fan, which is far worse than a baseball fan.

KC: So what's going on with Shellac?

SA: Same as always. We're a very slow-working group. We all have fairly busy professional and personal lives. So the band exists in the margins of our regular lives. We don't have very much free time.

Obviously, earning a living is my number-one obligation, and because I run a business, the needs of my employees are also my needs. So I have that as an obligation. As much personal satisfaction as I get playing in a band, I also acknowledge that it's a personal satisfaction -- it's for me, and the more time and energy, I devote to the band the more selfish I feel, and I don't enjoy that feeling. I don't enjoy feeling as though I'm indulging a selfish part of my personality.

KC: How did you get involved in this Neurot show?

SA: Well I've known Neurosis for several years, and they suggested this festival, and a lot of the people they suggested being a part of it are also bands and people I admire and respect, and it seemed like a good idea.

[Shellac] had sort of developed a sort of general dislike and distrust of festival mentality, because festivals by and large are set up to exploit an audience that isn't particularly ... discerning or isn't particularly interested in what music is on offer. They just want a good day out. But the nice thing about this festival and festivals like All Tomorrow's Parties is that they're curated. That is, all the people are selected by someone who's bringing his tastes to bear on the selection process so the patrons are getting a glimpse into someone else's frame of mind, and they're also getting exposed to music that is being vouched for. Someone they trust is saying you should check this band out.

There's a general thrust to this festival that I admire greatly. It would be very difficult to describe these bands using a blanket term. There's almost no external characteristic, almost no descriptive trait, that the bands have in common. The thematic link is that these bands are all good.

KC: I found that piece you wrote "The Problem With Music" on various Web sites, and you go into a lot of excruciating detail about how bands can end up losing money or getting caught in complicated legal agreements after they sign to major labels. What kind of response did you get to that?

SA: Well, that piece was written quite a few years ago, eight or nine years ago, and it has survived for a really long time on the Internet. It's sort of taken on a life of its own, really, and I have people make mention of that article all the time, probably because it was originally written for a literary and cultural criticism magazine from Chicago called The Baffler, and The Baffler has made a point of not copyrighting its material so people would feel free to make copies and distribute it. And in this instance, it has encouraged countless people to post that up on their Web sites.

The original intention of that piece was, I guess, sort of a wake-up call for bands in the position of being tempted to sign to big record labels during a period when big record labels were actively fishing within the underground music scene for bands to sign.

That period is pretty much over. Things have pretty much reverted to the way they were before punk rock, which is that big record labels release records from artists whose existence was brought to their attention by a lawyer or manager, and the record comes out on the big record label as the first step in a band's existence. The circumstances have changed a little. Granted, bands that are signing to big record labels do still end up in the uncomfortable situation of having to pay for the origination and making of the records that the record company will then make profits off of. They still end up in a very disadvantageous position. That part of it hasn't changed but the culture within which that happens has changed. The underground music scene now is quite healthy, and it's also almost completely separate from the mainstream music business.

KC: You think the independent music scene is vital now?

SA: Well just as a constant listener of music, I'm more satisfied by what I see in the clubs and the records that I'm hearing now. I'm more satisfied and more excited than I have been for a while. I just feel like the general thrust of things is more entertaining and ... more genuine than it has been in a while.

A big part of it is the profit motive has by and large been removed. So people who are still doing it are doing it for reasons of their own making rather than traditional show-biz reasons.

KC: Since you have a degree in journalism, what made you want to turn toward music rather than pursue writing?

SA: The whole time I was in college I was also involved in music and bands and I had a sort of idealized image in my head of what journalism would be like. My heroes as a teenager weren't movie stars and race car drivers but were people like Ring Lardner and Upton Sinclair. People who were journalists but were also artists, and I felt like there was a place for serious journalism and that maybe I could do it. Then going through journalism school and seeing the way daily newspapers operate and seeing the way, even on the smallest and most noncontentious issues, things get blown out of proportion or driven by things other than the truth, it sort of soured me on the notion of working as a journalist.

KC: So you never wanted to make a living doing music because of the things you've learned over the year about the music industry?

SA: It's incredibly difficult to make a living doing music, and I also don't know that I would really enjoy doing that as a job, because most of the people that I know that work hard for a living end up resenting their jobs and I would feel cheated if I ended up resenting music. Because I enjoy music and I prefer doing it as pure experience.

KC: What do you want to do with Shellac?

SA: It's basically the three of us in the band, enjoying being in the band and enjoying the music we make. And we're just pursuing it in whatever direction it goes. We don't have a specific goal or anything in mind, and I think if we did have goals in mind, we might end up being disappointed occasionally.

KC: So do you prefer playing live or recording your own music?

SA: Personally I much prefer playing live to anything else that I get to do. For me anyway it's the most liberating thing. I love the experience of doing it and I love all the things that I get to see along the way and I love interacting with Bob [Weston, bassist] and Todd [Trainer, drummer], the other two guys in the band. Playing live is by far the best thing that ever happens to me.

KC: What do you like the audiences to come away with after a show?

SA: It's none of my business.

Shellac performs on Friday and Saturday, August 17 and 18, as part of the Beyond the Pale Festival at Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell St., SF. Opening bands include Neurosis and Oxbow. Music begins at 9 pm. Tickets are $15; both shows are sold out. Call (415) 885-0750.